Sony Pixel Power calrec Sony

FA Cup Final 2019: BBC Sport To Use Single Production Workflow for Both SDR Broadcast, UHD HDR Stream

18/05/2019

FA Cup Final 2019: BBC Sport to use single production workflow for both SDR broadcast and UHD HDR stream By Will Strauss, Editor

Friday, May 17, 2019 - 09:43

Print This Story

This weekend's FA Cup Final at Wembley between Manchester City and Watford is going to be a one-sided affair, if the bookies are to be believed. And if they're right (Watford are currently 14/1 to lift the trophy), the result of the match won't be the only thing that can only go one way on Saturday.

BBC Sport's coverage of the showpiece final will, for the first time, be produced for both HD standard dynamic range (SDR) broadcast on BBC1 and in UHD with high dynamic range (HDR) as a BBC iPlayer trial using a single production workflow.

Until recently, all of the BBC's live UHD trials including Wimbledon 2018 and the 2018 World Cup in Russia have required a separate, experimental production process that has seen a UHD with HDR production run parallel to the HD with SDR production.

But for the Cup Final, the UHD coverage with HDR will be the master feed from which both the BBC's UHD online test stream and its HD broadcast will be derived. A UHD SDR feed will also be provided for BT Sport.

Devising this single workflow and testing it has been led by BBC R&D working closely with OB firm Arena Television.

Part of what we are trying to do is make this an effective business as usual' process within the BBC for distribution and for production. And having a dual workflow is not sustainable.

Andrew Cotton (pictured below, second right), a principal technologist within BBC R&D's Broadcast & Connected Systems section, believes that HDR to SDR conversion has improved sufficiently well in the last year to allow the BBC to confidently make the programme in UHD-HDR and still provide a great SDR signal to feed the main BBC1 transmission chain.

This will make a huge difference, he says, making it both cheaper and less complicated.

We've got to protect the HD SDR viewers because there are the most eyeballs in front of those screens, he told SVG Europe on the eve of the Cup Final.

High Dynamic Range discussion: (L/R) Will Strauss, SVG Europe; Shane Warden, ATP Media; Andrew Cotton, BBC R&D; and Andy Beale, BT Sport

But clearly we want to deliver a great UHD HDR experience for those watching that signal as well. Most UHD cameras have both an HDR and an SDR output and those two outputs have been effectively been passed through parallel production workflows. It has worked but it's an extremely complicated and costly workflow because you need twice as much equipment and timing up the different signals is more complicated. It's a complete nightmare.

For this to take off at scale we need to have a single production workflow and we need to be able to generate an HD-SDR output from a primary UHD-HDR signal. We now feel that we've reached that stage.

Phil Layton, the head of broadcast and connected systems at BBC R&D, is of the opinion that the previously used dual workflow was not sustainable.

Unless we can simplify the UHD production workflow, then it is very difficult for us to justify these trials, he says.

Part of what we are trying to do is make this an effective business as usual' process within the BBC for distribution and for production. And having a dual workflow is not sustainable. We were having to fund both productions through different means.

Royal approval

Down-conversion work completed for coverage of the Royal Wedding in 2018, which saw UHD-HDR signals down-converted to UHD-SDR for the benefit of Sky News, helped to inform the workflow and proved that the single workflow would be possible, acknowledges Cotton.

For the Cup Final, most of the cameras will be Grass Valley LDX-86Ns running in HDR mode with additional LDX-C86N compact HDR cameras on Steadicam rigs and one housed in a Shotover F1 gyro stabilised system on a helicopter.

HDR up-mapping for non-HDR sources and mixer feed down-mapping will be handled by Grass Valley UHD-3901 processing cards and AJA FS4-HDR units. Phabrix QXs will be used to monitor and analyse the signals.

All of the equipment will be housed in two of Arena's IP-based OB units - one dedicated to creating the match feed, the other being utilised for the BBC's domestic output.

More efficient and elegant: Daf Rees in the audio area of Arena's new OBZ

Daf Rees, Arena Television's deputy director of operations (pictured, right), reveals that this single HDR to SDR production workflow has been in the works for a while.

Our minds have been focused on developing and delivering a single HDR/SDR workflow since late 2015, alongside the development work for our IP OB fleet, he says.

In the same way as we saw quad SDI as an unsatisfactory way of delivering UHD, we recognised that a parallel HDR/SDR workflow was a similarly unsatisfactory, and in many cases, unrealistic way of delivering an HDR master with SDR deliverables.

His company started testing different options back in 2016, initially with single cameras across sport and entertainment events, evaluating HDR camera and monitor performance.

Step by step we introduced various up-map and down-map processes to evaluate their effect on the picture in the real world. It's been vitally important to us to create a format-agnostic platform for our clients so developed a very good rapport with R&D teams at several key vendors to improve the results iteration by iteration.

Mixing camera formats

Being format agnostic is a crucial part of this workflow, as Cotton explains.

