NIPPON TV GROUP TECHNOLOGY COMPANIES PURSUING 4K WORKFLOWS
23 May, 2014
Nippon Technical Resources Inc. (Nitro) is a video production technology company which is funded 100% by Nippon TV Holdings Inc. The Nippon Broadcasting Network production technology division, NTB Video Center, Nippon TV video divisions unified into one company, in 2007, and formed the nucleus of Nippon TV contents creation.
“I began getting really involved in the construction of the 4K production workflow from 2013. The film team introduced Sony’s CineAlta4K camera PMW-F55 as the 4K camera. At first, we looked at how to handle 4K cameras and shot a 4K video library (still lifes, scenery, baseball, golf and other sports, live music club, etc.) to gain experience.
We rented a Nippon TV floor and held a “Jikkan! Naruhodo4K (It’s reality! I see 4K)” exhibition on January 2014, and published the 4K workflow at the Nippon TV group technology exhibition “Digitech” in March to gain recognition for the 4K videos and bring the complete production process from the filming to post-production finishing to Nitro. The high resolution of 4K videos, the application of 4K trimmed to HD and grading with DaVinci Resolve, were viewed by the visitors there. There were many reactions from the production staff to the trimming of 4K, and there was a resounding reaction to the videos of clouds being made into a clear, blue sky and cloud tones being emitted. There was a professional baseball broadcast trimming from that approach and this led to the reception of orders for 4K production.
I compared and examined both Bluefish444 and Mojito workflow solutions, and of the two of them, I was attracted to the fact that there was only one Mojito board installed. However, there were capturing functions also and Bluefish444 was selected since it had a reliable record in being introduced in many cases. In addition, I felt reassured about the movement of Bluefish444 when I actually worked with it as an item for 4K editing at Nippon TV when it was introduced.
There have been no problems with our Bluefish444 systems, in particular. There was slight disarray in the images when the frame rate was changed from 60P to 30P but there generally wasn’t much of a problem during the frame rate. Nevertheless, it can be played without drop frames if it is edited in Adobe Premiere Pro and 1 layer of the XAVC material 60P. The playing will not make it on time and rendering will be necessary if MultiCam editing is frequently used in drama productions. I look forward to the future improvement of Premiere Pro. Moreover, I have felt that the role of date managers, which has not been solidified yet in the television industry, will become extremely important.
