Nucleus Pico 90°, FOR-A, and Teradek TV in the new episode of 360 Seconds. Broadcast News & Commentary. Airing on February 26, 2024.
360 Seconds. Broadcast News & Commentary is a weekly program on Youtube about the latest equipment for broadcasting and film. Short, clear, informative. Explained by experts – practitioners directly working in the field of cinema and television.
Super Bowl 2024: Nucleus Pico 90° Global Shutter Camera Premiere
Maria: Antelope Camera Systems has unveiled its latest innovation, the Nucleus Pico 90° global shutter camera. This cutting-edge device was notably utilized during the 2024 NFL Super Bowl, where ten Nucleus Pico 90° cameras provided viewers with live ultra-slow-motion footage.
So, Philip, can you talk us through this?
Philip: Yes, it’s really kind of a unique camera, mainly because of its size and in a sports environment it’s great. You can pretty much stick it anywhere. I was reading some of the articles, and they put it in the pylons on the end zones, which may or may not be a good thing. You know, if a referee call “was it a touchdown, wasn’t it a touchdown”. But what makes this one of the more unique products is that it does have what’s called a global shutter. In sports, that’s really an important item, especially if you’re putting these cameras in locations that could move. You’re not going to be on a solid tripod. And for those who aren’t familiar with the global shutter, it just means that it captures the entire image at one time, as opposed to scanning from top to bottom.
The easiest way to demonstrate that is to grab your cell phone and shake it while you’re recording a video, and it looks like jello. From a professional sports perspective, that’s really fantastic. Additionally, the fact that it has a high frame rate, both traditional frame rate and high frame rate at the same time, as an ecosystem. So, you get this ultra-slow motion. I believe it’s up to 400 and some odd frames within the HD world, 120 frames in UHD. So, it does provide interesting views of the field, and interesting storytelling.
I always think about any technology that you’re going to implement in something: does it push the story forward, does it help tell the story? And a lot of things are a little bit gimmicky, to be quite honest, but this one doesn’t necessarily have that gimmicky factor. It really does help put you, the viewer, on the sideline, put you in some unique positions as well that maybe you wouldn’t see. So maybe that’s a little bit gimmicky, but in general, I think the tech is going to find a place in live sports very quickly.
Maria: Do you see it being used beyond sports?
Philip: I can see it being used beyond sports because of its size. So, live concerts, debates, plays, or anything where you’re trying to capture live content. Because of its size, it can be placed just about anywhere and again, because that global shutter really mimics more of a film camera than a digital camera.
FOR-A to Debut IP Solution Enhancements at NAB 2024
Maria: All right, great. Now moving on, FOR-A will unveil a series of innovations during the upcoming 2024 NAB Show in Las Vegas that advance the company’s “Software-Defined IP Solution” theme. Among the innovations on the FOR-A stand will be the introduction of a SMPTE ST 2110 broadcast suite that enables flexible IP resource sharing and a 3G-based production automation solution. FOR-A’s live production ecosystem works with all variants of IP. So, Philip, can you break this down for us?
Philip: Yes, one of the most important things is that FOR-A is a big vendor in the market space. It’s not Imagine Communications, Evertz, Sony, or Grass Valley, but we’re now starting to see, and I don’t want to say this in a pejorative sense, the second tier, but people who have made products that really sort of fit niche areas, really starting to play in the IP world, which I think is fantastic. Part of that’s been enabled by the fact that SMPTE ST 2110 is a standard that everybody tries to adopt. It’s not proprietary, and it no longer requires heavy iron. That router that the four or five manufacturers made, in order to be in their ecosystem, you had to work with that. Now, it’s a standards-based model, so we’re going to see a lot more players getting into it, which is a good thing. The opposite of that is that it’s going to be more difficult for my clients and customers to make decisions on what tech to adopt because there’s a lot more choices, and not all choices are going to be equal. FOR-A has been one of the leaders in the industry, and so I’m looking forward to their tech being utilized more. And really, the fact that they’re adopting all flavors of IP really shows sort of a forward-thinking, not just trapped in the “it’s got to be SMPTE ST 2110 or nothing.” So, I think that’s a great thing.
Teradek Unveils Teradek TV Platform
Maria: Great, okay thanks. Now moving on to our last news item of the day, Teradek unveils Teradek TV, a new platform for real-time production viewing and post-production collaboration, featuring encrypted, ultra-high-quality feeds with minimal delay, designed to enhance the collaborative process across various production stages.
So, Philip, what are your thoughts on this?
Philip: Well, Teradek has been great as an on-set product for a very long time, doing video distribution and streaming locally. Their products have adopted camera-to-cloud technologies as well, and so now this is just sort of that next logical step. Because they’ve got this stuff in their ecosystem to provide a platform to sort of connect it all. Not quite the same as TVU Networks, which has a full-fledged production environment, but this is really, I think, more for sort of live-to-tape and live production, enabling people to view the content anywhere. So, it’s really an enhancement or an extension of their current product set, which I think is fantastic, and it’s going to be exciting to see how customers take this tech and really push it to enable new storytelling capabilities.
Maria: That’s all the time we have today. Many thanks to our expert, Philip. And don’t forget to comment on the news we’ve discussed. See you next Monday at the same time!
360 Seconds. Broadcast News & Commentary
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