4K Cameras To Get Growing Exposure At NAB

When television broadcasters enter the exhibit floor of the Las Vegas Convention Center April 13 to attend the 2015 NAB Show, many may feel a sense of déjà vu — especially if they have been around long enough to remember the fits and starts that took them from NTSC to 1080i and 720p HDTV.

Nowhere will the nagging feeling of having walked this path before be more evident than the exhibits devoted to broadcast cameras.

More And More Of 4K Cameras And Gear

There, broadcasters will find a growing lineup of new cameras that supports 4K acquisition for the future while delivering HD imagery for today.

“Set aside ATSC 3.0 and the possibility that the broadcast world is going to change,” says Dave Walton, assistant VP of marketing and communications, at JVC. “I believe 4K acquisition makes sense.”

“4K as an acquisition format can be used very effectively even when the output is HD. And let’s not forget that,” he says. “We can deliver four times the resolution in a product that is virtually the same price an HD camera was a year or two ago. Why wouldn’t you want it?”

JVC

At the 2015 NAB Show, JVC will show its 4KCAM handheld cameras, which were introduced in November 2014. Together, the 4K cameras — the GY-LS300 Super 35, GY-HM200 4K Ultra HD streaming model and palm-sized GY-HM170 — expand the company’s product lineup, but “don’t replace anything,” says Walton.

“The LS300 has a single large-format Super 35 CMOS imager,” he says. “The HM200 and HM170 use single 1/2.3-inch BSI CMOS imagers.”

While the HM200 and HM170 are outfitted with a fixed 12x optical zoom lens, the LS300 is equipped with a Micro Four Thirds, MFT, mount allowing interchangeable MFT lenses, as well as PL- and EF-mount lenses with an adapter, Walton says.

The LS300, HM200 and HM170 shoot and record 4K Ultra HD, Full HD with 4:2:2 sampling, and SD video. The LS300 also records Web-friendly proxy formats. Each has two SDHC/SDXC card slots to provide backup and continuous recording. Both the LS300 and HM200 also include a built-in HD streaming engine.

Blackmagic Design

At the NAB Show, Blackmagic Design will be highlighting its line of broadcast cameras, including the Blackmagic Studio Camera, which Bob Caniglia, senior regional manager of eastern North America, calls “the world’s smallest studio camera with the world’s largest viewfinder.”

The studio cameras, available as a 4K model with HD output and a native high-def version, come with a 10-inch LCD viewfinder, which when configured with a viewfinder hood, dwarfs the camera head.

The Blackmagic Studio Camera was designed to be controlled and shaded via the company’s ATEM live production switcher. Remote control from the switcher via bi-directional fiber optic cable or two SDI cables makes it possible to mount the cameras in difficult places to access in studios while maintaining control, Caniglia says. Their compact size also makes the cameras candidates for small studios.

For live sports and entertainment production, new 4K cameras at NAB will deliver the signals most commonly used today while offering a path into an Ultra HD future. That’s especially important when it comes to electronic field production, EFP, cameras onboard mobile production trucks.

“Nobody knows what will be the correct format for the next five to 10 years,” says Klaus Weber, senior product marketing manager, cameras, at Grass Valley. “A system camera is typically in operation for at least eight years, sometimes 10 years.”

Grass Valley

At NAB, Grass Valley will show its new LDX-4K, a new multiformat EFP camera designed for sports and live production. At the heart of the new camera is a 4K imaging system that relies on three 2/3-inch Grass Valley Xensium-FT CMOS 1080-progressive imaging chips.

“We use these three imagers in their full bandwidth, which we call 4:4:4 processing,” says Weber. “We do a kind of up-conversion [to 4K] in the so-called RAW mode, meaning before the final signal processing happens.”

This approach offers an advantage when it comes to image quality in terms of dynamic range and camera light sensitivity, which is maintained whether the signal from the camera is 720p, 1080i, 1080p or 4K, he adds.

Hitachi

Hitachi also is eager to grab a piece of the 4K live production market. The company will show its new SK-UHD4000 4K production camera at the convention.

Like the Grass Valley camera, the SK-UHD4000 outputs a variety of signal formats, including SD, HD and 4K. Another similarity is the use of 2/3-inch CMOS sensors; however, rather than relying on three imagers, the Hitachi camera uses four.

“This is the only camera on the market that uses this optical system,” says Emilio Aleman, engineering manager at Hitachi. “The camera prism has four ports to feed the sensors. It takes incoming light, divides it into red, green and blue, except there are two ports for green.”

Hitachi offsets the two green channels by a half pixel vertically and horizontally, he says.

“By having dual green, we have higher resolution because the green channel overall is about 60% of the video signal,” Aleman says. “And that is what gives you the higher resolution and most contrast in the picture.”

Using 2/3-inch imagers for sports production is important for a few reasons. First, the shallow depth of field created by digital cinema cameras using Super 35mm imagers is not appropriate for covering sports where, for example, a camera positioned in the centerfield bleachers may be called on to zoom into home plate.

