I've seen a few threads on here recently on the subject of the new ultra hd / 8k format that’s coming in a few years, and as some of you may be aware, this years Olympics was used as a test bed for the technology, with a few broadcasts beamed out to various locations in the UK, Japan and the states. Yesterday I was lucky enough to view one of these broadcasts at the national media museum in Bradford in the north of England, and thought I’d write a little report about the experience as there doesn’t seem to many first hand accounts about regarding 8k.
The set up where I watched the broadcast was in a small cinema with a relatively small screen, (I think it was 300 inches diagonally) and an 8k NHK projector set up just behind the back row, about 20 feet or so away from the screen. The presentation itself was an hour long and comprised of a short intro into what 8k or “super high vision” as its being called, actually is, where we were shown some test shots, and then after this we got about 40 minutes of Olympics highlights from the opening ceremony, cycling and athletics events.
Now I’m just going to get it out of the way now and say it. 8K is amazing. It’s the most impressive evolution in digital video technology I’ve ever seen. Remember the first time you saw HD and how fuzzy and antiquated SD seemed in comparison? Well it’s like that all over again but on a much more dramatic scale; to put it bluntly it made 1080p look like a joke.
In the first portion of the presentation we got a narrator explaining the virtues of super high vision whilst we were shown a few test shots; birds frolicking, busy city streets, a grassy field and a few other stock footage type shots. At first glance it didn’t look like anything especially spectacular or impressive; because it was scaled up on a 300 inch screen it almost seemed like the equivalent of what you’d see watching 1080p on your 30-40 inch TV at home. However when I started focusing on little spots on the screen, the detail seemed to just continue on indefinitely; There was a wide crane shot looking top down on a field with long billowing grass and you could literally discern every individual strand of grass, to cite a cliché it really was like looking through a window into another world on the other side of the screen.
The Olympics portion of the presentation was even more impressive. The opening ceremony, shot from a high up corner of the stadium presented an effect similar to something like those “where’s wally” picture books from your youth. No matter where you focused your attention in the very busy scene you could look right into the screen and distinguish the tiniest details, and almost see miniature stories unfolding within the frame. Every interaction between every person on the screen was there to see if you looked hard enough. The fireworks display was particularly striking, again giving the “looking through the window” illusion, as you are able to make out every individual little spark and wisp of smoke. Something I hadn’t anticipated was the sense of depth present on these big, wide, epic shots. There definitely is a distinct pseudo 3d effect caused by the increased detail, it’s not quite avatar, but there’s definitely something there that makes you feel as if you could get out of your seat and walk into the scene.
In the rest of the presentation we were shown highlights from the men’s Kirin cycling, the heptathlon , 100 and 10’000 meter running events (3 of the 4 won by British athletes as well, go on England!) all the events had similar set up’s, wide shots on slow pans following the athletes around the track and Velodrome. From a sports fans perspective the thing that stood out in all the events was how the increased resolution allows you to really distinguish the subtleties in the athlete’s technique and movements. Being an avid cyclist myself it was interesting to be able to scrutinize the Kirin riders’ methods in a way that wouldn’t have been possible before, right down to the placement of individual fingers on the handlebars.
In the 100 meter event, we were shown a tighter shot, the runner’s lining up in their lanes for the race with the track in the foreground and a packed stand of about 300 spectators in the background. What was special here was being able to see the individual expressions on every last one of spectator’s faces. This effect was amplified ten fold in the 10’000 meter event; in the final stretch of the race when Mo Farrah pulls away from the rest of the runners and you know he’s essentially got the gold in the bag, you can see the expression on the guys face in full detail from a wide shot whilst he’s still running the final hundred meter’s , and just how relieved and happy he is to be winning the race, this really added to the emotional intensity of the event in a way I’ve never seen on a television screen before.
Just from watching 40 minutes of footage, it seems evident that sport, perhaps more than any other form of programming, will receive the greatest benefits from 8k. I for one can’t wait to watch some football in this format, here’s hoping that there’ll be similar Super High Vision trials being conducted at the world cup in 2014. However, despite all the wonderful things I saw and the borderline sycophantic praise I’ve been giving it, I still do have a few reservations regarding 8k, albeit minor ones.
The first issue I saw was the 22.2 surround sound that’s supposed to be the replacement for HD’s 5.1. At the cinema where I watched the trial they had the full 22 speaker set up, which essentially assault you with very loud noises from every conceivable direction. Most of the time it felt like complete overkill, disorientating you and taking you out of the experience on screen rather than sucking you in, it wasn’t just me either, the 3 friends I was with all had the same complaint.
