Why the Super Bowl Is Being Broadcast In Fake 4K (gizmodo.com) 113
Today Fox will broadcast the Super Bowl in 4K and HDR, reports Gizmodo's senior consumer tech editor. But "the 4K is fake 4K, and, according to Digital Trend's interview with one of the men producing the Bowl, there's a good reason for that..."
The reason is that 4K is still really, really data intensive. A 4K video is often twice the size of a 1080p video. It's full of twice as much data which means storage drives need to be twice as big. It also means data pipelines need to be bigger, and processors need to be faster. That's pretty easy to do if you're handling a single 4K stream. But the Super Bowl broadcast will have to handle data coming from a hundred different sources, from cameras on the field, to drones, to big broadcast cameras pointed at the commentators.
"When we're doing a football game that is somewhere north of 100 cameras, there's no possible way we can do this in 4K," Michael Drazin, a broadcast engineering consultant working for Fox, told Digital Trends...
Instead, nearly all the cameras will shoot in 1080p HDR. A few cameras will shoot in 4K and 8K, giving the broadcast's directors the ability to crop and zoom in and without needing a big zoom lens. Then it will all be converted to a 4K HDR stream for 4K broadcasts, and a 720p SDR stream for terrestrial channel broadcasts.
Digital Trends is still calling it "the most grandiose single-day sporting spectacle of the year."
"When we're doing a football game that is somewhere north of 100 cameras, there's no possible way we can do this in 4K," Michael Drazin, a broadcast engineering consultant working for Fox, told Digital Trends...
Instead, nearly all the cameras will shoot in 1080p HDR. A few cameras will shoot in 4K and 8K, giving the broadcast's directors the ability to crop and zoom in and without needing a big zoom lens. Then it will all be converted to a 4K HDR stream for 4K broadcasts, and a 720p SDR stream for terrestrial channel broadcasts.
Digital Trends is still calling it "the most grandiose single-day sporting spectacle of the year."
Quadruple the resolution, only twice the data? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Quadruple the resolution, only twice the data? (Score:5, Interesting)
To use an extreme simple example, let's say you were showing a color bar test pattern. If your compression algorithm is sane, the bytes needed to compress that is practically independent of the number of pixels, because the image being compressed has no sharp detail to capture.
Even normal photos from the real world have regions that are constant or smooth gradients, whose data needs are not proportional to the resolution.
Re: Quadruple the resolution, only twice the data? (Score:2)
Re: Quadruple the resolution, only twice the data? (Score:4, Informative)
Codecs like HEVC are more efficient at higher resolutions. But even Appleâ(TM)s HLS authoring guidelines (**) are more like 1:3 for the lowest quality bitrates: 1080p HDR is 5.4 mbs vs 13.9 for 4K HDR. This goes up to 7 vs 20mbs at the best quality for these resolutions.
https://developer.apple.com/do... [apple.com]
** yes, Iâ(TM)m aware there are some problems with this recommended bitrate ladder and that it could be tuned better, but this is the guidance many people follow.
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Re:Quadruple the resolution, only twice the data? (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure the number of pixel is four times bigger. But the stream is compressed even if it is lossless it is still compressed. I doubt they bring raw encodigns from wireless drones.
The question is "does quadrupling the number of pixels quadruple the amount of information in term of information theory?"
My guess is that it does not. You'll get sharper edges which will cost a bit more. But the space between the edges probably compresses very well.
Re: Quadruple the resolution, only twice the data? (Score:2)
Following on from my other comment... in the stadium I imagine theyâ(TM)re uncompressed SDI based, and converting this to a loosely compressed high bitrate contribution feed before they compress the edited version properly for distribution. So yes, if it was all 4K they could be dealing with 4x the data of 1080p in places.
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How can that be if it's full of twice as much data!
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ARRRGGHHH its called directors.... (Score:3)
basically you can do raw 8k easily enough in camera's and transport over 40GBps links (optical) just fine however the mixing desk just can not handle it
so your limiting factor is the mix desk... if you have a studio with limited camera's then you could organise something however they dont want to do that when there is so many angles and directors...
its the people... swapping out to a drone with 1080 looks really really bad so basically they limit everything...
