LAS VEGAS—Technologists working on all aspects of the 8K media production chain offered an optimistic update at the 2024 NAB Show on the state of 8K in video production, indicating that significant advances are being made in capture, encoding, mastering and distribution. 

“We are seeing 8K being used further and further into the production process,” said Juan Reyes, director of operations, 8K Association, and moderator of the “8K Technology and Its Impact on the Production Process” panel at the NAB Show.

Those developments have been accompanied by newer consumer experiences including 8K displays on VR headsets like the Apple Vision Pro, and more content from live events. 

“If you look at the new types of displays like headsets coming into the market, 8K content is already being delivered to headsets for live events,” RED Digital Cinema CTO Uday Mathur said. “Some of our customers are already doing 8K for NBA games. Others are doing it for other types of live events and concerts. Those events are happening live, with [internet protocol video] delivered over the top, live out of the venue. So it’s not a large leap to think that 8K will be pervasive within a few years as hardware costs come down for televisions.”

Streamlined workflows for 8K live productions and improvements in codecs and video encoding have made it easier to deliver content over the public internet, panelists noted. “We did a concert a couple of months ago in 8K with [Japanese broadcaster] NHK,” Spin Digital CEO and co-founder Mauricio Alvarez-Mesa said. “It was streamed live in 8K to several locations … over the open internet. That shows we can do it now with the current technology.” 

Ravi Velhal, technology policy and standards, Intel Research agreed. “In terms of events, we have shown the end-to-end capability, glass-to-glass, with less than 2-second latency,” he said.

Added Reyes: “Some of the bit rates and the advancements in the encoding capabilities that we have today are down to the level of what we’re experiencing with 4K content. You know, historically, that was a big concern. How are we going to put so many pixels and what kind of bandwidth is everybody going to be needing to get it into the home?”

In addition to providing several examples of how encoding advances have reduced bandwidth requirements, Intel’s Velhal also pointed to similar improvements that have made 8K production much more economically viable. “Camera prices are coming down,” as are the costs for VFX and other parts of the production process, he said.

During the Paris Olympics a variety of Intel processors and technologies will be used on live 8K productions. 

IMAX chief product officer Abdul Rehman stressed the importance of creating an end-to-end 8K ecosystem. “We believe that producing 8K is really important in this day and age, and controlling the pipeline from content creation to playback is important to the experience,” he said.   

Though panelists acknowledged a lack of devices and the cost of producing and distributing content as ongoing roadblocks to 8K adoption, they also stressed the importance of further tech advances that allow producers to create new 8K experiences.

“We need to give the masses a reason to yearn for and look for an 8K experience,” IMAX’s Rehman said. “Achieving that will be a win for creators, a win for the folks who are providing the technology and a win for the consumers and display manufacturers. Once you start that loop and build that snowball effect, it will accelerate the whole process.”

WALTHAM, Mass.—Spin Digital has integrated the Zixi Software-Defined Video Platform into its live encoding and playback solutions. 

Together, the solutions offer the live encoding, compute efficient playback and transport performance to unlock new immersive viewing experiences, including up to 8K/HDR resolution, efficient HEVC and VVC compression and VR/AR optimized video delivered with error-free reliability and ultra-low latency, Zixi said.

Spin Digital’s live encoding and playback solutions enable ultra-high resolution 4K, 8K and 16K video processing with support for high dynamic range, high frame rate, wide color gamut and 360-degree video and virtual reality. 

Integration of Zixi with the Spin Enc Live, Spin Player HEVC and Spin Player VVC products, enables reliable transport of these high-performance streams that can leverage network bonding, enabling live video to span seamlessly across multiple networks to maximize available bandwidth and add resiliency and enhanced protections, including Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS) connection security and live content encryption support, it said.

Users leveraging the Spin Digital live encoders can now accept as well as broadcast from Zixi-enabled live sources and to Zixi Broadcaster target destinations. This enables users to deliver high-quality content with greater bandwidth efficiency at lower latencies and with increased reliability. Dynamic Forward Error Correction (FEC) and Automatic Repeat Request (ARQ) combine to ensure reliable delivery without adding significant latency while maximizing available bandwidth for content delivery. The bandwidth efficiency and error-free delivery included with the integrated solution are vital for supporting advanced UHD/8K video applications, it said.

"Spin Digital is leading the charge in to the next generation of media and entertainment applications, and we are thrilled to be able to deliver this joint best-of-breed experience," said John Wastcoat, senior vice president of alliances and marketing at Zixi. "Spin Digital has an excellent reputation for next-generation innovation with their dynamic, feature rich offerings, and we look forward to a successful partnership.”

More information is available on the Zixi website.

BERLIN—Spin Digital has released a new HEVC/H.265 software real-time encoder designed for 8K live video applications, the Spin Enc Live. With the new encoder, users can generate live UHD resolutions for broadcast and internet streaming applications.

Spin Enc Live can compress 8K content in real time at low bitrates. It features an optimized HEVC encoder, as well as modules for input capture and output streaming.

The new encoder fulfills the requirements for 8Kp60 broadcasting and streaming applications, per Spin Digital, including:

• Real-time operation mode
• HDR model compliance 
• Broadcast-level rate control 
• HDR and wide color gamut support 
• Input capture based on SDI 
• Simultaneous output for broadcasting (TSoIP) and internet streaming (HLS) 
• Audio encoding up to 22.2 channels 

Spin Digital also says that the encoder provides minimal latencies in both high-efficiency (long GOP) and low-delay (short GOP) operation modes.

The Spin Enc Live encoder is also able to be used for other live applications, like 4K with High Frame Rates or immersive live experiences with ultra-high resolution 360-degree video, according to Spin Digital. The company says that as more computing resources become available, higher resolutions and frame rates will be achievable.

Spin Digital is now offering the Spin Enc Live encoder for licensing, either as a complete application or as a module as part of the Spin Digital SDK. For more information, visit www.spin-digital.com. 

LUXEMBOURG—SES’ Industry Days featured a first for European broadcasters, a demonstration of an 8K signal being directly broadcasted to a flat screen TV via a built-in satellite receiver, a collaboration between SES, Spin Digital and Samsung.

The signal is coming from the ASTRA 28.2-degrees East orbital slot. Spin Digital’s HEVC encoder is encoding the 7680x4320 pixel, 50fps 8K content at a bitrate of 70Mbps. SES handles the transmission on a single 33 MHz transponder using DTH broadcast parameters. The signal is then directly received by the 82-inch Samsung 8K Q950RB QLED production model TV, which is using DVB-S2 transmission parameters for this demonstration.

The demo is designed to showcase how satellite is already capable of reliably providing transmission bitrates necessary to distribute 8K signals across continents.

“The collaboration with SES is helping to define the compression and quality settings for the new 8K format exploiting all the potential of the HEVC coding technology,” said Mauricio Alvarez-Mesa, CEO of Spin Digital. “Our next step is to enable similar quality and compression for live 8K HEVC.”