The reason I asked about 60p was the half the European music Blu-rays seem to be released at 60hz
instead of 50hz, even though they were shot in Europe (most likely to save costs). If they're going to do that I would think it would be better to shoot like that originally for better PQ and better motion. Maybe there could be a format converter somewhere in the broadcast chain.
Most Blu-rays are released 60i or 24p - for two main reasons.
1. The US isn't compatible with 50Hz content (although our HD Ready TVs accept 60Hz content, US TVs don't accept 50Hz content). Whilst mastering for Blu-ray is still so much more expensive than mastering for DVD, it makes sense to make a single master for all territories. This means either 24p or 60i. BBC productions are shot at 25p, and mainly edited 50i. Because they want to sell Blu-rays in both Europe and the US - they master to 60i, so they only have to do it once. Whilst Blu-ray releases are still niche, they can't justify spending twice as much to master in two formats.
2. First gen players didn't have that great compatibility with 50Hz content - and AIUI the first generation of mastering tools didn't include it. Blu-ray was launched in Japan and America first - both 60Hz territories... (So early UK-only releases were 60Hz because there were worries that discs mastered at 50Hz weren't guaranteed to play on UK players in the early days)
Your suggestion that shooting at 60Hz would make sense because it would improve things for the Blu-ray release is thinking completely backwards though.
The Blu-ray release will generate an insignificant amount of revenue, maybe none at all. The live TV production is the entire raison d'etre for the contest. There is NO way that the broadcasters taking the contest, or hosting it, would agree to compromising the live broadcast's picture quality by shooting it at 60Hz and then forcing every live viewer to watch a standards conversion to 50Hz with all the artefacts that would introduce.
The whole point of shooting the contest in HD rather than SD is to deliver the best possible quality to the viewer at home (who is paying for the contest via their local broadcaster, and via the sponsorship). Compromising the live quality of the show would not be acceptable...
(NB Format Conversion is normally reserved to describe conversion within the same frame rate - not universally but usually. 576/50i to 1080/50i is a format conversion, 1080/60i to 1080/50i is a standards conversion, sometimes a framerate conversion.)
Standards conversion of something as fast cut and busy as the ESC is not going to be transparent - it has improved a lot, but is still far from perfect, and to be avoided at all costs (ask NBC audiences in the US how much they liked the picture quality of the Sydney, Athens, Beijing Olympics which were all 50->60 conversions in the US...)
However it is possible that the BD release could be a 1080/50i one rather than a 60i one - as the US sales for such a release are likely to be negligible (though I understand 60Hz Korea likes ESC?) - though I don't know of many (any?) 1080/50i releases currently - though I heard rumours "Being Human" might be?
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That's the problem - until there is content, they're not likely to make players like Blu-ray support it, and players like Blu-ray not supporting it means there's less chance of them making content in that format.
Blu-ray players will not drive 1080/50p production. The massive bulk of Blu-ray content, that drives player sales, is 1080/24p production - i.e. movies. The benefit of 1080/24p native carriage (avoiding 3:2 pulldown in 60Hz) has also helped.
50 & 60Hz production (mainly sport, music concerts and non-scripted TV shows) is, by comparison, a very niche market for pre-recorded content. There simply isn't the volume in 50/60Hz material sales to drive a change in production format, and certainly not a change to the BD player standard.
50p is a multi-camera production format - it will be driven by broadcasters.
Given that no consumer Blu-ray player currently supports 1080/50p and 1080/60p content - you aren't going to find people mastering in 1080/50p or 1080/60p to try and cause a change in the Blu-ray standard - that would be madness.
Blu-ray doesn't drive a multi-camera produciton business - it is a spin-off to it - and it is still dwarfed by DVDs.
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If they shot in that format there'd be 1080p50 content (so they'd be more likely to add support for it in players), and it would still mean it could easily be converted to other formats like 1080/50i or 720p50 for if they don't yet support 1080p50.
Yep - but where would the money to pay for this come from? You couldn't justify the budget increase required to shoot in an as-yet pretty much unavailable format with the argument "it will help force the Blu-ray player manufacturers to support the format" - when Blu-ray is not yet part of your business model (or if it is the revenue generated is insignificant) You'd be laughed out of the room by the production finance people. I can hear the conversation now :
Finance : "So you want to have a major increase in budget to shoot 1080/50p"
Producer : "Yep - it's a great new standard"
Finance : "Which broadcasters will pay extra for this format?"