JAPAN (NHK) is going to show EVERYONE how to do
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What are they talking about?
Perhaps codec generation? HD and FullHD are most often limited to h.264 or earlier as that is what is most supported by associated hardware of the era.
4k is almost exclusively HEVC or similar complexity.
Sigh. its BS season again. (Score:3)
for a standard production:
1. yes, its (roughly) 4 times the data, production is generally done in uncompressed data.
2. no, they dont have north of 100 cameras, at least not active at once.
3. broadcast camera links are generally point to point, and not all cameras are recorded, so no, they dont have unmanageable data,.
However, it is quite possible they are trying to remote produce this, which is retarded, but will save them a bit of cash.
in which case they will pull most of those cameras to a remove location
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a bit sad to reply to myself, but their 'article' (puff piece) is just hilarious!
'It turns out that 1080p at 60 frames per second delivers really smooth motion, while 4K at 60fps does not. “With 4K at 60fps, you can definitely see some motion artifacting,” says Drazin'
Oh dear oh dear, really? I would love them to try and justify that.
But wait, it gets better:
'But, if you take a 1080p 60fps production and upscale it to 4K, everything looks just smooth as silk'
So, 4k 60fps is smooth as silk so lon
Re: Sigh. its BS season again. (Score:2)
4K60 live encoders do require more expensive hardware, and many vendorâ(TM)s codecs cannot match the quality of 1080p. Itâ(TM)s doing it live, and with low enough latency to beat the gambling industry and improve the experience for multi-device viewers that makes this particularly challenging. But yes, theyâ(TM)re being cheap too :)
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4K60 live encoders do require more expensive hardware,
Strangely enough: Keyboards that can type normal apostrophes don't.
Re: Sigh. its BS season again. (Score:2)
Donâ(TM)t be daft: why would I buy a keyboard for my phone?
If you donâ(TM)t like /.â(TM)s bugs, complain directly to them instead your misguided whinging in my direction.
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I've had this in my signature for years. Every time I post, I complain to them.
Yes, I even put that shitty "smart" apostrophe in stuff not posted from iOS just to prove the point. I don't even have an iPhone any more, but their unicode is still just as fucking broken.
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Riiiight. So broken that no other website has a problem.
Re:Sigh. its BS season again. (Score:5, Interesting)
The piece you're missing and why engineer is right and your layman assumptions are wrong is that this is 4k 60fps *real time* encoding. Every encode is a balancing act between multiple mutually opposing factors such as quality vs speed of encode vs maximum allowed bitrate.
And that means that you do indeed get motion artefacts at 4k 60fps where you won't in 1080p 60fps with the same encode. Because encoder has to lower the quality of the encode to fit other constraints, such as target maximum bitrate, and it cannot do a second pass to better distribute the load because it's live broadcast.
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He didn't make bad assumptions, he's panning them for having cheap gear and not being honest that their 4K is crap in the first place and not up to the use case they bought it for.
Try comprehending harder. If you can.
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"He's on a budget".
When you grow up, you'll find out that you'll be too if you're a project engineer. For any project.
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being on budget doesn't mean that 1000 hp would not be 1000 hp.
4k 60fps is as smooth as 1080p 60fps. but their 4k hw can't provide 60fps so it's not smooth.
look the problem isn't being on a budget or whatever they stream it at. the problem is selling a 4k experience and not delivering it. just like with google stadia, it wouldn't be a problem that they are not delivering a 4k experience across the board if the f'ks at marketing didn't advertise it as such.
the only advantage you get here is that you get a
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being on budget doesn't mean that 1000 hp would not be 1000 hp.
That's the part you're not understanding.
They have top of the line 1080 equipment. The output is smooth as butter.
Because everything 4K is even more expensive than 1080, they didn't buy the best equipment available this time. They bought cheaper equipment.
And the output sucks. But they can upscale the 1080 to 4K just fine, that's easier to do, that part of the equipment works fine. So most of the shots, that is what they do. Because it looks better. Because they're on a budget.
They have a limited amount of
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"He's on a budget".
