In yesterday’s Display Daily, I looked at the effects of the SMPTE ST-2110 standards on the design and construction of a new production or post-production facility, as discussed by the six experts at the SMPTE New York section meeting on January 15th. ST-2110 technology allows the replacement of traditional dedicated video hardware such as SDI and video routers with generic IP hardware, including Ethernet connections and IP routers.
This was only one among the 13 topics discussed at the meeting. (See yesterday’s 13 New Technologies for Video Production Part 1: ST-2110for the complete list.) Several of the other topics on the list were a direct result of choosing ST-2110 technology instead of dedicated video technology. These included #1, hardware to virtual systems; #2, on vs off-premise systems; #3, hardware vs software subscriptions; #5, dedicated video routing vs COTS IP routing; and #7, 10Gig to 40/100 gig transport.
Video vs IP routing is actually the same question as SDI vs ST-2110. The 10Gig to 40/100Gig transport upgrade sometime in the future is a non-issue, according to the panelists – ST-2110 does not discuss the hardware layer and the move from one version of Ethernet to a faster version will not affect the system operation.
Experts on the SMPTE NY panel. The Sixth expert was the moderator, Josh Gordon. (Credit: SMPTE)
The future of post-production houses
ST-2110 does allow many things that are simply not realistically possible using SDI. This includes using cloud services instead of in-house hardware and software. This, in turn, allows people working on video content to work remotely. Conceivably, this could lead to the demise of a centralized post-production facility, where everyone works in-house to take advantage of the video connectivity for the signals. Would this lead to the demise of post-production houses, with everything being out-sourced? The consensus was not yet and maybe never. ST-2110 primarily replaces the in-house SDI video connections with in-house Ethernet video connections. Cloud services, however, can work with public internet connections, as long as they are relatively fast, e.g. high-end consumer grade.
While it did not come up at this meeting, there are serious questions about the security of cloud services when used for video editing, storage and streaming that have been discussed at other SMPTE meetings.
ATSC 3.0 and 5G
ATSC 3.0 poses special challenges to the broadcast industry, although not necessarily the post-production houses. Since ATSC 3.0 allows higher bit rates to the consumer than ATSC 1.0, there was a general expectation that the demand for 4K broadcast content will increase at the expense of 1080P HD content. This is not a disruption because many content producers are already producing content in 4K/UHD format to future-proof it. Besides, there is general agreement that 1080P content looks better if it is produced in UHD and than down-scaled than it looks if it is produced in native 1080p format.
The other ATSC 3.0 topic discussed related to the broadcasters. TV channels were originally allocated on the basis of analog NTSC area coverage and ATSC 1.0 area coverage was deliberately designed to match the coverage of NTSC signals. ATSC 3.0, however, has flexible encoding and bit rates and coverage can be expanded at the transmitter for lower resolution content, allowing a station to encroach onto another station’s coverage area. For UHD-TV broadcasts, higher bit rates can be used, producing smaller coverage areas, with coverage gaps between adjacent stations. The panel saw this as more of a political problem than a technical problem. In any event, it will not affect the technology in the production or post production facility, other than to increase the demand for UHD content.
The main discussion of 5G service was asking why a company like Verizon would include a mobile DTV ATSC 3.0 chip in a mobile handset, allowing users to watch free over-the-air content. Without this chip, they would be forced to watch, and pay for, video services provided via the 5G link. After all, the main force driving 5G is the dramatic increase in video downloading.
One of the questions considered by the panel, but not resolved, was the future of ATSC 3.0. With 5G cellular service, does ATSC 3.0 make sense anymore? Will ATSC 3.0 be a failure in competition with 5G? Not only the panel, but no one else seems to have a satisfactory answer to this question.
HDR and other issues
HDR typically is produced with 10 bit video as opposed to SDR produced with 8 bits. This is not seen as a problem for ST-2110-based facilities where almost everything, including bit depth, can be controlled by software. However, it is a problem for consumers, most of whom have non-HDR TVs. It is estimated that of the 1.5 billion TV sets in the world, 1.4 billion of them are SDR-only. This is a particular problem for PQ-based HDR systems such as Dolby Vision and HDR-10/10+. These SDR-only sets normally ignore the metadata and show the video as transmitted.
This leads to dark images as millions of viewers of Game of Thrones noticed, including John Turner’s wife. The drive behind HDR is, of course, the image quality when it is shown correctly, i.e. on an HDR TV set in an environment with controlled and very dim lighting. John Humphrey commented on the importance of HDR and said, that at the typical 9 foot (3 metres) viewing distance, he believed 1080P video with HDR looked better than UHD video without it. He added that to begin to perceive pixels on an 8K TV, you would need a 200” TV, and sit just 9 feet (3 metres) away.
The smartphone market has encouraged the production of content in 9:16 format rather than 16:9, especially for sports. Again, not really a post-production problem in a world dominated by software rather than dedicated video hardware.
The key takeaway from this panel was that the transition from dedicated video interfaces (SDI) to ST-2110 IP-based interfaces is the key issue going forward. There was universal agreement that this transition will happen. All the other questions on the list were either subsidiary to this question; not a problem for either SDI or ST-2110 systems; or, like HDR, 5G and ATSC 3.0, not a post-production problem at all. If broadcasters or OTT video service providers want HDR, 9:16 video, 4K or 8K, the post-production facilities can produce it. – Matthew Brennesholtz
