Eyeheight Legaliser Selected For OB Coverage Of Wimbledon

Eyeheight's video legalising technology has been selected for the annual Wimbledon Open tennis tournament for the BBC output via Hyperactive Broadcast.

The event is the world's premier grass court tennis championship and this year's contest is being transmitted to audiences worldwide from Monday June 25 through to the men’s final on Sunday July 15.

"Summer sports can be quite challenging for outside-broadcast camera crews, given the wide variation in light levels and the ever-present potential for bright reflections bouncing in from the public enclosure," comments Eyeheight sales director Martin Moore. "The LE-2M chosen for this event will ensure that video content captured throughout the series conforms fully to internationally agreed signal levels."

Eyeheight compliance products and keyers are relied upon by many of the world's leading broadcasters and post-production facilities. In addition to their use in permanent studio installations, they have been deployed for many sports-related productions. These include BBC Sports Personality of the Year, the 2014 Brazil world football championship, the Grand National, the London Marathon and the Paris Clay Court Tennis Championships.

The Eyeheight LE-2M auto-detects incoming SDI or HD-SDI video at 1080i/50/59.94, 720p/50/59.84, 625/50 or 525/59.94 and applies the appropriate legalising format. It then ensures that incoming signal video is held within user-selected colour-space parameters: RGB; YUV; composite (PAL or NTSC); or RGB-and-composite combined. Legalisation can be performed to conform with EBU-R 2003 standard SDI settings and 7.5 IRE or 0 IRE Pedestal. Six user memories and common presets are provided.

Additional features of the LE-2M legaliser include Eyeheight's unique clobberRing automatic luma overshoot and undershoot suppression together with luma and chroma gain, black level adjustment, hue rotation, adjustable clipping levels and soft-clipping-knee levels. An 'out-of-gamut' indication feed displays overshoot or undershoot severity and shows the user where on the picture any signal correction is being performed.

In the audio domain, the Eyeheight LE-2M-K variant provides automatic real-time control of perceptual loudness and true peak level using ITU-R BS.1770 multi-channel loudness and true-peak estimation algorithms. These are coupled with proprietary correction algorithms to ensure compliance with loudness and peak-programme level requirements. Embedded stereo or surround audio loudness are continuously monitored, system gain being seamlessly adjusted across all channels to maintain the loudness limit while preserving the audio imaging. The processor also performs 8x over-sampling true-peak estimation and instantaneous correction on all stereo or surround channels, ensuring that peak-programme level limits are adhered to.

Up to six LE-2M or LE-2MK legalisers can be housed in a 1U Eyeheight FB-9E smart chassis with an integral web server and optional FP-9 front control panel.

www.eyeheight.com