Yeah, the superbowl is such a low budget event.
Re: Sigh. its BS season again. (Score:2)
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When you grow up, you'll find out that....
you were born yesterday. Welcome to slashdot, Son.
Re: Sigh. its BS season again. (Score:3, Interesting)
Another likely explanation: they're SHOOTING at 60fps, but DISTRIBUTING it as 1080p60 and 2160p30, which would explain smoother 1080p/720p motion.
IMHO, the most shortsighted decision made by ATSC was limiting 2160p to 30fps. Ok, sure, realtime 2160p60 compression isn't feasible today, but 98% of prime-time TV is pre-recorded, and could EASILY be multi-pass compressed to make 2160p60 fit in ~19mbps.
It's the same as ATSC 1.0's stupid decision 25 years ago to not allow 1080p60 just because it couldn't be encod
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Ok, sure, realtime 2160p60 compression isn't feasible today
Yes it is. Video encoding is an embarrassingly parallel problem.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: Sigh. its BS season again. (Score:2)
> Yes it is. Video encoding is an embarrassingly parallel problem.
The problem isn't necessarily processing speed, it's latency. Without the ability to buffer and digest at least a few frames before sending the first, you lose the most potent tool in your compression arsenal: the ability to pre-send bits of an upcoming frame. So every time there's a total, radical scene change with lots of subsequent changes, you're forced to depend entirely upon starved 'I' frames for at least the first, and don't have e
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"It's sad... 30 years ago, we had TVs that could go from "off" (with the CRT kept warmed up @ 5-10 watts) to "on, with stable picture & sound" before you even released the power button on the remote. And even a SHIT TV circa 1980 could go from "totally cold-off" to "sound on, visible pic in a half-second, and stable pic in 2-3 seconds". Yeah, 5-10 watts was a lot of power to waste, but Jesus, keeping a HDCP link up at all times (throwing it a stream of zero-placeholders with the backlight LEDs off) woul
Re: Sigh. its BS season again. (Score:2)
Ok, let me clarify. With a 1990s-era CRT, the picture would stabilize to the point where it appeared stable within a second or two, even if if slowly improved for another 15 minutes. My point was, you weren't left gritting your teeth and waiting several seconds before having watchable content on-screen.
Ditto, for flipping through channels. It was *instant*. If you went back in time to 1990 & showed people how slow "changing the channel" (cable, satellite, AND OTA) would become in just 10-15 years, peopl
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the most shortsighted decision made by ATSC was limiting 2160p to 30fps.
As per ATSC A/341 [atsc.org] Section 6.2.3.1 Progressive Video Formats, you can do 2160p60 and even 2160p120 in ATSC 3.0. Demos at NAB regularly show 2160p60 OTA transmission.
The ATSC "1.0" decision to not do 1080p was because no one was ready for it, and frankly you have to have TV manufacturers on board the standard as well as broadcasters. There was no 3G-SDI for production, and it was all they could do to stick a 1080i or 720p signal into 19
Re: Sigh. its BS season again. (Score:2)
OMG, you have *no* idea how happy I am to be wrong! You just made my night! 2160p120?!? That's *awesome* news!
I wish devices like Roku, FireTV, Xbox One, etc. could recognize 50fps content encoded as 60fps with every fifth frame repeated, and turn it back into "real" 50fps if the TV supports it (with setting for "ignore EDID and just force it", because I've found that about half of recent-vintage American TVs can DO 50fps if you force-feed them 720p50 or 1080p25, but they'll pretend they can't if you query
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Real 50/60 hz conversion involves motion compensation smoothly across the frames. But it is also an expensive device.
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they should show 4K with doubly horrible artifacts?
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So, 4k 60fps is smooth as silk so long as the source material is blurry (compared to native 4k), it seems ;)
Blur makes movies look smooth. Very sharp images produce juddering.
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Judder occurs when you try to scale a 24 fps source to a 30 or 60hz display. Framepacing is forced into a 3:2 cadence.
Movies look smooth because the frames are "blurred', yes, to a degree, but you can do sharp images at 60+ hz and attain smoothness (the hobbit at 48hz is a great example)
The downside, is that some stuck up purists liken the visual effect this produces to a "soap opera".
