Radio Television Suisse (RTS) has recently completed a series of UHD HDR OB recordings and post-production tests at the 2017 Montreux Jazz Festival. A Leader LV5490 was chosen as one of the master test instruments during the project at the Montreux Music & Convention Centre and RTS' post-production facilities in Geneva.
   

Kevin Salvidge, Leader's European Regional Development Manager, commented: "RTS identified the Montreux Jazz Festival as an ideal subject for evaluating the potential of UHD HDR. 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," added 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," explained Anne-Laure Sacher, RTS Colourist. "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."

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. 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. 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.