TV y Video interviewed Thorpe in order to know his opinion on some of the topics he will address in the two conferences he will give during the seminar: technological trends in broadcast and professional video production, and evolution in the construction of the HD image.
Francisco Urdaneta: Many professionals in the Latin American market, from TV stations to event cameramen, are resisting the inevitable migration to tapeless production. What could you tell them to convince them that the advantages of file-based production technologies make that resistance to change obsolete.
Larry Thorpe: The new world of tapeless production offers fabulous options, especially in terms of workflows. We have significant improvements in the quality of audio and video in SD and HD, in content protection, in the reliability of equipment in the long term and also a significant reduction in maintenance costs.
Despite being in their early years, tapeless systems offer interesting options, even for those who want to keep the feeling of having a videotape in their hands. It is possible to use optical discs or RevPro cartridges to continue enjoying all the advantages of removable media and immediately start receiving the benefits that tapes simply cannot offer.
Apart from various disc burning systems, tapeless systems also include a growing offer of solid-state recording systems ranging from specially designed systems such as flash memory 'blocks', SxS cards and the P2 system, to various types of SD cards such as those we use in our cameras. The common denominator of all formats is that the cost per gigabyte is constantly going down.
On the other hand, connectivity options increase. HD camcorders include USB and FireWire ports, and it is increasingly common to find low-cost equipment with HDMI or HD-SDI connections.
For all of the above, the acquisition of tapeless material in the form of archives is being massively adopted by producers around the world, and this happens simply because its advantages are too obvious to ignore. Some of these advantages are:
- Instant, non-linear access to recorded material.
- Acquisition in the form of independent files that can be transferred in minimum time and used by several publishers simultaneously.
- Inclusion of metadata that allows to increase the value of the material produced.
- Powerful content protection strategies.
- Open formats for material exchange that support efficient workflows.
- Elimination of scanning as the initial step of editing.
- Improvements in the reliability of the equipment due to the reduction of moving parts.
To answer the question, I think it can be said that the consolidation of production systems without tapes is inevitable. It is definitely recommended that in this digital age, in which all media operations are file-based, producers adopt this technology as soon as possible.
Francisco Urdaneta: There is an 'avalanche' of low-cost equipment on the market and several producers are using equipment that some of their colleagues perceive as toys. Do you think it is possible to get good production values out of a low cost in production equipment?
Larry Thorpe: The boundaries between professional and consumer teams have been blurred as a result of advances in digital technology and the pressures imposed by global competition. Consumer HD camcorders can deliver images of excellent quality from a subjective point of view, especially if they are produced in good conditions in terms of lighting and if viewed on a small HD monitor.
As these images are appreciably better than the PAL or NTSC signals we are used to, we tend to accept them as 'good enough' HD signals; and in fact, we can accept that images of this type offer production values suitable for some genres or for low-budget HD programming.
But when it is possible to compare side by side the images of low-cost equipment with those of high-end HD cameras with 2/3" sensors, dramatic differences in the quality of the material begin to appear, especially if the material is displayed on large screens. Keep in mind that many of the screens on the consumer market have a physical resolution of 1920x1080 that makes the advantages of a 'Full HD' signal as evident as the disadvantages of lower quality equipment.
The evaluation of the production values of low-cost equipment should be done with full awareness of its limitations and always making side-by-side comparisons with material that reflects the type of content required by the program that is intended to be produced with that equipment.
Francisco Urdaneta: There are voices that tell us that the limits of physics make it impossible for HD cameras with sensors smaller than 2/3" to deliver real high-definition images. What do you think of that?
Larry Thorpe: The first thing we must understand is that all images captured by any means are multidimensional. REAL high-definition images should combine an excellent degree of detail with high contrast throughout the 16:9 frame area, excellent grayscale tonal reproduction with bright and accurate color reproduction, and sufficient exposure latitude to handle overexposed content. It is also important that images are not affected by noise, distortions or other visible defects. And even more important is that all these attributes of the image must be maintained regardless of the type of image being captured – even without panoramic images with a lot of detail.
Real high definition, as produced by currently available equipment, sets a very high point in terms of image quality. It is the result of a decade and a half of technological advances in cameras based on 2/3" sensors stimulated by global competition among manufacturers. The excellent quality of these images also comes from the use of lenses specially designed for these cameras. The better the image the lens projects onto the camera's sensors, the better the resulting electronic image.
When sensors smaller than 2/3" are adopted, physics and economics begin to interfere with some of the multiple dimensions of the image. If we wanted to generate images similar to those of a 2/3" camera using 1/2" sensors or even smaller we would have to use better lenses than those we put in front of high-end cameras, but this is not possible because cameras with smaller sensors have to offer a cost. lower than that of 2/3".
On the other hand, manufacturers must face the limits of physics when designing small sensors. They have to limit pixel count, limit dynamic range, and support higher noise levels. The truth is that most camcorders with small sensors offer signals that are generated by one form or another of subsampling. It should be noted that no manufacturer of cameras equipped with 1/3" sensors publishes its signal-to-noise ratio specifications.
In spite of everything, manufacturers offer HD products of small formats that are very interesting and in fact produce images of excellent quality. But we can't escape reality: the image quality of these cameras is lower than that of high-end cameras equipped with 2/3" sensors. The end user should carefully evaluate these levels of image quality taking into account their budgets, aesthetic aspirations, service life and competitiveness of their products. The good news is that the market is so diverse that it has spaces for everyone and there is a very varied offer of HD production equipment appropriate for any budget.
Francisco Urdaneta: The industry is changing very fast, adopting new distribution schemes that represent a clear threat to the traditional outputs of our product, such as terrestrial or pay television. How can traditional television and video producers prepare to meet the challenges of the near future?
Larry Thorpe: Television as we know it is rapidly becoming the distribution of audiovisual content in digital form and on different platforms. Traditional TV is still 'on the air', but with a wide variety of distribution options ranging from terrestrial transmission to cable, satellite systems, telephone networks, IP platforms and a wide variety of packaged content.
Television receivers must compete with other devices that purport to occupy the eyes of humanity, such as computers, mobile phones, digital assistants, and a constantly growing network of digital information systems. Video screens invade public space while on the Internet social networks offer a mixture of material produced by users with professionally made programming.
And meanwhile digital cinema is advancing with great speed. The flexibility of digital distribution schemes has the potential to turn into 'cinema' events that were traditionally covered by other media such as the New York Metropolitan Opera, which distributes live and pre-recorded content to digital cinemas in North America, Europe and Japan.
Video and TELEVISION producers need to understand the profound impact that digital distribution has on the modern world. The offer of video content must grow simultaneously with the distribution channels. And at this point is that the selection of production equipment acquires a vital importance. The diversity of production and distribution schemes generates a wide range of production values appropriate for different types of products.
It is too often forgotten that digitally originated content must go through multiple instances of processing and transcoding that inevitably affect its final quality. To overcome the inevitable 'erosion' of image quality that accompanies these digital processes it is necessary to generate a product with a sufficient 'excess quality' to achieve an acceptable final product. As the evaluation of image quality is essentially subjective, it is necessary that these processes are assumed by a combination of technical and production disciplines.
In order to establish which production standards we must adopt, we need to have a combination of formal technical tests accompanied by a careful process of subjective evaluation of the quality of our products.