Producer : "Err - none, nobody is broadcasting it yet."
Finance : "So - it will drive our Blu-ray sales, because the release will look so much better in 1080/50i?"
Producer : "Err - no, we can't release it at 1080/50p because Blu-ray doesn't support 1080/50p yet"
Finance : "So what are we paying the extra for?"
Producer : "Well it might force them to upgrade the Blu-ray standard"
Finance : <Hysterical laughter>
This isn't how production standards change. It isn't how 405 became 625 (that was driven by the launch of a new UHF band and channel, and by a wish to match neighbouring countries quality) , it isn't how we went from B&W to Colour (that was to rectify a huge failing, and catch up with the US who had done it the previous decade, and production had already begun to switch for some shows because of overseas sales) , it isn't how we switched from 4:3 to 16:9 (that was again caused by a new platform allowing new standards to be adopted, and production developments happening at around the same time) and it isn't how we switched from SD to HD (which was a bit like the switch to colour, also driven by international markets for resale).
There is no drive for a new platform, there is no drive for international resale, and there is no seismic quality improvement for 1080/50p to replace 1080/50i.
To be honest - I think the EBU have kind of missed the boat with their recommendation. They're technically completely correct, but in actual economic reality of production terms, I think they're wrong.
Until Blu-ray has proved popular enough to make significant profits for content producers, they aren't going to try and force an upgrade of the standard, they are going to work within the current standards, and make as much money from the format as possible.
The driving force for 1080/50p production is likely to be sport. It has advantages in picture quality during production - particularly for slow-motion and other processing techniques - and is good potentially for major competitions where there are 1080i and 720p rights holders. 1080/50p infrastructure can also carry 2x1080/25p or 2x1080/50i streams as well - so 3D production becomes possible. I suspect that 50p infrastructure may arrive for 3D TV - but the benefits of 50p pictures will not.
There is a possibility that Sky may go 1080/50p when they move to their new studios (2012?), and some of the Olympics might be 1080/50p as well - but whether this is for 3D or 50p native, again that's the question.
One of the main problems is that the improvement in quality isn't huge - particularly as de-interlacers improve in consumer displays. There IS a vertical resolution improvement in the output of live cameras, because the frame-offset line-pair-averaging that is used to create fields is removed - but it isn't gobsmacking. Also the main vertical resolution benefit is on fast motion - which if not horribly shuttered also has motion blur - so you get extra resolution on blurred content.
Personally I think 1080/50p and 1080/60p will, outside of 3D and some premium productions, remain quite niche. I think that increased resolution (hopefully with higher frame rates, but I'm not holding my breath) - with 3840x2160 or 7680x4320 on the horizon, all at 50p or 60p (no interlace) - or higher.
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Also, they could make the iplayer support it (though bandwidth could be a problem maybe).
Yep - IPTV and VoD/Download are the two areas where 1080/50p and 1080/60p could be implemented quickly if the content were produced. However these are, in the main, non-live outlets - and this is still more the province of 1080/25p or 1080/24p content.
That said - PCs and interlace don't mix - and at the moment the iPlayer is 25p only (all 50i content is de-interlaced down to 25p) so a shift to 50p for replay may happen (again I'm not holding my breath)
The bandwith required for a decent H264 1080/50p signal now appears to be around the 12-15Mbs range with the latest encoders - so bandwith requirements aren't hugely greater than previous generation 1080/50i encoding (which can now deliver pretty good quality stuff at the 8-10Mbs range) Still not in a lot of people's broadband speed range - but as 40/50Mbs and 100Mbs services become available - it isn't ridiculous. However the content production is still the issue.
As 1080/50p H264 profiles are not part of any of the current implemented mainstream broadcast standards (including the new Freeview HD) - the only "near future" implementation I could see is if a Pay TV operator decides to go 1080/50p or 60p (as they can control box manufacture and standards). Given that all the mainstream operators are chosing a sub-HD 3D system (sending both eyes in a single 1080/50i or 1080/60i stream) - I'm not sure if that will happen.
Last edited by noggin on 30th January 2010 10:55am
