FIFA Films has installed a Quantel Pablo Rio suite at the International Broadcast Centre in Rio to edit and polish 4K footage of the World Cup Final and two other matches in 4K for an official film of the tournament.
The plan for the 4K 59.94fps production by Sony and FIFA host broadcasters HBS will position twelve F55 cameras at the Maracana stadium, a significantly smaller number than the 30+ cameras arrayed for the main HD match production.
Director Ben Miller will be able to draw on speciality camera feeds upconverted to 4K for helicopter aerial shots and PoV actionvcams such as one on the spider-rig criss-crossing the half-way line, as well as another RF camera in the tunnel.
Footage will be instantly available on EVS for live turnaround, but instead of recording to SR as per the Confederations Cup test run, it will be mastered onto Sony’s new PWS 4400 server in XAVC at 600Mbps.
“This creates one file, not four, making it easier to handle in an edit suite,” explained Mark Grinyer, head of business development for 3D, 4K and sports at Sony.
HBS teams building footage for FIFA Films will work from the Quantel Rio situated in the IBC. This will take the XAVC master file for immediate online in 4K without any need for transcoding. A number of HBS film crews armed with F55 cameras will also gather 4K footage in XAVC to feed into FIFA Films production of highlights packages and promo trailers for the official film, which will be sent to point of sale retail outlets to promote Sony Ultra HD sets and also to create a polished 4K film of the final.
Quantel Rio is software running on PCs loaded with high performance Nvidia graphics cards and is seen as one of the few systems capable of handling 4K 50/60p media in realtime with ability to work interactively and to be able to playout in short order to other parts of the broadcast chain.
The official 4K film is due to be distributed online by FIFA via 4K content distribution services after the tournament.
For super-slow-motion 4K Sony hopes to bring in an F65 camera shooting in dual speed, although this is not finalised.