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If you have any sort of fast motion with no blur, it's going to look like a bunch of still images played quickly, and not like a movie. The higher your framerate, the less blur you need. With film, this takes care of itself, as the sutter speed is inherently coupled to the framerate, to the point you can just talk about shutter angle.
And, no, it not about "stuck up purists" at all. The greater blur that comes with a lower framerate triggers something in the mind that says "I'm watching fantasy, not realit
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Why would they not be cheaping out on the Superbowl? People are going to watch it no matter what. The demand for 4k comes from the cable and satellite companies trying to find a reason for people to subscribe to their services.
Japan will broadcast the Olympics this year in real 8k. It's an opportunity to sell new TVs. But 4k is already pretty much standard even at the low end so there just isn't much money in promoting it now.
Also all broadcast TV looks shit compared to Netflix and they can't do anything ab
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The desirability of spectator sports are waning and what they are talking about, is simply corporate marketing, talking about, talking about a spectator, come and see all the layers of advertising display. As it wanes, so the desperately try to generate more noise to keep the jock strap douche bags focused on their empty dreams, of them being out there, all so lame. Talk about get a life, desperately trying to live the life of the marketing created sports pseudo celebrity, and in their youth, them dreaming
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Modern codecs handle "patterns in the image" more so than "pixels" when encoding. This means that increase in input pixel number does not mean anywhere near same level increase in output filesize. To grossly simplify, think of 2x2 vs 4x4 grid. Then consider that you need to draw a straight line from top left to bottom right. Raw data will indeed quadruple in number going from former example to the latter, from "pixels A1 and B2" to "pixels A1, B2, C3 and D4". But modern codec will do an image pattern analys
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What are you talking about?
2160p ("4K") is double the resolution of 1080p, but contains 4 times the number of pixels.
Waaaaaah! Waaaaaah!! (Score:5, Funny)
Cunts.
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It is in no way impossible, they said what they needed, it is just cost prohibitive given that the main costs is bribes to the NFL.
One of the few redeeming qualities of the otherwise useless super owl should be to fund and test state if the art tech. Instead the fundamental quality seems to be to fool the gullible viewer.
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One of the few redeeming qualities of the otherwise useless super owl should be to fund and test state if the art tech.
What are you talking about, what about the time Super Owl saved Christmas?! Surely that was as useful as testing art.
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Marketing side is raking in millions. Broadcaster techs are an expense, and work on a budget.
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Errr if you think this is money dependent then man you do not belong on a nerd news site.
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Well yeah you can process 8K video on a potato if you can wait a week for it to complete rendering and encoding. Processing 100s of 8K streams in real time is quite a bit more difficult.
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1080p vs 2160p (Score:3)
A 4K video is often twice the size of a 1080p video.
1080p vs. 2160p == 4x the number of pixels, if considering more or less now-ubiquitous television standards. Hopefully, they'll use more than double their previous 1080p bitrate; otherwise, I don't see the point (aside from marketing schlock).
Re:1080p vs 2160p (Score:4, Interesting)
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I suspect it was a knowledge failure, but it's possible that a *compressed* 4k stream might only average twice the bandwidth of a 2k stream - just how much of the image actually has enough detail that 4k meaningfully enhances it? I suspect that both grass, sky, walls, etc. are uniform enough in most shots that your could get some serious compression going on. Especially once you factor in that only a narrow range of depths will be in focus at any given moment, and thus most of the image will be slightly b
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Indeed, I imagine most scenes shot on a grass field would compress fairly well, unless zoomed in quite far. Less so for the crowd, but there's generally less rapid motion to capture there. I also suspect improved codecs makes a lot of my personal concerns less relevant.
Imagine again. Grass, water, and crowds are notoriously hard to encode because there's so much moving high-frequency detail. To your point, though, turf on a football field is much more uniform and still than normal grass so that probably is easier than your typical pasture. Still, the point of 4k is to make the grass not look like a uniform green sheet.