For football coverage, it is simply not possible today [to have everything in one format] because we rely on a number of specialist cameras that can only operate in SDR BT.709 such as the super slo-mo camera, the roving cameras and the cameras behind the goals. We need to
LINK: https://www.svgeurope.org/blog/headlines/fa-cup-final-2019-bbc-sport-t...
See more stories from svg

Most recent headlines

05/01/2027

Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be demoed at CES 2026

Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...

09/10/2026

Dolby Expands Dolby OptiView Platform with New Capabilities at IBC 2026

September 10 2026, 06:00 (PDT) Dolby Expands Dolby OptiView Platform with New Capabilities at IBC 2026 New Sports Intelligence helps providers better unders...

07/10/2026

Dalet Flex LTS Delivers Smarter Media Operations from Ingest to Distribution

Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, today announced the latest Long-Term Supported (LTS) release of Dalet Flex. Build...

22/09/2026

Young Journalist Award 2026: Meet the Final 12

From Malaysia to Mexico and from DR Congo to Ukraine, this year's 12 finalists for the 2026 Thomson Foundation Young Journalist of the Year award tell extra...

22/09/2026

ESPN, Precision Lasers Light Up NHL Player Media Tour in Las Vegas

The annual preseason content-gathering event brought 36 NHL players to Las Vegas, where ESPN used 2.5 kilowatts of laser power and a motion-control camera syste...

22/09/2026

Neumann Introduces KK 104 A and KK 105 A Wireless Capsule Heads

Neumann has introduced the KK 104 A (cardioid) and KK 105 A (supercardioid) wireless capsule heads, succeeding the KK 204 and KK 205. The new capsules are compa...

22/09/2026

NFL and TMRW Sports Announce Pro Flag Showcase During Super Bowl LXI Week

The NFL and TMRW Sports have announced a new annual Pro Flag Showcase to be held during Super Bowl LXI week in Los Angeles. The event will feature top flag foot...

22/09/2026

Washington State University Unveils New Daktronics Video Board and Audio System at Gesa Field

Washington State University has unveiled a new end zone video display and audio ...

22/09/2026

SVG Sit-Down: Disney's Dave Johnson on ESPN's New 4K HDR Distribution Pipeline and What It Means for Super Bowl LXI and Beyond

Disney's SVP of Live Operations and Engineering details the technology behin...

22/09/2026

Cosm Promotes Mazen Alawar to SVP of Marketing, Alexis Scalice to VP of Cosm Studios

Cosm has announced two senior promotions. Mazen Alawar has been promoted to SVP,...

22/09/2026

Mississippi State University Extends Camera Relationship with KOKUSAI DENKI

Mississippi State University's University Television Center has purchased four KOKUSAI DENKI SK-UHD7000-S2 cameras since 2024, with plans to add two more, a...

22/09/2026

Net Insight Appoints Christine Kjellvard as Interim CFO

Net Insight has announced that Christine Kjellvard will assume the role of interim Chief Financial Officer on November 1, 2026. Kjellvard has previously held in...

22/09/2026

Net Insight Launches Zyntai TimeNode Access PTP Grandmaster for Edge Sites

Net Insight has announced Zyntai TimeNode Access, a compact PTP Grandmaster designed for distributed edge sites. The product carries secure, precise time across...

22/09/2026

The Weight Explores the High Cost of Freedom in the Depression Era

Sam Hazeldine, Austin Amelio, Padraic McKinley, Julia Jones, and Ethan Hawke attend the premiere of The Weight at The Ray Theatre on January 26, 2026, in Park...

22/09/2026

Avalanche Tones introduce Noise Suite

Second high-gain tone plug-in released Following on from their debut release, Chainsaw Suite, Avalanche Tones have announced the launch of their second plug...

22/09/2026

LW6 wireless headphones from Lewitt Audio

Uncompressed audio with below 6ms of latency Lewitt's have just introduced their first pair of headphones which, despite being aimed primarily at studio...

22/09/2026

Neumann launch the KK 104 A & KK 105 A

Two new capsule heads for Sennheiser wireless systems Neumann have announced the upcoming launch of the KK 104 A and KK 105 A, a pair of new premium condens...

22/09/2026

Apogee Plugins Are Moving to Plugin Alliance

Apogee Plugins Are Moving to Plugin Alliance We're excited to share an important update about the future of Apogee plugins. Apogee plugins are moving to Pl...

22/09/2026

SipRadius honored with a Technology And Engineering Emmy...

Parkland, Florida, US, September 22, 2026: SipRadius, widely recognized for making content processing and connectivity secure and seamless, has been honored wit...

22/09/2026

VanityFilter 3.1.5 adds project files and adjustable protection around lips, brows and ears

VanityFilter 3.1.5 adds project files and adjustable protection around lips, bro...

22/09/2026

Chile's TV+ Modernizes Broadcast Operations with Blackmagic Design

Chile's TV Modernizes Broadcast Operations with Blackmagic Design Brie Clayton September 22, 2026 0 Comments URSA Broadcast G2 brings versatility...

