KitPlus | Articles

Active or Passive? Its a walk-over!

With the forthcoming Olympics being broadcast in 3D free-to-air, there is sure to be a surge in new TV purchases. Given so many 3D capable models to choose from, which is best?Until the manufacturers come out with autostereoscopic designs that work properly in high definition, we have to view 3D though some sort of glasses to separate the left and...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 February 2012

Managing Media

Looking after the media for a television production used to be a relatively simple task. The footage would be shot and captured on tape. The tapes would be delivered to the post-production facility for editing. They would be ingested into the edit system, the editor would construct the final program and it would be recorded back to tape. All the ta...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 February 2012

How a live streaming launch comes together....

Well it’s that time of year again. CALL of DUTY Launch. That’s right it’s been a whole year since I wrote about the successful launch of Call of Duty Black Ops, and now we have the new Call of Duty MW3 launch. Just as last year, myself as part of the Mediakinetic team were once again asked by Headstream and Five by Five Digital to live stream the l...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 January 2012

Choosing a Mixer for 3D Events

VIDEOFORCE is a company with modern ideas and a fresh outlook. After starting in Linkping in 1999, it added a new Stockholm base in 2010. The company specialises in video for events providing technical equipment such as cameras, flightpacks, LED displays, projectors, screens, vision mixers and converters as well as the operations and production per...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 January 2012

JVC 3D Spotlight

JVC Professional’s expanded family of 3D products now include the new GY-HMZ1 3D ProHD handheld camera, along with the GD-323D20 32 inch 3D display/production monitor, our popular DT-3D24G1 3D production monitor and the upgraded IF-2D3D1 2D to 3D converter. The products are already widely used throughout the post industry, helping content creators...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 January 2012

Putting the Realism into Reality Television

“Reality television’ as a category of programming emerged in the late 1990s with the introduction of shows that attempted to portray real people responding to real challenges under more or less continual public gaze. Unlike sport, where the focus is primarily on physical skills and endurance, reality television shows place their participants in a w...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 January 2012

Sennheiser MKH 8060, 8070 and MKE1 Lapel microphone revie...

Sennheiser recently asked me to review two new MKH series microphones, and a new Lapel MKE 1I had a job coming up and I thought this would be the perfect time to try the two MKH microphones out. The job was a TV commercial. We would shoot on the beach and in Jumeirah Beach Park. For my set up, I decided I would use a PSC Alphamix Mixer, a Sound Dev...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 January 2012

Whats new in video monitoring

The great majority of video monitoring displays in any modern broadcast presentation facility are LED-backlit LCDs. Reliable, space-efficient and economical on power, they produce excellent pictures for all but the most critical applications, usually in conjunction with one or more multiviewers to emulate a monitor stack. Domestic television began...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 December 2011

Monitoring, managing and processing SDI signals efficient...

With the proliferation of HD, Dual Link and 3G technologies, SDI signal management is now, more than ever, a challenge for broadcast engineers and A/V professionals. They would often like to use affordable HDMI displays for monitoring. They need to distribute signals throughout their facility, which often means video feeds must be amplified to acco...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 December 2011

Innovation, harmonisation, simplification

You could reasonably argue that “innovation, harmonisation and simplification” is a good motto for designers of any product to bear in mind. It is certainly true for mission critical monitoring, and it is what TSL has tried to do with its range of rack-mounted professional digital audio monitors. Checking audio quality, and particularly levels, at...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 December 2011

COUNTING DOWN TO BVE NORTH

The engines are revving in the countdown to BVE North, the new event that is designed to serve the needs of the rapidly growing broadcast and production industry in the North. The exhibition and seminar program will address the myriad challenges facing broadcast professionals, from multi-platform broadcasting to the realities of 3D for television,...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 November 2011

Back to Basics with Stereo 3D

In 2011 more than 35 networks in Europe and North America will broadcast stereo 3D programming — and several will launch dedicated 3D channels. 40 3D features are expected to hit theatres this year, and stereo-3D-ready consumer devices from TVs to video cameras to smartphones are hitting the streets. The demand for compelling content to meet the ne...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 October 2011

Glasses wars again

It was never going to be easy. Even now, over four years into the modern 3D era, reliably creating and displaying 3D still presents many challenges. Everyone says that the footage must be technically ‘good’ and, for television, the need for glasses is an issue for viewers, though glasses are pretty well accepted for cinema. The good news is that hu...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 October 2011

LIGHTS, CAMERA, PROMPTING

Prompting equipment may seem to be one of the most standard, reliable and commonplace pieces of a workflow but that doesn’t mean provision should be treated with complacency. Thinking ahead and selecting best of breed is as applicable in this case as it is for a supposedly more mission-critical asset management, newsroom or production system. In re...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 October 2011

Storage and archiving

Anyone looking closely at a helical scan video tape mechanism, particularly the miniature variety, might be forgiven for wondering how such an elaborate technology ever came to be invented. The first experimental video tape recorders were essentially audio recorders running at very high speed to achieve the bandwidth needed for television signals....

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 October 2011