Back in the day when I worked on broadcast TV gear, water and grass were used as quality tests. If those looked good after encoding and decoding, you could
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Real television production is done uncompressed for highest quality and ultra-low latency. Compression is only done if signals need to travel intercity or for end-user distribution.
For uncompressed 4:2:2 subsampled 10-bit 720p59.94 is 1.1 Gbps (before overhead). 1080p59.94 is 2.5 Gbps. 4K is 10 Gbps.
4K doesn't fit into 10 GbE pipes (or the ubiquitous 3Gbps SDI cables). You have to step up to at least 25 GbE (or 12 Gbps SDI cables). This is doable, but not quite standard equipment in all production area
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Production perhaps - but my understanding is that broadcast is typically pretty heavily compressed. And for a live broadcast such as a sporting event I suspect they compress to broadcast quality before the signal leaves the stadium.
Re:1080p vs 2160p (Score:5, Informative)
And for a live broadcast such as a sporting event I suspect they compress to broadcast quality before the signal leaves the stadium.
HD signals for major (e.g. NFL) events are usually sent from a venue via fiber to a network center either as uncompressed or very lightly compressed (JPEG 2000 @ 100 Mbps). At the network center, additional ads and other graphics may be inserted before transmission to distributors (which could be uncompressed for major MVPDs), and the distributors do a final distribution compression.
However 4K live event contributions, still being unusual at this time, are often done at the venue and may bypass network centers that are not built out for 4K. In such cases, generally 4K is compressed with HEVC at ~100 Mbps at the venue, transported back to distributors directly via satellite, and then a final distribution encoding is done in HEVC to 25-35 Mbps.
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From this article [sportsvideo.org]:
All of the HDR efforts in Miami will ultimately be delivered to an HDR master control room in Los Angeles that will integrate the HDR feeds from with tone mapped SDR commercials and promos delivering a complete 1080P HLG BT.2100 HDR program. This program is then upconverted to 2160P(4k) for the distribution partners.
So I assume for Super Bowl LIV, the 1080p59.94 is sent form the venue via fiber to the network center using JPEG 2000 (likely @ 200 Mbps) before being upconverted there to 4K a
Use the excuse while you can (Score:2)
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I doubt every camera at Tokyo 2020 will be 8K. Likely only main cameras at major venues with be 8K, hundreds of others will be unconverted from 4K.
skin defects... (Score:2)
the true reason is because the football players dont want you to see their skin defects.......
Twice as big? (Score:2)
They might be talking about typical file size or bitrate, but I'll just clarify here that 4k is FOUR times the pixels of 1080 (double the width AND double the height).
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They might want to do 4K30 vs 1080p60 to save money on the editing rigs.
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Live sports at 30p? Choppy and full of judder.
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I'll just clarify here that 4k is FOUR times the pixels of 1080
Almost half the posts here thought they needed to point that out. Who do you think reads Slashdot? Everyone here knows. Everyone.
4K. (Score:3)
Because nobody who bought into 4K can actually tell the difference anyway?
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>"Because nobody who bought into 4K can actually tell the difference anyway?"
Bingo. On a typical TV at normal viewing distances (typ. 8-10'), almost nobody will be able to tell any difference between 1080P and actual 4K. On a huge up-scaling TV (75-85") at normal distances, almost nobody will be able to tell any difference, either. But that never stops the marketing hype. Probably 50% can't even tell the difference between 720P and 1080P.
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Rubbish. I have tried when ever the BBC have been doing 4K iplayer trials what it looks like on my TV at home. Yep looks much better in 4K. I would also note that 18 months ago they where (as a trial) streaming World Cup matches in 4K HDR at 50fps live via iPlayer.
Though I would note they advertised needing at least a 50Mbps internet connection and well in my experience with a 80/20Mbps VDSL connection and getting the full 80/20 link that doing anything else on the internet while trying to watch the match c
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I have a feeling it is mostly HDR. THAT people will notice. And one has to hold the quality of bitrate constant. I have seen 1080P in lower bitrates compared to high bitrates and that matters, for sure. But resolution on moving pictures? Not so noticeable to most people.
