China Science and Technology News Network, August 2 (Zhao Fuyao) In recent years, the accelerated development of 5G has provided more development opportunities for 4K/8K ultra-high-definition video technology, and it has become a new trend to increase audience participation and bring immersive experience through ultra-high-definition video. The ongoing Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games in Japan have already adopted 8K live broadcasting, and the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics have also announced that it will use 8K live broadcasting, which makes the audience feel looking forward to it.
On July 23, Beijing time, the Tokyo Olympic Games, which had been postponed for a full year due to the epidemic, finally officially opened. In order to cheer for China's Olympic athletes, Hangzhou West Lake Tianmu and Chongqing Guanyin Bridge staged a "Dream Back to the 2016 Rio Olympic Games" Chinese women's volleyball classic smash naked-eye 3D show, and the realistic picture made the onlookers marvel.
It is reported that this shocking naked-eye 3D show is produced by Sikai Garden Network Technology (Guangzhou) Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "4K Garden") for Migu Creative, 4K Garden also announced in 2020 and Migu Video reached a cooperation, involving the field of ultra-high-definition sports events, jointly creating a new ecology of 5G+ ultra-high-definition event content.
According to the official introduction, based on the cooperation, 4K Garden will provide technical support for 4K/8K and VR front live broadcast signal production for Migu ultra-high-definition sports event broadcasting, including but not limited to on-site signal acquisition, encoding transmission services and required equipment, networks, and technologies.
According to public information, 4K Garden focuses on solving the two major pain points of 4K content and difficult production, providing content partners with a complete set of 4K solutions from pre-shooting to post-DIT support, content distribution, and has reached cooperation with more than 300 high-quality video program agencies, and is a 5G+ ultra-high-definition content production and application technology platform with batch continuous update capabilities.
Once upon a time, network transmission bandwidth, terminal display, storage capacity, and post-editing software and hardware equipment all restricted the development of ultra-high-definition video to a certain extent. But the 5G era has arrived, making the realization of ultra-high-definition video full of imagination. So what technical difficulties are there in the production of 4K, 8K ultra-high-definition video and naked-eye 3D video? What are the profit models? Will 5G+4K/8K ultra-high-definition video enter thousands of households and empower thousands of industries? With many questions, China Science and Technology News Network conducted an exclusive interview with Wu Yi, chairman of 4K Garden, and Xiao Tian, general manager of 4K Garden Post-production Center.
The following is the full text of the interview:
Photo: Wu Yi, chairman of 4K Garden, China Science and Technology News Network/Photo
China Science and Technology News Network: In the 4K/8K + naked-eye 3D business line, what will be the next move of 4K Garden?
Wu Yi: The application of 4K and 8K outdoors has always been a problem that 4K Gardens is thinking about, because traditional ultra-high-definition video is mainly presented on tv sets. Like the north, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and other cities, there are many outdoor LED screens, but this industry has always been tepid, and even some people think that it is already a sunset industry.
Naked-eye 3D technology takes advantage of the illusion of human vision and will form a very cool effect. At present, outdoor LEDs in Japan, South Korea and other countries have been upgraded to 4K and 8K, in the long run, we hope to combine naked-eye 3D with 8K, combine the highest technology and artistic level of outdoor displays, make a cooler effect, and change the outdoor LED industry from a sunset industry to a sunrise industry.
China Science and Technology News Network: The development of the 4K industry is inseparable from the construction of the industrial chain and ecological chain, at present, what level do you think the network transmission bandwidth, terminal display, storage capacity, post-editing software and hardware equipment, technology, etc. are at? Where are the shortcomings in these industrial chains?
Wu Yi: After several years of development, in fact, China's ultra-high-definition industry chain has been quite complete, China produces tens of millions of 4K TV sets every year, and 8K TV shipments are also growing. In terms of network support, it is now 100 megabit fiber and gigabit fiber into the home, and the speed of speeding up and reducing fees in the future will also accelerate.
In terms of ultra-high-definition content, there are now also enterprises dedicated to the 4K ultra-high-definition content ecology such as 4K Garden, and the content we can put on the ultra-high-definition market has approached 20,000 hours, including TV series, concerts, variety shows, documentaries and so on.
Thanks to the rapid development of China's 5G industry and the improvement of the ceiling of the ultra-high-definition industry, 5G+ultra-high-definition has become a new highlight of the entire entertainment industry. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and local governments are very supportive of the ultra-high-definition industry, and the combination of these two industries, China is bound to be at the forefront of the world.
China Science and Technology News Network: In the process of development and rise of technology, it will inevitably face the discussion of business models, and effective monetization is also a sign of technology maturity. What are the current ultra-high-definition naked-eye 3D profit models? How does 4K Garden think about this?
Wu Yi: Naked-eye 3D is actually a very mature monetization model, at present, there are a large number of very good ultra-high-definition naked-eye 3D ads in China that are produced by 4K Garden, and the combination of advertising marketing and cool technology must be a new highlight. At present, we are undertaking the naked-eye 3D production needs and delivery needs of the world's top 500 companies and some famous brands, and the business model is very mature.
We not only have the ability to produce naked-eye 3D video, 4K Garden is now spending 200 million yuan to build 8K outdoor LEDs in the core cities of the country, combined with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the State Administration of Radio and Television, the "100 Cities and 100 Screens" plan, we believe that the combination of naked-eye 3D technology and 8K and other digital technologies will have a very large space in the field of commercialization.
