OBS Takes UHD/HDR, Cloud, AI and 5G to New Heights at Tokyo Games By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director Friday, July 23, 2021 - 11:08 am
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The pandemic may have caused the OBS (Olympic Broadcasting Services) team to pause its efforts but it didn't pause a focus on innovation as the Tokyo Olympics will long be remembered as the launching point of some major technological efforts. Top industry trends like UHD, HDR, spatial audio, cloud services, AI, and 5G will all drive a new level of content creation, distribution, and viewer experiences.
The Tokyo Olympics IBC will be an innovation hub for the next two weeks.
For example, UHD and HDR have been a part of the past two Olympics via tests at Rio 2016 and PyeongChang 2018. But OBS is adopting a new production standard across the board that will see all outputs in UHD, combined with HDR and immersive audio (5.1.4 channels) from the 42 Olympic competition venues (only the production for the seven outside Tennis courts will remain in HD).
OBS says setting up a broadcast environment of this scale and complexity is a significant undertaking. Delivering UHD HDR content requires customized production units and workflows. Overall, OBS will utilize a total of 31 Outside Broadcast (OB) vans and 22 fly-away systems that have been specifically designed and fitted-out to meet the new production and distribution requirements.
OBS has created a single HDR/SDR production workflow model that will allow the trucks to generate an HD 1080i SDR output via high-quality conversion from the primary UHD HDR signal.
Isidoro Moreno, OBS, head of engineering, says OBS has been focused on a single HDR/SDR workflow.
That has been done together with adding IP capability to our OB fleet, always making sure that we don't sacrifice any quality in the delivery of the SDR signal, he says. That's quite a challenging and complex task for an event of the scale of the Olympic Games.
The full IP infrastructure has been built to support the transport of the UHD HDR signals for the contribution network. OBS Venue Technical Operations (VTO) team has developed a set of look-up tables (LUT) in-house to maximise the quality between all cross-conversions (from/to UHD-HD and HDR-SDR).
As for technical specs, all RHBs will receive the international signal in HD, based on the host city's HD standards. For Tokyo, the SMPTE 292 standard is used to allow for bit rates of 1.485 Gbps for the produc tion of the 1080i/59.94 HD-SDI signal (OBS will follow the 59.94 Hz specification). UHD takers will receive the international signal in UHD HDR, with 5.1.4 audio configuration. The UHD production will adhere to the SMPTE 2036-1 standard and follow the 59.94 Hz specification. The HDR standard will be Hybrid-Log Gamma (HLG).
OBS says that by having natively captured the content in UHD HDR or up-converted to UHD HDR, then down-converted again, the final HD 1080i signal delivered to the RHBs will offer higher quality across all platforms than if produced in a standard HD production.
Almost all of the content captured will be produced natively in UHD HDR; however, OBS will also rely on several specialty cameras that at this time can only operate in HD 1080p SDR. The video source of these cameras will need to be up-converted to UHD HDR to be seamlessly integrated into the main production.
OBS will deliver the UHD HDR feeds to the RHBs participating in the project, while simulta neously ensuring the content delivery also in HD 1080i SDR to all broadcasters.
OBS will also capture the sounds of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics through an immersive 5.1.4 audio configuration that enables viewers to have a more realistic audio experience, with sound appearing to come from every direction - even from above. OBS will expand upon 5.1 surround sound by adding an overhead, and thus third dimension with the addition of four hanging ceiling micro phones with heights that will be adjustable. Two new microphones were specifically designed for this immersive sound production. In total, OBS will use 3,600 microphones (28 different models). Three immersive audio quality control rooms will support the venue production and guarantee quality consistency across all sports.
Clear Skies for Cloud-Based Future
In collaboration with Worldwide TOP Partner Alibaba Group, OBS has created a suite of cloud services, specifically designed for data-heavy broadcast workflows. This can allow broad casters to carry out a virtualization of a great part of their broadcast systems and network platforms in their own private cloud installation, integrated with Alibaba Cloud technology.
With the increasing demand for more content in more formats, cloud-enabled services are becoming a key partner for broadcast organ isations as they can better address media management workflows from processing to editing to distribution operations. OBS says if most broad cast organizations were still in the early stages of deployment and integration of cloud-based systems beginning of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has clearly accelerated the adoption of such solutions. Most organizations have been forced to carry out production and distribution workflows from home and, during the crisis, rely on cloud services to support their newly remote production. In that sense, workflows have dramatically changed over the course of the last months.
With the launch of OBS Cloud, OBS says it can accom modate tailored, fully fledged cloud-based front and back-end solutions for the RHBs to help them more easily set up all or part of their processes in the Cloud. For broadcasters, this is a dramatic inflection point in the cost struc ture of their on-site production as they reduce up-front investments. Also, they can significantly keep their set-up time to the minimum and have their equipment all prepared for their Olympic coverage befor
