F4 Meet 4K

(12/01/2015) F4 meet 4K is the motto of a complex networked cooperation between the entertainment company Sky Germany and the most successful German hip-hop band Die Fantastischen Vier (The Fantastic Four) and their label Sony Music. The Fantastic Four are celebrating their 25th anniversary on stage. Around the release of the new Fantastic Four album Rekord and the associated concert tour, Sky Media Network has developed a comprehensive communication strategy, involving the various divisions at Sky. The Cooperation will initially run until June 2015. The aim is to provide intensive networking to achieve exceptional staging of the Fantastic Four and their new album on Sky and their various channels.

As part of the content partnership Sky produces exclusive video content in Ultra High Definition (Ultra HD) with the Fantastic Four including the transmission in HD and Ultra HD on Sky Germany. On 19, 20 and 21 December 2014 the Fantastic Four performed three shows in their native town Stuttgart. Sky brought TVN Mobile Production on board and together with the management of the Fantastic Four it was decided to use the concert on the 19th as a test run and to carry out the live production and transmission on the 20th.

With the support of Fraunhofer HHI/Rohde & Schwarz the native 4K signal was encoded in realtime in 35 Mbit/s HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding) and transmitted via Astra 19.2 East with 50 progressive images/s live to four selected households across Germany. Each household was equipped with a 55-inch Sony BRAVIA Ultra HD television set. In addition the live signal was transferred in native 4K via fiber cable with a transfer rate of 12 GB/s to the ARRI cinema in Munich. Of course Sky down-converted the Ultra HD signal to HD and made the concert available live via the pay-per-view channel Sky Select.

The Ultra HD footage from the concert and exclusive behind-the-scenes materials will be used to produce a documentary film in Ultra HD for cinema release in February. In addition, the Ultra HD content will be used at point of sale for Sky and for Sony.

The Live Production in Ultra HD

TVN Mobile Production had send its TVN 2HD together with a staff of 23 technicians to the Hanns-Martin-Schleyer-Halle in Stuttgart. The concert was produced with ten Sony PMW-F55 Ultra HD cameras. The camera set included a camera on a crane (K1), a camera on a 18 meters rail-dolly (K6) and a camera on a 20 meters Blackcam rail running on the stage directly in front of the artists.

At the OBVan the ten camera signals were mixed by vision director Sven Offen on a Sony MVS-8000X. The 4K set-up in the OBVan included also a 4K VIZRT graphics engine. A dedicated focus was on audio. Sound engineer Stephan Thyssen was receiving 56 audio signals from the Fantastic Four and the band on stage. In addition 16 atmosphere microphones were hanging in front of the stage and in the middle of the event location. On a Lawo mc 56 Stephan provided a Dolby 5.1 surround mix for the UHD and the HD live transmissions and for the first time an Audio 3D 9.1 mix was produced which will become part of the BluRay production. For this purpose all microphone signals were recorded as well as all the 4K camera signals (on two Sony PWS-4400 multi-port storage units).

Gunther Hecker's Visual Design Rocks For Fantastic Four

Gunther one of Germany's most innovative designers is working with the band since 25 years. When Gunther's name is on the design credits for a show, you know it's going to be visually interesting, idiosyncratic and a bit out-of-the-box' with a few flourishes of the unexpected ... and so Gunther has created another epic stage, set, lighting and video design. Gunther is working closely with Lighting Director and FOH Systems Engineer Marc Lorenz on the Rekord tour where video is playing a major role in the visuals of the Rekord tour, and is completely integrated into the design from the outset avoiding all the current video and LED clich s! The video screens sometimes are used in a lighting role, with all the regular lights turned off and just the screens as the light source. During the show Gunther operated a HedgeHog4 to control the show. All the lighting (mainly Robe - see Robe BMFLs on the Record' for Die Fantastischen Vier Tour), sound (L-Acoustics) and video kit for the stage was hired by rental house satis&fy.

Live-Video/IMAG was used in about 70% of the show and the screens were active throughout. For the 4K UHD production Gunther and Marc worked in close collaboration with Sven to optimize the lighting and to specify additional lighting equipment necessary for the inclusion of spectator shots in the 4K live transmission. This equipment was controlled by a grandMA2 and only available in Stuttgart.

Alessandro Reitano, Director of Sports Production at Sky Germany and responsible for the 4K UHD production in Stuttgart: It was just great to implement this production together with the Fantastic Four and to transmit their home game live in Ultra HD. For the first time we have realized an Ultra HD and an HD production in one go and we are very happy with the results and particularly with the images. With tests like these we step by step come closer to a regular Ultra-HD operation.

The Fantastic Four presentation at the ARRI CinemaTimm Stemann, Managing Director CONCON International and an expert for 4K and new technologies was at the ARRI Cinema in Munich and delivered the following impressions:

Projector and transmission

The Christie projector provided outstanding 4K images on the slightly curved screen and delivered excellent impressions of the live concert in Stuttgart. Really great was the transmission with 50p which virtually revealed no motion blur. Once there were problems with a failure of the first image quadrant and with the sound, but it was resolved within a few se

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