Switzerland’s RTS Deploys Leader’s LV5490, UHD Series at Montreux Jazz Festival

Swiss public service broadcaster Radio Télévision Suisse (RTS) has successfully completed a series of UHD high-dynamic-range live OB recordings and post-production tests at the 2017 Montreux Jazz Festival. A Leader LV5490 was used as one of the master test instruments during the project at the Montreux Music & Convention Centre and Radio Télévision Suisse post-production facilities in Geneva.

“RTS identified the Montreux Jazz Festival as an ideal subject for evaluating the potential of UHD HDR,” says Leader’s European Regional Development Manager, Kevin Salvidge. “The combination of bright lighting on performers and much lower lighting in the auditorium pushes the dynamic capabilities of traditional HD television to the limits. Shooting UHD in standard-dynamic-range increases the visibility of any video noise in the system, particularly in darker areas, because the amount of detail in the images is much greater than in HD.

“The LV5490 proved highly effective in ensuring that the full advantages of high-dynamic-range compared with standard-dynamic-range were maintained from the point of capture right through the live production process,” says Yannick Dumartineix, Head of Studios & OB Vehicles at RTS. “Using the instrument to monitor critical parameters allowed the production team to ensure that their HDR cameras were correctly adjusted both in terms of system alignment and exposure settings. Leader’s intuitive Cinezone HDR feature was particularly appreciated along with the LV5490’s ability to display the extended HDR colour gamut.”

“Having seen the LV5490 being used during the live production process, it was only natural that we used the LV5490 in post-production, where we have been tasked with delivering Sony SLOG-3, SMPTE-2084 (PQ) and Hybrid Log Gamma (HLG) versions of the finished project,” says RTS Colourist Anne-Laure Sacher. “The LV5490 supports all these flavours of HDR, and its real-time false colour Cinezone HDR and CIE colour chart seamlessly complement the signal waveform displays traditionally used in post-production.”

This project confirmed the superiority of UHD to such a degree that RTS will be providing extracts from the Montreux Jazz Festival production for demonstration at the 2017 International Broadcasting Convention in Amsterdam mid September. These will be displayed as part of their respective exhibits by the European Broadcasting Union (stand 10.F20), Sony (stand 13.A10), Canon (stand 12.D60) and EVS (stands 8.A96 and 8.B90).

Leader’s LV5490 offers 4K, UHD, 3G, HD and SD test and measurement features in a half-rack-width by 4U portable unit with a full high-definition 9 inch front-panel monitor. It provides all the facilities required to implement the full potential of high dynamic range in both ultra-high-definition and high-definition. Signal displays such as video waveform, chroma levels, colour vectors, bar-graphs, noise, video patterns, quad-3G phase, data tables, camera picture output, colour chart, multichannel audio levels and surround-sound vectors can be freely integrated into a combined display.

If a specific displayed element requires detailed attention, this can be selected quickly for viewing at higher resolution or full-screen. The Leader CINELITE HDR toolset also comes as a standard feature, allowing easy assessment of relative exposure and overall luminance during production. A focus-assist option allows highly accurate on-set adjustment of camera focus to match the ability of 4K and UHD formats to handle precise image detail.

Supplementing its front-panel display, the LV5490 provides 1920 x 1080 HD DVI and HD-SDI feeds to feed external monitors. Simultaneous viewing of up to four 3 gigabit/s SDI inputs is possible, including overlays. The size and location of individual channels can be adjusted on the display using a USB pointer so the user is not limited to fixed-size quadrants. Operators can select the size and position of the measuring area as well as the Y/G/B/R component channel. An alarm can be set to alert operators if the noise level exceeds a predefined threshold. An integral low-pass filter allows elements of the high frequency band to be removed at the time of noise measurement.

Founded in 1967, the Montreux Jazz Festival is held annually in early July in Montreux on the Lake Geneva shoreline. The event was originally held at the original Montreux Casino which burned down in December 1971 during a Frank Zappa performance. The festival was relocated to other venues in Montreux before returning to the rebuilt Montreux Casino in 1975. The event continued to grow and in 1993 moved to the larger Montreux Music & Convention Centre.