Appealing to broadcasters who seek to maintain the quality of their SDR broadcasts at all costs, while simultaneously capturing HDR content for the fraction of the viewing audience that is equipped to view it, Lynx Technik is touting the “frame by frame” conversion capabilities of its new HDR Evie.
Running on the company’s existing GreenMachine Titan video processing hardware, HDR Evie analyzes HDR images and corrects them for SDR conversion “in real time on a frame-by-frame basis,” Lynx Technik said. That means that, as lighting conditions and/or shot compositions change during live coverage of sports or breaking news, HDR Evie can react in real time to protect the integrity of the converted SDR program.
Lynx Technik GreenMachine
Lynx Technik claims it’s a departure from other products on the market — including Lynx’s own GreenMachine-powered HDR Static system — that apply corrections globally, across the entirety of an individual scene or shot. Those processes are robust enough for much broadcast work, especially material shot in the highly controllable confines of a TV studio environment. Outside the studio, conditions can be unpredictable enough that the image benefits from tweaks made automatically, in real time, while shooting is in process.
In demo footage, the HDR Evie is shown to be especially effective at preserving picture information in hot spots on the image that are clearly visible in HDR but blasted out entirely in SDR without the frame-by-frame adjustments that keep detail visible well into the highlights.
Lynx Technik said the proprietary, patented algorithms behind HDR Evie grew from years of R&D by a team at Hochschule ReinMain University of Applied Sciences in Wiesbaden, Germany. “HDR Evie solves a challenge for broadcasters that was not previously addressed with an available real-time solution,” said Lynx Technik CEO Stefan Gnann in a prepared statement.
As you’d expect, HDR Evie recognizes HDR standards including HLG, PQ, and SLog3, and supports HDR-to-SDR conversion via 12G fiber/ coax in and out. in various configurations, including 4K HDR to 4K SDR, 4K HDR to HD SDR, and HD HDR to HD SDR. When used in 1080p60 mode, the GreenMachine Titan can support four independent processing channels, each with its own settings and frame sync.
The HDR Evie system was one of 120 products cited by NAB Show in its Product of the Year Awards earlier this month.
