KitPlus | Articles

Trends that could bring a much needed change to post-prod...

In my Christmas article I made the analogy that the post-production market was like high street shopping where the superpowers – Tesco, Waitrose, Asda, Sainsbury's and Morrison’s – have become ever larger at the expense of the poor, independent, high street retailers. With American venture-vultures circling the likes of HMV and Dreams, shoppers inc...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 February 2013

The joy of field editing

In the world of remote working, cloud storage and instant news, the ability to edit on location at a shoot has become a pre-requisite. Only a few years ago, field editing used to be merely about the quick rough cut, the assembly of proxy files or simply the ingest of media in an edit-friendly format. These days, however, energy efficient, high perf...

Submitted by Kieron Seth#

Published 01 February 2013

Metering in the age of loudness: Keeping things on the le...

By Martin DysterThe new age of production and post production for HD broadcast has gotten more complicated with the advent of legislation and guidelines concerning the relative loudness between different programs, channels and, especially, commercials. With ATSC A85 in place in the U.S., EBU R128 covering the members of the European Broadcasting Un...

Submitted by Martin Dyster

Published 01 February 2013

Call of Duty Black Ops II: World Exclusive First Look Str...

I work a lot in live online broadcasting, and backup systems are top of mind when designing any live event. Being off air for any reason is unacceptable, so I build systems knowing that should something fail, I can easily reroute the signal or switch to another machine. This was on my mind when we were asked to live stream for four straight days at...

Submitted by Will Strauss#

Published 01 January 2013

Ask the Experts Monitoring sound in the stdio

1. Why do I need monitors? And why can't I just use my Hifi speakers?It may sound like the most obvious thing in the world, and it is, but along with your headphones your monitoring system is the only thing in your mix room that actually makes sound. All the decisions you make in relation to mixing, mic placement, balancing and more are coloured by...

Submitted by Will Strauss#

Published 01 December 2012

OMNEO Networking Technology

Why are digital media networks becoming more and more important? For two main reasons. First, if designed properly, they allow plant communications infrastructure to be used for multiple purposes: the same “pipe” can carry audio, video, control, and other needed signals. This reduces costs of materials and installation. Second, if designed to pub...

Submitted by Kieron Seth#

Published 01 December 2012

HOW AND WHEN TO DIVERSIFY YOUR BUSINESS

In the first of two articles on diversification, Peter Savage offers advice on building your business by diversifying within your existing business and marketI had an interesting experience last week, and one which conveniently leads on to the subject of business diversification which is my topic for this month. Some of you might have seen that I h...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 November 2012

Wibbly Wobbly Waveforms

The very first analytical electronic instrument, developed in the late 1890s, was the oscilloscope. This used a cathode ray tube (CRT) to paint a graph of voltage on the Y axis versus time on the X axis. Once television became a practical reality in the 1930s, the same instrument was applied to the video output from the camera and became the very u...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 November 2012

Pointing out the right colours

In the old days of PAL and NTSC analogue television, a vectorscope was an essential tool for examining chroma at every part for the programme production and transmission chain. This was because the colour information was carried as a phase and amplitude modulation which could be sensitive to a variety of transmission or recording non-linearities an...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 October 2012

TV-BAY: Ask the Experts

Studio Technologies responds to typical booth visitor questions at NAB and IBCBy: Gordon Kapes, president, Studio TechnologiesStudio Technologies, the manufacturer of tailored, high-performance video, audio and fiber optic products for the professional audio and broadcast markets, has been building equipment to address the production needs of broad...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 October 2012

Ask the Experts - IT and Broadcast converge

Q. ‘Convergence’, specifically the convergence of IT and broadcast technology, appears to be one of those themes that endures. Why does the subject still garner so much attention in 2012? It must be 15-years since the term was first used in this context, are we not a fully converged industry?No, I don’t think we are fully ‘converged’, far from it;...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 September 2012

Tally systems and Confidence Audio Monitoring for Sports...

Q: Because sports broadcast tends to originate from OB vehicles, having the capability to connect a tally system between trucks is vital. How do you connect your TallyMan controllers together to create an integrated, seamless tally system?A: When two OB trucks are engaged in the live broadcast of a major sports event, one truck will act as the main...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 September 2012

SPG - a commodity product or something special?

The need for a reference generator in broadcast television applications is universally accepted. Quite what that reference generator is or should be is another matter. Early reference generators produced signal pulses like Line Drive, Field Drive, Mixed Blanking, Sync, etc. Soon thereafter analogue colour black appeared on the scene and the sync pu...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 August 2012

Our third digital revolution?

Our third digital revolution?By Bob PankA little history – the first digital revolution for the TV production and post industries started somewhere about 1972 and then involved introducing digital islands into an analogue world. The introduction of much more affordable digital VTRs such as Sony’s DigiBeta in 1993 heralded the beginning of the end o...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 July 2012

A live video streaming advocate

As you may or may not know, I’m a bit of a live video streaming advocate. I love the idea of being able to distribute high quality content via the internet, without the need for huge budgets, licensing, and all the hassle involved more conventional means. I do a lot of live streaming from small venues, and by their very nature is difficult to fit m...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 July 2012