Examining Sky Sports Live HDR End-to-End Implementation

Sky Sports UK launched its live High Dynamic Range (HDR) service covering the English Premier League soccer in August 2021. In the subsequent three years, coverage has grown to over 6000 hours of live HDR sport production per year using single-stream HDR workflows across Sky UK's satellite and streaming platforms, as well as international distribution. In this paper the authors examine the end-to-end considerations for launching live HDR at Sky UK, whilst maintaining the existing Standard Dynamic Range (SDR) delivery to customers, and how workflows have been operationalized for live production. This paper looks at the acquisition of content and how simple, reliable, repeatable and cost-effective workflows are used to deliver the added benefit of HDR and Wide Color Gamut (WCG) to existing productions. This paper examines the operational demands and training required for Operational Engineers and the wider impact this has on production. Analyzing the design considerations for end-to-end deployment, this paper will examine the decisions, requirements and practical knowledge areas involved in addressing several key workflow areas, including edit, archive and distribution encode platforms. It will review some key considerations for the assessment of Look-up Table (LUT)-based conversions, techniques appropriate for validation of the pipelines used to apply them and the approaches that are transferable in the assessment of broadcast graphics workflows. Lastly, the paper will provide a brief overview of the considerations for Critical Viewing and management of End Devices & television sets within assessment environments.

Published

2024-10-21

Content type

Original Research

Keywords

hdr, hlg, uhd, live production, workflows

DOI

10.5594/MOO/3035

ISBN

978-1-61482-965-2