Live from The Open Championship: UHD HDR Coverage Debuts on Hole 1, 18 Feed By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director
Saturday, July 21, 2018 - 8:42 am
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The most newsworthy addition to the mix this year at The Open Championship is DirecTV's request for UHD HDR coverage. DirecTV's Open Experience mosaic channel includes a channel dedicated to holes 1 and 18. The decision was made to produce the coverage from those two holes in true UHD with HDR (for separate distribution apart from the mosaic) and it required eighteen Sony HDC-4300 cameras and one P43 to operate in true 4K mode as well as an EVS XT4K replay server operating in 2 2 channel mode and at true UHD 4K resolution.
CTV's OB2 production unit is handling UHD and HDR production of holes 1 and 18.
DirecTV wanted as much native 4K coverage as possible and they didn't want to start with 1080p, says Paul Francis, CTV OB, CTO. This is the first sport we have been involved with where we had native UHD and HDR replays and it's been a reasonable compromise to say in UHD instead of 1080p and upconverting it.
The impact of the HDR element depend somewhat on lighting conditions as in bright, sunny conditions the colors pop much more and details are a bit more visible. And when the clouds and rain roll in the colors may not pop but the HDR benefits become clear when looking at darker areas where details previously would have been lost (like the sides of Barry Burn).
When the sun is out there is a wow factor in the production gallery. He adds that one of the best shots in UHD HDR comes from the behind the player as they walk down the fairway as the 4K and HDR adds depth to the shot looking down the fairway.
You have the player in the foreground and there is an amazing depth that comes from that, he says.
Hamish Greig, CTV OB, CEO, says the move to UHD and HDR required all of the cameras on the two holes to be switched to Sony HDC-4300 cameras. The BPUs for the cameras extract UHD and HDR for the hole 1 and 18 coverage while a 1080i signal is used for the world feed and coverage from Sky UK and NBC Sports.
Five cameras are dedicated to the UHD and HDR production while 13 are part of the standard world feed, he adds. The crane cameras in UHD and HDR have an amazing level of detail and depth of field.
The biggest issue for making the move to even more UHD coverage on a golf course is that there is not enough available spectrum to accommodate 25 radio cameras operating in 1080p.
It's been a relatively painless production, says Greig of the two holes of coverage. We have the cricket trucks that are already configured for UHD and then have the HDC-4300 cameras on board and they also had a one-week window. So, the gods were shining on us.
DirecTV brought in DTAGS to help out with encoding of the 4K HDR contribution and distribution signals at Carnoustie. Mike Burk, DTAGS president, is on hand for the encoding of the 4K HDR production and then an IP multicast of the signal which is sent to DirecTV's Los Angeles-based broadcast center.
The most critical component really is the video signal, he says. If you have a beautiful picture you can maintain that through the whole picture chain.
DTAGS is on site with two Grass Valley Alchemist Live units for frame rate conversion from 50 to 59.94 fps. The converted signals are then sent to Ericsson AVP2000 encoders and Ateme Titan Live encoders and encoded using HEVC compression and output at 85 Mbps.
It's a pretty high HEVC data rate in order to maintain the pristine quality all the way through contribution and distribution, says Burk. It is then sent to Los Angeles via IP multicast directly into an Elemental decoder, so it is never truly decoded in the traditional sense.
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Live from The Open Championship: UHD HDR Coverage Debuts on Hole 1, 18 Feed By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director 
