Leader LV5490 Monitors TVN Mobile Productions’ UHD, HD Transmissions of the 2018 UEFA Champions League Final

TVN Mobile Production chose Leader LV5490 test instruments as its master reference during coverage of the UEFA Champions League final. A capacity crowd at the NSC Olimpiyskiy stadium in Kiev saw Real Madrid secure its third consecutive and 13th overall UEFA Champions League title. The game was transmitted live in UHD and HD to television viewers around the world.

The Leader LV5490 was responsible for inspecting UHD and HD transmissions of the championship match.

“We invested in five Leader LV5490 instruments just over a year ago following highly successful UHD-HDR coverage of the 2017 Bundesliga football match between Borussia Mönchengladbach and RB Leipzig,” says TVN production engineer Holger Tadge. “The LV5490 is intuitive to operate and the real-time false-color picture display is proving especially useful in ensuring we make the greatest possible use of the UHD-HDR headroom in content we deliver to our clients.”

“The Kiev football final was a really large-scale project requiring an OB crew of 73 people,” adds Wolfgang Peiss, production manager in charge. “We implemented a workflow allowing completely independent signal generation for UHD and HD, feeding into a single production configuration. The camera plan was based on a 40-camera set-up. In addition to our TVN-Ü2, TVN-Ü3, and TVN-Ü5, we were responsible for a helicopter crew, a wireless crew, and a PMT SpiderCam installation. An added factor was the need to accommodate more than 50 microphones capturing immersive audio from the stadium.”

“We are very pleased to see TVN achieving ongoing success with its LV5490 instruments which are equally suitable for OB and studio operation,” adds Leader’s European regional development manager Kevin Salvidge. “A crucial feature of the LV5490 is the ease with which it can be configured to match the wide choice of production standards now being implemented across the broadcast business. These can be selected either at the time of purchase or added as optional upgrades during the proven very long lifetime of Leader test instruments.”

The 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 capabilities needed to implement the full potential of high dynamic range in both HD and UHD.

Signal displays such as video waveform, chroma levels, color vectors, bar graphs, noise, video patterns, quad-3G phase, data tables, camera picture output, color chart, multichannel audio levels, and surround-sound vectors can be viewed simultaneously in a user-customizable layout. If a specific element requires detailed attention, this can be selected quickly for viewing at higher resolution or full-screen.

Leader’s Cinelite HDR toolset also comes as a standard feature of the LV5490 — 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 very precise image detail.

Supplementing its front-panel display, the LV5490 provides 1920 x 1080 HD DVI and HD-SDI feeds for connection to 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.