Because they're too cheap to do it (Score:1)
Then don't call it 4k (Score:3)
You will NEVER see true 4k. Why? (Score:2)
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Unless the "system" can get its 4K without the long cable system...
Some sort of dish and less of the long cable?
ie the "cable" can be upgraded to a 4K sat "system".
Same brand, new 4K ready dish. Cable? A network to the new dish.
ie the "network" can move anytime it wants to new 4K tech.
What? (Score:2, Funny)
What's a "Super Bowl" and why do I care? Is that lawn bowls for the over 150 crowd?
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It's the variety of sportsball where a bunch of millionaires try to catch a dead pig.
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Except that one guy, he doesn't want the thing at all, keeps kicking it off the field. Poor pig.
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Yes, sure.
You were born yesterday, stick to things for people your age. six freakin million, that's a lot of bots, jeeze.
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Yes, yes, I know the parent is trying to be clever, but there is an important point he is missing, whether he cares for American football or not. The National Football League (NFL) is a huge, money-making enterprise that earns billions of dollars per year (just south of $10B). Their deep pockets have driven substantial advances in handling huge information streams in real time for broadcast. If the NFL can't do real-time 4K for the singularly best-funded event, then it isn't possible.
Excuse me, what?
Righ
Fake 4K (Score:1)
And the ads were dumb and boring too. Looks like they're trying to push some kind of political propaganda. Horrible!
But the Chiefs won! Yay!
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And the ads were dumb and boring too.
"Kill Your Television"
The excuse doesn't make sense... (Score:2)
Let's assume high quality 4K compressed streaming at 25Mbps, times 100, that's 2.5Gbps. While this is high for home basement editors, how is this a challenge for Fox production studios? A sub-$1,000 security NVR can handle sustained recording of ~300Mbps. Where exactly is Fox bottleneck? Real time multiplexing? Legacy equipment not able to handle 4K? Are they trying to push it all via local WiFi?
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Let's assume high quality 4K compressed streaming at 25Mbps, times 100, that's 2.5Gbps.
The only thing we can assume here is that Dunning and Kruger were correct.
No Surprise (Score:2)
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Confetti - and flocks of birds/bats. Best way to kill MPEG-like compression.
Honestly, find a David Attenborough nature documentary with bats or insects or anything that involves thousands of individual things swarming... whole screen goes to crap.
Just another reason that 4K is pointless expense - most of the time the display device is *not* the bottleneck at all.
Nonsense (Score:2)
did you notice? (Score:2)
did anybody notice?
no?
who cares then.
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Half Time Makeup (Score:2)
No wonder why! (Score:2)
No wonder why I couldn't make out the razor burns during the half-time show!
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So it waits another year...
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You don't get 25Mbps from the cameras, the cameras are or should be as close to uncompressed as possible. So you're talking at least 1-10Gbps per camera, depending on the compression levels and whether it's streaming a preview or the full picture.
Although there are feasibly modern computer systems that can handle this, low latency, zero-loss networks together with live editing rigs that can handle 100Gbps+ are a bit expensive and for what purpose really, the only platforms these days that handle 4K60 HDR is
Re:Impossible? (Score:4, Informative)
You don't get 25Mbps from the cameras, the cameras are or should be as close to uncompressed as possible. So you're talking at least 1-10Gbps per camera, depending on the compression levels and whether it's streaming a preview or the full picture.
Although there are feasibly modern computer systems that can handle this, low latency, zero-loss networks together with live editing rigs that can handle 100Gbps+ are a bit expensive
We're talking a small supercomputer and fiber everywhere, on the other hand, they're probably just fishing for sponsorships from Dell/IBM/HP/nVidia for next year's event.
It's amazing how many commenters are spouting off on this thread.
You do not pick the biggest live production of the year in the country to hope and pray that such a massive bandwidth requirement internally holds up and performs without a hitch. Uncompressed for all those streams at once you're starting with Infiniband for mesh and going up from there. There's no reason to attempt a full 4K broadcast from top to bottom this year when the live production tech is still untested (and so few people will notice). Maybe next year, when they've been satisfied of its reliability and the tooling has been rigorously tested (probably at some other similar live event).