Guest post: Andy Marken – andy@markencom.com – is an author of more than 900 articles on management, marketing,
communications, industry trends in media & entertainment, consumer electronics, software, and applications. An internationally recognized marketing/communications consultant, he has a broad range of technical and industry expertise. This article is a look-ahead at new products coming at IBC 2025.
Everyone in the live event and film/show industry knows that budget (time/money) can help them deliver flawless sports/concert action as best as possible and near perfect shows/movies to linear/VOD viewers. It’s always the last 2-5 percent of the workflow video stream that is expensive to polish and forces them to say, “Good enough” and send the content to the viewer.
A recent news item seemed to address the problems and how an AI-enabled tool could change things for harried production teams and meet the viewers’ expectations. This is a quick summary of how Paramount’s Chilevisión addressed the real-time HD to UHD 4K conversion challenge. We’ll learn more at IBC at the Ultra HD stand (14 C11) and neighboring Accelerator Innovation Zone.
BACKGROUND
It’s interesting to us that live events concerts/sports production teams and people responsible for breathing new life into studio/streamer/broadcast library shows/movies have a similar content enhancement/delivery challenge. Recently, we spent time online with Hugo Teran-Padilla, founder of HTTA Ingeniería e Integración, recently to learn how he helped Paramount’s Chilevisión seamlessly add the Danish firm Pixop’s AI-enabled “Pixop Live” into thire workflow to solve the time-consuming and expensive upscaling task for both content delivery issues in seconds vs. hours.
Remote Work – As with nearly all sports coverage today, Paramount’s Chilevisión uses a healthy mix of cameras to capture all of the action and consolidate it all in their OB (outside broadcast) truck for almost instantaneous transmission to the studio production facility for HD to UHD enhancement/distribution.
To provide complete coverage of sports and concert events, organizations such as ESPN, Fubo, WBD’s TNT, Paramount and DANZ increasingly use a mix of drone, action camera, wireless broadcast and HD broadcast cameras to feed all of the action to the OB (outside broadcast) truck, then consolidate it all in their OB (outside broadcast) truck for almost instantaneous transmission to the studio production facility for HD to UHD enhancement/distribution.
Testing Performance – At Paramount’s Chilevisión’s studio production facility interlaced HD SDR signals are SRT-encoded and upscaled with AI-enabled Pixop Live for distribution in UHD 4K with less than 600 ms latency.
The interlaced HD SDR signal is then SRT-encoded by the central broadcast facility team to be edited, finalized and upscaled to UHD 4K and distributed the linear or streaming viewers in near real-time.
APPLYING AI TO REAL-TIME PRODUCTION
Chilevisión’s first live action test of the Pixop Live solution was at the International Ironman Pucón in southern Chile.
The OB truck’s stadium production content was then sent 750 km to the network’s master control room in Santiago for final real-time processing and distribution to linear and VOD viewers.
In addition to instant upscaling HD to UHD 4K, one of the network’s and Teran-Padilla’s major requirements was that AI-enabled Pixop Live boost video quality without adding to the cost or slowing operations.
The added benefit that Teran-Padilla – who has designed and supervised operations including the World Cup, Olympic Games and multiple sports and entertainment venues – found was that the AI solution preserves codec compression rates and API integration while correcting source errors prior to upscaling to 4K.
In addition, it complemented the network’s existing video processing workflow without any adjustments/modifications.
Pixop Live End-to-End Video Processing Workflow
“Handling video feeds from a mix of content capture resources and blending them into a smooth UHD 4K video stream needs to be flawless and virtually instantaneous,” Teran-Padilla said, “especially in sporting events where viewers feel any delay is devastating to their enjoyment of the contest.”
That’s true, but we were also interested in the issue every studio, network and local station production team faces … breathing new life into their curated content libraries.
“Like the network’s parent company Paramount-Skylark and others, Chilevisión has an extensive and very valuable archive library,” he noted. “It’s an irreplaceable video history of the 64-year-old network’s work and the country’s evolution and progress that has been captured in older SD and HD formats.
“The network needs to protect and preserve that content,” he emphasized, “However, while people find the shows/movies/documentary work interesting, they expect to watch it in today’s UHD 4K standard.”
Founded in November 1960; Chile Vision Chilevisión (CHV) is also digitizing its extensive archive library with Pixop’s archive processing tools to preserve the historical content and make it look even better on large 4K HDR screens. The organization’s goal is to boost video quality without adding to the cost or slowing operations.
To test his faster economical recommendations, he and the network conducted a series of upscaling trials with copies of several of their oldest documentary projects.
Chilevisión had already upgraded their operation with NextGen TV standards such as Japan’s ISDB-Tb, Brazil’s TV 3.0/DTV+ initiative and optional 4K through its own OTT MiChv and 4K platforms. Cable operators can also differentiate their quality delivery with their own 4K HDR solution,
For the tests, the network established a number of linear/VOD KPIs including upward shift to Buffer Ratio quality average bitrate and join times.
“We were helping Chilevisión frame a more strategic approach to upscaling the quality of the content that would be fast and reliable while maintaining modest data management investments,” Teran-Padilla said.
Because of his experience with networks and studios throughout Central and South America, Teran-Padilla was intimately familiar with the technical challenges of integration requirements to ensure the network’s smooth, seamless transition to 4K UHD.
“The introduction of an AI solution to upscale HD SDR has to work within existing video processing and workflow rather than replace it because organizations like Chilevisión already have made a significant investment in their infrastructure, processes and procedures and that needs to be preserved,” he noted.
“AI experts who say the technology will simply replace everything you’ve invested in and will probably do it better and faster are simply ignoring real world economics,” he said. “The infrastructure has to be preserved, enhanced and leveraged to provide the best viewing possible.
Pixop Live Linear SDR-to-HDR Workflow
“In all of our trials,” Teran-Padilla continued, “Pixop Live performed seamlessly in the network’s existing workflow taking HD SDR feeds, processing, and returning it as UHD 4K HDR…. And with 600 milliseconds latency, we were more than a little surprised.”
Teran-Padilla observed that AI’s potential to rejuvenate archival content not only improves the visual quality but can also extend the commercial value of legacy content for studios, networks and even stations.
The fact that the Pixop Live’s embedded AI delivers instant HD to 4K UHD significantly improves video quality without impacting operations and conversion processing costs has developed a lot of interest from studio and production management in the region he has discussed the tests with.
For them, time savings and quality improvements have a direct positive impact on OPEX.
While he, like us, will be spending time at IBC catching up on the industry’s rapidly changing technology, he said he has already scheduled a number of meetings with forward-thinking broadcasters to help them effectively integrate AI into their UHD environments without altering their core workflow.