22/09/2026

OWC Shares Sneak Peek at Amazon Prime Big Deal Days Pricing

OWC Shares Sneak Peek at Amazon Prime Big Deal Days Pricing Brie Clayton September 22, 2026 0 Comments Image courtesy of Deposit Photos Business and ...

22/09/2026

Berklee's First Homecoming Block Party Brings Alumni Home for Global Music Festival

Berklee's First Homecoming Block Party Brings Alumni Home for Global Music F...

22/09/2026

New TVU Pocket Offers Broadcast Features In Phone-Sized Unit

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

22/09/2026

Operative Launches Unified Platform for Advertising and Broadcast Management

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

22/09/2026

Element Launches New TiVo-Powered Smart TVs in the U.S.

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

22/09/2026

NOAA Taps Tomorrow.io for Improved U.S. Weather Forecasts

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

22/09/2026

Gray Media Promotes Tim Maloney to GM and Director of Sales at WBKO

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

22/09/2026

Reports: Paramount Reaches Settlement with State AGs in Antitrust Suit

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

22/09/2026

New Research Lays Out Streaming Services Best Defense Against Churn

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

22/09/2026

Sinclair Expands The National News Desk

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

22/09/2026

Paramount Settles Antitrust Lawsuit over WBD Merger

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

22/09/2026

U.S. Broadband Industry Investment Hits $92.6 Billion

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

22/09/2026

Sky commissions Tupac murder trial documentary from Passion Pictures & Propagate Content

From Academy Award-winning Passion Pictures and BAFTA-winning director Marian Mo...

22/09/2026

Wi-Fi, phones and power lines: understanding EMF exposure

Whether it be from the sun or from our phones and other devices, we are all exposed to electromagnetic radiation in some shape or form. With the dramatic growth...

22/09/2026

Comscore's latest AI Intelligence Report Shows Competition Intensifying as Claude and Gemini Gain Ground on ChatGPT

Comscore's latest AI Intelligence Report Shows Competition Intensifying as C...

22/09/2026

The Factory-X Project Sets Standards for Data Sovereignty in Industry

The Factory-X Project Sets Standards for Data Sovereignty in Industry Arvato Systems Brings Digital Sovereignty to Industrial Practice Factory-X Successfully...

22/09/2026

Apple opens Apple Music Hall, a\u00A0state-of-the-art live music venue in London - PRESS RELEASE - Posted on 21 September 2026

LONDON Apple today announced the opening of Apple Music Hall, a brand-new state-...

22/09/2026

Young creativity across the island of Ireland takes centre stage as sixth RT This is Art! competition launches

RT , Creative Ireland and Shared Island Initiative ask young artists to respon...

22/09/2026

NVIDIA Isaac ROS 5.0 Advances Agentic, Open Source Robotics Development

To build and deploy sophisticated robotics applications that can perceive, reason and act in dynamic environments, developers need new physical AI models and to...

21/09/2026

Manifold Taps Ryhaan Williams for North America COO Post

Manifold Technologies, developer of software-defined, FPGA-accelerated infrastructure for live production, has named Ryhaan Williams as Chief Commercial Officer...

21/09/2026

SNS Wins IAMT Best Journal Article Award

Studio Network Solutions (SNS) has won Best Journal Article at the 2026 IAMT Impact Awards for What Video Editors Need When Everything Is Changing Around Them,...

21/09/2026

MLW Announces Streaming Deal with Tubi for Weekly FUSION Series

Major League Wrestling (MLW) has announced a streaming distribution agreement with Tubi for its weekly series MLW FUSION. Beginning September 17, new episodes w...

21/09/2026

Adam Smith Named Chairman of Direct-to-Consumer at Disney Entertainment

Disney Entertainment has announced that Adam Smith has been named Chairman, Direct-to-Consumer, with responsibility for Disney and Hulu including product, engi...

21/09/2026

United Airlines and DISH to Offer Live Football on Starlink-Enabled Seatback Screens

United Airlines and DISH have announced an agreement to bring live professional ...

21/09/2026

SES to Provide Satellite Distribution for JioStar Channels Across India

SES and JioStar have announced a multi-year agreement under which SES will provide satellite distribution services for JioStar's television channel portfoli...

21/09/2026

Detroit Red Wings Announce Detroit SportsNet Broadcast Details for 2026-27 Season

The Detroit Red Wings have announced details for their inaugural season on Detro...

21/09/2026

Manifold Technologies Appoints Ryhaan Williams as CCO for North America

Manifold Technologies has appointed Ryhaan Williams as Chief Commercial Officer for North America, effective October 1, 2026. Based in Jacksonville, Florida, Wi...

21/09/2026

DAZN Pick Up L.A. Kings DTC Streaming Rights; ABTV Will Continue as Local TV Home

Angels Broadcast Television (ABTV), the local television home of the Los Angeles...