Huawei Mate80 Pro Max into a broadcast-grade system.

Fast Technology reported that this year’s CCTV Spring Festival Gala used a brand-new device for vertical screen live streaming: the Huawei Mate 80 Pro Max. This marks the first time that stage footage shot by a mobile phone has been integrated into a broadcast-grade system, setting a new precedent !

The Huawei Mate80 Pro Max served as the official camera, capturing vertical shots of 10 programs from the Spring Festival Gala. The images were clear, the colors were accurate, and the playback was stable and smooth, perfectly showcasing the visual effects of the Spring Festival Gala to the world and passing the rigorous test of a national-level live broadcast.

Today, Li Xiaolong, CTO of Huawei Terminal BG, gave a detailed response and explanation to this matter:

To ensure the Spring Festival Gala broadcast went flawlessly, Huawei engineers and the CCTV technical team worked together for a month to overcome several industry challenges, implement more than 40 underlying optimizations, and conduct 48-hour uninterrupted stress tests on 30 mobile phones for each version.

1. Seamless integration of the live streaming ecosystem.

In order to align mobile phone video system standards with CCTV broadcasting standards, the Central Radio and Television Station innovatively achieved full-link collaborative production of mobile phone signals and signals from other professional channels through its independently developed signal conversion equipment.

Huawei has designed an end-to-end solution for accessing broadcasting systems, covering every step from acquisition, rendering, transmission, and format conversion, making mobile phones a reliable link in the professional production process. 

2. A leap in picture quality standards to broadcast-grade levels.

In response to the complex lighting environment of the Spring Festival Gala stage, Huawei and CCTV’s technical team built a brand-new mobile acquisition system.

First, there’s color reproduction. Relying on Huawei’s Red Maple Imaging System and deep tuning of the underlying ISP, it achieves the same color performance as a broadcast channel camera, accurately reproducing stage colors.

Secondly, regarding brightness reproduction, in the absence of any industry precedent, both teams quickly figured out a solution to connect the mobile phone HDR link with the broadcast system HDR link, thus solving the brightness consistency problem.

Through this combined approach, CCTV and Huawei have raised the image quality standards of mobile shooting equipment to a new level of broadcast-grade production. 

3. Stable, smooth, and low-latency live streaming over extended periods.

To ensure a consistently smooth viewing experience throughout the eight-hour pre-broadcast preparation and live broadcast, Huawei’s R&D team collaborated with CCTV’s technical team to optimize the phone’s performance across multiple dimensions, including frame rate, latency, and heat dissipation.

Through software and hardware co-optimization, the resource utilization capability of the HarmonyOS system is improved, ensuring that its output frame rate remains stable at the 50FPS broadcast standard.

In addition, by optimizing the shooting and transmission links, the delay difference between mobile phone signals and professional channel camera signals was reduced from the second level (1200ms) to less than 100ms, solving the problem of synchronization between mobile phones and multiple channel camera positions;

Finally, by adding a physical heat dissipation module, the system’s power consumption is reduced and the external heat dissipation module provides dual protection, further ensuring stable and smooth transmission during long-term shooting.

Li Xiaolong stated that this practice not only verified the enormous potential of domestically produced mobile phones in professional fields, but also provided a replicable and scalable mobile shooting and transmission solution for vertical screen live streaming of future large-scale events, creating a mobile live streaming industrial ecosystem. From output format, color control, HDR performance, and latency issues, it has initially established the mobile professional live streaming 1.0 standard .

“It can be said that every live broadcast started using the Mate80 Pro Max is backed by the technical strength of the Spring Festival Gala.”