From a visual standpoint, despite all the great things the detail of a 36 megapixel image brings to the table, at times it was quite distracting. My eyes would sometimes wander from what I was supposed to be watching, over to some random corner of the screen to watch a line of photographers jostle for a the best position to snap Usain Bolt as he crosses the line, or the in the Velodrome rather than paying attention the boys doing the racing I’m transfixed by the mechanics area wishfully staring at all the exotic carbon fiber bikes in the stands.
There were also a couple of technical points that stood out , namely motion blur and focus issues; despite being presented at what looked like either 50 or 60 frames a second, due to the sharpness of the images the slightest bit of motion blur on a couple of the pans was quite pronounced. Apparently when this format finally reaches our homes 120 fps will be rate we’ll be watching so hopefully this problem won’t exist by then. Even though this sounds like an obscenely high frame rate judging by what I saw I think it will be a requirement and actually seem pretty normal in conjunction with the high Res images. As controversial as it might sound, there is no way I can see the standard 24p/25p/30p carrying over to 8k and looking nice, James Cameron and peter Jackson might just be onto something shooting their new films at higher frame rates…
The other issue I saw was with focus on certain shots, basically anything that is slightly soft that you would get away with in 1080p stands out, it’s not like any of the footage was actually out of focus, (it was all fantastically shot) but in certain shots you could detect the planes of focus to an almost distracting degree, not in the shallow depth of field “look at all my bokeh” kind of way but rather in the opposite direction, where you’ve got a very deep dof, and whatever is behind the focal point is ever so slightly soft. You wouldn’t realize it in normal hd but you can detect it at these massive resolutions.
However all of these problems presented themselves so infrequently and in such a minor way that they should be considered as nothing more than niggles, spotted by the hardcore pixel peeping of a self professed video geek, and probably not identifiable to your average viewer. And remember this is still a prototype system in the early stages of development; HD was test broadcasted for the first time at 1984 Olympics, and it’s only become the standard in the last decade, so we’ve got a long time to wait for the next generation to evolve and become widely adopted.
To conclude I’d say that from what I saw, super high vision, ultra hd, 8k or whatever you want to call it is definitely the way forward. As a format to be displayed in the home I don’t think it has a lot of point as the detail would be so fine on a normal sized TV that it would be indistinguishable from 2k or 4k unless you were sat inches away. However as a format to be displayed on the big screen it’s ideal, and as an acquisition format for regular TV it has amazing potential, things like being able to crop video in the same way photographers do with stills whilst retaining a very high level of detail, imagine having a master shot that could be your wide, mid and close all at the same time. I for one am keeping an open mind and am very much looking forward to getting my hands on some of this technology, even though its probably not going to be for another 10 to 20 years….
The set up where I watched the broadcast was in a small cinema with a relatively small screen, (I think it was 300 inches diagonally) and an 8k NHK projector set up just behind the back row, about 20 feet or so away from the screen. The presentation itself was an hour long and comprised of a short intro into what 8k or “super high vision” as its being called, actually is, where we were shown some test shots, and then after this we got about 40 minutes of Olympics highlights from the opening ceremony, cycling and athletics events.
Now I’m just going to get it out of the way now and say it. 8K is amazing. It’s the most impressive evolution in digital video technology I’ve ever seen. Remember the first time you saw HD and how fuzzy and antiquated SD seemed in comparison? Well it’s like that all over again but on a much more dramatic scale; to put it bluntly it made 1080p look like a joke.
In the first portion of the presentation we got a narrator explaining the virtues of super high vision whilst we were shown a few test shots; birds frolicking, busy city streets, a grassy field and a few other stock footage type shots. At first glance it didn’t look like anything especially spectacular or impressive; because it was scaled up on a 300 inch screen it almost seemed like the equivalent of what you’d see watching 1080p on your 30-40 inch TV at home. However when I started focusing on little spots on the screen, the detail seemed to just continue on indefinitely; There was a wide crane shot looking top down on a field with long billowing grass and you could literally discern every individual strand of grass, to cite a cliché it really was like looking through a window into another world on the other side of the screen.
The Olympics portion of the presentation was even more impressive. The opening ceremony, shot from a high up corner of the stadium presented an effect similar to something like those “where’s wally” picture books from your youth. No matter where you focused your attention in the very busy scene you could look right into the screen and distinguish the tiniest details, and almost see miniature stories unfolding within the frame. Every interaction between every person on the screen was there to see if you looked hard enough. The fireworks display was particularly striking, again giving the “looking through the window” illusion, as you are able to make out every individual little spark and wisp of smoke. Something I hadn’t anticipated was the sense of depth present on these big, wide, epic shots. There definitely is a distinct pseudo 3d effect caused by the increased detail, it’s not quite avatar, but there’s definitely something there that makes you feel as if you could get out of your seat and walk into the scene.
