Caracol TV: reference in 4K production in Latin America

Eymard Cabrales, technical director of Caracol Televisión, has shared with the professionals attending the 4K-HDR Summit his vision of 4K and the experiences that the Colombian broadcaster is carrying out together with Netflix.

The 4K-HDR Summit which is being celebrated these days in Malaga has had the presence of Eymard Cabrales, technical director of Snail Television, who has shared with the attending professionals his vision about 4K and the experiences that the Colombian broadcaster is carrying out together with Netflix.

In 2014, Caracol opted for 4K, making a significant investment in capture equipment (in this case they opted for F55 cameras Sony) and post-production and finishing (with Baselight the Filmlight). “The challenge was to convince managers and producers from the technical area to start producing in 4K, taking into account that the channel broadcasts in HD,” Cabrales acknowledged.

One of the challenges was medium transport which multiplied the volume by 5 compared to the HD. “That forced us to be more efficient in making decisions in the field,” he commented. “In post-production, the challenge was transporting the internal media in high resolution,” he added.

In 2015, they tackle their first two major productions in 4K (Manual for Ninjas y The Night) already having at that time better management of the S-Log3 curves, obtaining a greater color space, or the LUTS and BT.2020 monitoring that allowed better decisions to be made in the field.

Agreement with Netflix

In 2017, Caracol signed an agreement with Netflix to produce various fictions in 4K. Initially three co-productions were signed (Alias ​​J.J, The Secret Law, Mafia Dolls) and a Netflix original fiction (Always Witch 1). "At this point, we had to strengthen the technical team, already thinking about new challenges such as the adoption of HDR. Among other measures, we launched an area dedicated to quality control," said Cabrales.

Last year they tackled the co-production of Bolívar Honored Bandit y The Queen of the Indies.

Already in 2019, they have carried out the co-production of The Bricenos, and two Netflix originals: Always Witch 2 y Chipato, these last two already delivered HDR with certification Dolby Vision. For these productions they are using the camera RED Gemini 5K (RAW with 16-bit color depth) and finished with DaVinci Resolve of Blackmagic Design.