Broadcast Engineering - April 2008 - (Page 12)

DOWNLOAD BEYOND THE HEADLINES video control room; a new digital audio control room with 5.1 surround sound; six new HD studio cameras; three upgraded HD edit suites; an expanded video storage system; four HD ﬁeld camera systems; two HD studio decks; video servers, storage and archive equipment; expanded HD routers; a rear projection multi-image display wall; and QC/QA workstations. This is a long equipment list and represents a considerable ﬁnancial investment. There is only one opportunity to get it right. An HD upgrade is a tricky undertaking. Much of the equipment is evolving; new features are offered frequently by manufacturers. known; the devil is most certainly in the details of an HD infrastructure. This is when the use of a knowledgeable system design and integration company will prove invaluable. Unforeseen problems can be avoided, or resolved before they ever appear. In a complex undertaking, there is no substitute for experience. Consider the source News operations face a particularly difﬁcult aesthetic challenge compared to dramatic programming and studio programming. Excruciatingly true for HD is the unavoidable fact that program quality is dependent on the afﬁliates reliably. A major challenge with HD news production is the fact that source content may be in a plethora of audio and video formats, all of which must be properly format-converted, transcoded or transrated for production and distribution. Video can arrive in 1080i, 720p, 480i, NTSC, IMX, P2, HDCAM, HDV and many other formats, while audio can be analog, digital, mono, stereo, 5.1 or others. It cannot be assumed that all feeds will be in a 16:9 aspect ratio. User-generated content from citizen-journalists makes matters worse. Whatever the source formats, they will have to be converted to the house production standard. Intelligent leveraging of the inherent characteristics of source material may be possible. For example, consider windowing an SD source rather than upconverting to full screen HD or using a stereo source as left and right channels and supplementing the center and surround audio. Historical footage News segments often use historical footage in legacy formats. This poses a serious challenge when converting to HD news production. Money spent on equipment needed to convert legacy material for HD broadcasts may be more expensive than the depreciated value of the device. It may be signiﬁcantly more costeffective to digitize and ingest content that has a high probability of use prior to its being needed for a segment. Or should equipment be kept on hand and operational for ad-hoc conversion as needed for a breaking story? An experienced systems integrator has probably faced these questions before and can discuss the merits of each approach based on your production workﬂows. Visual aesthetics Graphics packages may now need to support two aspect ratios. Although existing graphics that were produced for SD may initially be used for HD broadcasts, at some time in The WETA studio includes six new Sony HDC1000LW HD studio cameras with Fujinon lenses. A serious challenge in any upgrade may be getting all the diverse equipment to work properly and communicate as a system. Let’s face it: An inhouse engineering staff, particularly at a local station, has probably never designed from scratch or converted an HD infrastructure. Development of functional system block diagrams by in-house staff, who are intimately familiar with the newsroom workﬂow, is about as far as an in-house engineering department may feel comfortable to venture. Beyond this point lies the great un- source. Set design, lighting and makeup must stand up to the viewer scrutiny allowed by HD resolution. Fortunately, most stations are meeting the challenge, and talent actually looks better than ever before when make-up is properly applied for HD. HD-friendly sets are routinely designed by theatrical design and lighting integrators. HD ENG contribution feeds over Broadcast Auxiliary Services or via commercial carriers are emerging technologies. Why take chances? Content delivery service providers can get HD feeds in from the ﬁeld and out to 12 broadcastengineeringworld.com | April 2008 http://broadcastengineeringworld.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Broadcast Engineering - April 2008

Broadcast Engineering - April 2008 Contents Editorial HD Newsrooms Wavelet Compression Mobile TV Audio Processing for HDTV, Part 1 QoE for IPTV End Users NAB Update Asset Management Advertisers Index

Broadcast Engineering - April 2008

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