In the past, the content and clarity of outdoor LED playback did not bring friendly experience to the audience, and now we have a new technology and communication foundation, which can be secondary communication and social communication, so I think it will be broader than the outdoor LED industry market in the past.
China Science and Technology News Network: At present, 4K/8K ultra-high-definition video is more used in the production of variety shows, concerts, advertisements, film production and other cultural and entertainment industries. In the future, will 4K gardens enter the fields of medical, educational, industrial and other fields, empowering thousands of industries?
Wu Yi: What 4K Garden is best at is to combine ultra-high-definition technology with 5G in all walks of life for application, because our team first belonged to the Internet, so it initially monetized from the already mature cultural and entertainment fields, and then continuously consolidated its own brand channels and technical capabilities.
In the next step, we will definitely make some efforts in education, healthcare, defense, and many other areas combined with the needs of ultra-high definition. At present, there have been some explorations, such as in the field of e-commerce live broadcasting and education, we have exported ultra-high-definition technology, and next year we will launch cool hardware terminal products, combined with emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence.
Entertainment is only our initial 1.0 stage, the relatively large monetization opportunities and greater scenarios to promote society will come from the application of 5G + ultra-high definition in various vertical fields, which is also the direction we will explore in the future.
China Science and Technology News Network: Recently, the 4K Garden creatively produced the Olympic cheering naked-eye 3D video for Migu to land on the giant screens of Hangzhou's West Lake Sky Curtain and Chongqing Guanyin Bridge, reproducing the wonderful moment of the Chinese women's volleyball team's victory. But because the screen is too large and there are corners, there must be certain technical difficulties in the production process, how to break through the difficulties to achieve the best naked-eye 3D effect?
Xiao Tian: The area of the West Lake canopy in Hangzhou is 3,000 square meters, and the area of the Screen of Guanyin Bridge in Chongqing is 3,788 square meters, and when the screen becomes larger, it means that the amount of data we need to produce has also become larger. The screen of the movie is about 500 flat, from the requirements of clarity, this amount of data is 8 times the amount of film data, at this time, it is the time when we show our advantages, from the beginning of ultra-high-definition production, 4K garden has been doing large amounts of data, high resolution content, including three-dimensional content, the cloud rendering technology used here and the combination of hardware and software rendering technology, the problem of slow rendering is solved.
As for the corner, it will give the displayed content a space, and this space is in line with the audience's cognition of the building space, using the technical characteristics of naked-eye 3D, it is convenient to form a better screen effect.
Photo: Xiao Tian, General Manager of 4K Garden Post-Production Center, China Science and Technology News Network/Photo
China Science and Technology News Network: In addition to the combination with ultra-high definition, how can creative naked-eye 3D video be combined with VR, XR, large and small screen interaction and other technologies? What interactive gameplay or presentations will there be in the future?
Xiao Tian: We actually hope to attract more people's attention by placing it in the hot areas of hot cities and forming a new landmark of punch card. Therefore, the interaction of large and small screens is the trend of the future, at present, we have set up a two-dimensional code in a certain area of the screen, it may be a moment, the audience can take out the mobile phone to scan the two-dimensional code and interact with the screen, which is also the trend of our future interactive gameplay.
In addition, the common application of naked-eye 3D and XR has been for some time, like the current many parties are on a fixed stage, using XR technology to make a variety of gorgeous scenes, including large radio and television agencies, Internet agencies have also made similar attempts, XR also has a certain application in the film shooting and production process, previously, when the actors and backgrounds need to do some special effects synthesis, you need to do post-production. Now the use of ultra-high-definition naked-eye 3D plus XR technology allows the director to see the effect of the combination of people and background effects on the shooting scene, which greatly improves the productivity of the film. The gameplay of these new visual technologies mentioned above, including business models and technical support, etc., we are exploring.
China Science and Technology News Network: Compared with other naked-eye 3D video production institutions, what are the outstanding advantages of 4K Garden in terms of naked-eye 3D video technology and creativity or team?
Xiao Tian: From a technical point of view, the higher the 3D clarity of the naked eye, the more it can reflect its authenticity, so that people watching the screen can have an immersive feeling and bring a strong impact. The naked-eye 3D requires a resolution of at least 4K, because the outdoor screen is relatively large, so when the 4K is relatively close to the screen, the audience can still see that the picture content is composed of pixels, which seriously affects the perception. We recommend 8K, or even 12K resolution, naked-eye 3D should be above 8K. 4K Garden currently has hundreds of hours of 8K content, and the outdoor 8K screen is really suitable for displaying these detailed and colorful content compared to the small screen, which is also our advantage.
From the team's point of view, in fact, the production of naked-eye 3D content is a particularly complex system, which is similar to the complexity of film-level CG production, and the production cycle is much shorter than that of film-level CG production cycle. It can take a year or two to make a movie, and there is some uncertainty in CG production, especially ultra-high-definition CG production, and the preparation period is very long. The shortest cycle of naked-eye 3D production is two weeks, which requires that each type of work in each of our links can reach a very high level, and when planning these processes, it is necessary to "interlock and closely connect", while also considering various uncertainties in each link, which requires strong teamwork skills. Since the establishment of 4K Garden, our self-made ultra-high-definition long and short videos have been nearly 20,000 hours. In this magnitude, we have developed our own team of directors with the ability to combine art and technology.