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.”
