CPqD

Objective of Project 2014K is to broadcast football games live to various countries, with images in super-high definition and 3D

Live, real-time transmission in super-high definition and 3D of the 2014 World Cup games direct from Brazil to special screens installed in countries around the five continents. This is the proposal of Project 2014K, developed through a partnership between the CPqD (Telecommunications Research and Development Centre) and Mackenzie University, which will be presented in South Africa during the next World Cup in the exhibition area for Brazilian technology provided by FINEP (Brazilian Fund for Studies and Projects).

The project, also involving the Kyatera Network, of Fapesp, and the National Research Network (RNP), is based on the transmission technology for films in super-high definition, called 4K, already adopted as the digital standard by the film industry. The images transmitted with this technology have an extremely high resolution: 4,096 horizontal pixels by 2,160 vertical pixels, totalling 8.8 million pixels per frame. "This resolution is four times greater than that of Full HD, which offers 1,080 horizontal by 1,920 vertical pixels, hence 2 million pixels per frame", explains professor Jane de Almeida and professor Thoroh de Souza, of Mackenzie University.

According to the project, this ultra definition will be associated to 3D technology in the image generation of some matches of the 2014 World Cup. The idea is to have this technology available by then in order to make experimental broadcasts of these games in 4K 3D to various screens spread around the world. "The major challenge for the project is distributing images on such a large geographic scale, to several different countries at the same time and in real time. And that's where fibre optic and various other specific technologies, yet to be developed, come in; technologies for video capture, encoding, compression and distribution", states Alberto Paradisi, manager of Optical Technologies of the CPqD.

As they are such heavy files (one second of footage in 4K 3D weighs roughly 2 GB), the transmission of these images will require dedicated super-fast fibre optic connections - reaching rates of 10 Gbits per second. Such bandwidth is only currently available in experimental networks of academic and research and development institutions, such as KyaTera and the GIGA Project and RNP networks, all of which are in Brazil. By 2014, the intention is to establish partnerships with various universities and international bodies in order to use the ultra-broadband infrastructure of their experimental networks for transmitting the games to other nations.

In the Casa Brasil exhibition, to be installed in Johannesburg, South Africa, Project 2014K will screen the first football match filmed in 4K 3D in the world: the local derby between Grêmio and Internacional, in the final of the Rio Grande do Sul State Championship.