In the rest of the presentation we were shown highlights from the men’s Kirin cycling, the heptathlon , 100 and 10’000 meter running events (3 of the 4 won by British athletes as well, go on England!) all the events had similar set up’s, wide shots on slow pans following the athletes around the track and Velodrome. From a sports fans perspective the thing that stood out in all the events was how the increased resolution allows you to really distinguish the subtleties in the athlete’s technique and movements. Being an avid cyclist myself it was interesting to be able to scrutinize the Kirin riders’ methods in a way that wouldn’t have been possible before, right down to the placement of individual fingers on the handlebars.
In the 100 meter event, we were shown a tighter shot, the runner’s lining up in their lanes for the race with the track in the foreground and a packed stand of about 300 spectators in the background. What was special here was being able to see the individual expressions on every last one of spectator’s faces. This effect was amplified ten fold in the 10’000 meter event; in the final stretch of the race when Mo Farrah pulls away from the rest of the runners and you know he’s essentially got the gold in the bag, you can see the expression on the guys face in full detail from a wide shot whilst he’s still running the final hundred meter’s , and just how relieved and happy he is to be winning the race, this really added to the emotional intensity of the event in a way I’ve never seen on a television screen before.
Just from watching 40 minutes of footage, it seems evident that sport, perhaps more than any other form of programming, will receive the greatest benefits from 8k. I for one can’t wait to watch some football in this format, here’s hoping that there’ll be similar Super High Vision trials being conducted at the world cup in 2014. However, despite all the wonderful things I saw and the borderline sycophantic praise I’ve been giving it, I still do have a few reservations regarding 8k, albeit minor ones.
The first issue I saw was the 22.2 surround sound that’s supposed to be the replacement for HD’s 5.1. At the cinema where I watched the trial they had the full 22 speaker set up, which essentially assault you with very loud noises from every conceivable direction. Most of the time it felt like complete overkill, disorientating you and taking you out of the experience on screen rather than sucking you in, it wasn’t just me either, the 3 friends I was with all had the same complaint.
From a visual standpoint, despite all the great things the detail of a 36 megapixel image brings to the table, at times it was quite distracting. My eyes would sometimes wander from what I was supposed to be watching, over to some random corner of the screen to watch a line of photographers jostle for a the best position to snap Usain Bolt as he crosses the line, or the in the Velodrome rather than paying attention the boys doing the racing I’m transfixed by the mechanics area wishfully staring at all the exotic carbon fiber bikes in the stands.
There were also a couple of technical points that stood out , namely motion blur and focus issues; despite being presented at what looked like either 50 or 60 frames a second, due to the sharpness of the images the slightest bit of motion blur on a couple of the pans was quite pronounced. Apparently when this format finally reaches our homes 120 fps will be rate we’ll be watching so hopefully this problem won’t exist by then. Even though this sounds like an obscenely high frame rate judging by what I saw I think it will be a requirement and actually seem pretty normal in conjunction with the high Res images. As controversial as it might sound, there is no way I can see the standard 24p/25p/30p carrying over to 8k and looking nice, James Cameron and peter Jackson might just be onto something shooting their new films at higher frame rates…
The other issue I saw was with focus on certain shots, basically anything that is slightly soft that you would get away with in 1080p stands out, it’s not like any of the footage was actually out of focus, (it was all fantastically shot) but in certain shots you could detect the planes of focus to an almost distracting degree, not in the shallow depth of field “look at all my bokeh” kind of way but rather in the opposite direction, where you’ve got a very deep dof, and whatever is behind the focal point is ever so slightly soft. You wouldn’t realize it in normal hd but you can detect it at these massive resolutions.
However all of these problems presented themselves so infrequently and in such a minor way that they should be considered as nothing more than niggles, spotted by the hardcore pixel peeping of a self professed video geek, and probably not identifiable to your average viewer. And remember this is still a prototype system in the early stages of development; HD was test broadcasted for the first time at 1984 Olympics, and it’s only become the standard in the last decade, so we’ve got a long time to wait for the next generation to evolve and become widely adopted.
To conclude I’d say that from what I saw, super high vision, ultra hd, 8k or whatever you want to call it is definitely the way forward. As a format to be displayed in the home I don’t think it has a lot of point as the detail would be so fine on a normal sized TV that it would be indistinguishable from 2k or 4k unless you were sat inches away. However as a format to be displayed on the big screen it’s ideal, and as an acquisition format for regular TV it has amazing potential, things like being able to crop video in the same way photographers do with stills whilst retaining a very high level of detail, imagine having a master shot that could be your wide, mid and close all at the same time. I for one am keeping an open mind and am very much looking forward to getting my hands on some of this technology, even though its probably not going to be for another 10 to 20 years….
