Ultra High Definition Video

Super Hi-Vision, also known as Ultra High Definition Video or UHDV and UHD is a digital video format, currently proposed by NHK of Japan.

The new format with a resolution of 7,680 × 4,320 pixels is four times as wide and four times as high (for a total of 16 times the pixel resolution) as existing HDTV, which has a maximum resolution of 1920 × 1080 pixels. Because this format is highly experimental, NHK researchers had to build their own prototype from scratch. In the system demonstrated in September 2003 they used an array of 16 HDTV recorders to capture the 18-minute-long test footage. The camera itself was built with four 2.5 inch (64 mm) CCDs with a combined resolution of only 3840 × 2048. They then resorted to pixel shifting to bring it to 7680 × 4320.^[1]

Demonstrations

The system was demonstrated at Expo 2005, Aichi, Japan, the NAB 2006 conference, Las Vegas, and at IBC 2006, Amsterdam, Netherlands. A review of the NAB 2006 demo was published in a BroadcastEngineering e-newsletter.

In November 2005 NHK demonstrated a live relay of Super Hi-Vision (UHDV) program over a distance of 260 km by a fiber optic network. Using dense wavelength division multiplex (DWDM), 24 gigabit speed was achieved with a total of 16 different wavelength signals.

Capacity

Eighteen minutes of uncompressed UHDV footage consumes 3.5 terabytes of data and one minute of footage consumes 194 gigabytes (2 hours of full length movie will use roughly 25 terabytes of storage). If 1920×1080p60 high definition video has a bitrate of 60 Mbit/s using current MPEG-2 compression technologies, then four times the width and four times the height will roughly require 16 times the bitrate, which translates to 100 GB for 18 minutes of UHDV, or 6 GB per minute if MPEG-2 video compression was used. If H.264 (MPEG-4 AVC) or VC-1 video compression technologies were used then roughly half the bitrate of MPEG-2 would be required to achieve the same quality, meaning 50 GB for 18 minute of UHDV, or 3 GB per minute. (These numbers assume compressed data rates scale linearly with resolution. They do not, so actual compression numbers would be much better.)

This would mean that a 12 cm Holographic Versatile Disc at 3 micrometer separation of different colored tracks (with a capacity of 3.9 TB) would be able to store roughly 11 hours of MPEG-2 or 22 hours of H264 or VC1 compressed UHDV, compared to the 18 and a half minutes of uncompressed UHDV. Additionally, an eight layer Blu-ray disc (with a capacity of 200 GB) would be able to store approximately 36 minutes of MPEG-2 compressed UHDV, or 72 minutes of H264 or VC-1] compressed UHDV, compared to the one minute of uncompressed UHDV. A 50 TB protein-coated disc (PCD) would be able to hold over 94 hours of H.264/AVC/VC-1 compressed UHDV, but generally that would be unnecessary, for a 50 TB PCD would be able to hold four hours of uncompressed UHDV. Once stabilizing ferroelectric materials is accomplished it would be able to store 1024 hours of uncompressed UHDV and 24,064 hours of H.264/AVC/VC-1 compressed UHDV.

The RED ONE

Red Digital Cinema Camera Company claims their camera to be Ultra High Definition, although the maximum resolution is only 2540p.

References

1. ^ Just Like High-Definition TV, but With Higher Definition, NYTimes.com

See also

• 22.2 (the audio component of UHDV)

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