Second, there are no 100x zoom lenses available for the Super 35mm imagers, says Weber.

Finally — and perhaps most importantly — existing lenses designed for 2/3-inch HD cameras can be used during the long transition to 4K. “The lenses are the most expensive part of a camera chain, especially for sports production,” Aleman says. “Nobody wants to throw out a $100,000 lens because the camera technology changed.”

AJA Video

However, there is a role for the AJA Video Cion single large-format CMOS imager 4K camera in sports production, says Andy Bellamy, field sales engineer with the company.

When paired with the company’s TruZoom application running on its Corvid Ultra breakout processing box, Cion can deliver up to 120fps slow-motion with “incredibly vivid, detailed instant slow-mo and region of interest,” he says.

“In baseball, using one Cion with TruZoom and Corvid Ultra to cover the whole diamond as a wide shot, gives you the option to zoom into a full HD portion of the 4K image, and even beyond that if necessary, to get to the point where you can see the stitching of the ball,” he says.

AJA Video will have a full demo of this setup in its booth at the 2015 NAB Show, Bellamy says.

Sony

Sony also is likely to show a new three-imager 4K camera designed for sports and live entertainment use. In December 2014, the company privately showed the camera to several industry insiders, according to a source who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Sony did not comment on the camera for this story.

Ikegami

Ikegami also has announced it will show a new 4K camera at NAB in a technology exhibit area at its booth, but no further details were available.

Other Camera Developments

While a significant trend, 4K will not be the only important development in cameras for television on display at NAB.

Sony

Sony will highlight newly developed 2/3-inch CCD image sensors for its PDW-850 XDCAM HD 422 shoulder mount camcorder.

The company also will introduce the ability to upgrade the performance of many of its cameras with a simple firmware update. For example, version 2.0 firmware for the Sony PXW-X180 camcorder enables live content streaming from the field via 3G, 4G, LTE and Wi-Fi connections. Wireless connectivity also enables remote camera control over functions such as start/stop, zoom, focus and iris.

JVC

At the NAB Show, JVC also will highlight enhanced streaming capabilities for its wireless IP cameras that enable a Zixi server to shape bandwidth usage automatically by analyzing the connection speed and adjusting the encoder to increase or decrease the number of bits streamed per second depending on the connection, Walton says.

Panasonic

Steve Mahrer, technology alliance manager/P2 product manager, at Panasonic says that while streaming and transporting content via wireless FTP connections are important, they are merely slivers of a much larger change in production workflows.

“You are no longer tied to a camera on your shoulder, recording to a P2 card and handing it off to someone to edit and feed a story,” he says. “Now journalists want to live stream from the camera back to their stations or to FTP content, and that could be high-res, a proxy or both.

“That’s evolving into really advanced workflows in the cloud. Obviously, cloud-based workflows encompass all sorts of things, including access worldwide, acquisition, editing on the cloud, previewing and pre-editing on the cloud and reaching into the camera to download content remotely.”

While Panasonic does not preview NAB introductions, Mahrer says, support for these sorts of cloud-based workflows that integrate the companies P2 ENG cameras into the process will be featured at the exhibit.

Ikegami

At the Ikegami booth, the company will feature the HC-HD300, the newest addition to its Unicam HD product line at the NAB Show. The three 1/3-inch CMOS camera, which Ikegami calls its “first affordable HD studio camera system,” can be controlled with the company’s new camera control system via the FA-300 Fiber Adapter and BSF-300 Base Station.

The new HDK-65C Unicam HD camera with three 2/3-inch CMOS sensors will also be on display at the NAB Show.

Canon

Run-and-gun newsgathering with small, single 1/3-inch sensor HD cameras have filled a need in the broadcast industry, says Larry Thorpe, senior fellow at Canon USA. The company, which has introduced seven of these camcorders over the past few years, continues to see them playing an important role.

While Canon does not preview NAB Show introductions, Thorpe says these types of cameras are “getting smaller, better in performance and very sophisticated when it comes to connectivity.”

“There are strategies among broadcasters where management is saying: ‘The days of high-quality 2/3-inch ENG is passe. Today, we need lots more cameras out there bringing in more news footage,’ ” says Thorpe.

Into this rich stew of camera technology, broadcasters attending the 2015 NAB Show must dip, looking to nourish their existing operations with HD images that meet today’s business realities, while keeping their operations free to take advantage of new higher-res alternatives.

“Broadcasters are leery of 4K,” says Thorpe. “But at the same time, they are watching it very closely because there are other delivery mechanisms that are looming.

“Not unlike the time back in 2003 when ESPN pulled the trigger and said, ‘Hey, we are going to do sports in HD,’ and suddenly the whole industry started to move, I think we are poised for a similar event with 4K.”

This is the first installment of a special series on emerging tech trends, NAB Hot Topics, that will appear each week leading up to the NAB Show that runs April 11-16 in Las Vegas. The schedule: March 5: Field Transmission; March 12: Editing & Workflow; March 19: The IP Transition; and March 26: Audio.