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Preparing for the holiday peak

The summer holiday getaway of 2018 hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons. A UK airport's non-functional departure boards left travellers unable to find their flights. Meanwhile, an airline cancelled over 2,000 flights due to a computer glitch. One European city closed its airspace entirely. Despite best efforts, staff struggled to cope with t...

Submitted by Jamie Adkin

Published 04 June 2019

Tips and Tricks to Giving Sci-Fi a New Look

From Terminator to Blade Runner, Alien, and even E.T., science fiction is a genre that will never fail to capture an audience’s imagination. It’s also a genre that encompasses so much more than just space crafts or time travel: frequently providing filmmakers with a platform from which to not only highlight social and political issues, but also exp...

Submitted by Mathieu Marano

Published 07 June 2018

Can university really set you up?

i When deciding what career you want to go into and which University to go to, there are so many questions that go through your head. I know when I first started considering University, my grades just weren\'t good enough. I knew which undergraduate course I wanted to do, but I still had a way to go. Well, I decided to go back to College just so I...

Submitted by Jess Sutton

Published 01 August 2017

Health and Safety gone mad

The first true broadcast television service started 80 years ago, on 2 November, 1936. Its home, famously, was Alexandra Palace, a vast and really rather run-down building on top of Muswell Hill in north London. Originally opened in 1873, and re-opened in 1875 after a catastrophic fire, it was built primarily as an entertainment venue. Indeed, it w...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.

Published 13 January 2017

Where university meets universe with Tim Peake

If you had told me last year that, going into my second year at the University of Portsmouth, I would have met and interviewed Tim Peake, then I would have probably laughed and said something along the lines of "I wish". Well, turns out I didn\'t have to wish, because I did just that. As a second year in Television and Broadcasting BSc I\'ve starte...

Submitted by Georgia Thirtle

Published 13 January 2017

Trends in IP based broadcast

The momentum behind moving media operations to IP-based environments is unstoppable and to stay ahead of the competition these days, companies need to be migrating operations away from rigid, single-purpose components and towards software-based common computing resources. The good news is a well-architected IP-based production facility is now able...

Submitted by Glodina Lostanlen

Published 13 January 2017

Dick looks at the faster future

I really enjoyed IBC this year. The fact that I barely set foot on the show floor is, of course, entirely coincidental, and I should take this opportunity to apologise to all those people I did not see in Amsterdam. One of the jobs I do at IBC is produce the awards ceremony, and this year that meant I got to meet some really nice people. We gave on...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.

Published 10 November 2016

The modern day media manager

As industry trends move towards all file-based workflows from production to post production, there are several concepts and traditional industry practices that need to be modified and adapted for the transition. This spans throughout the entire production process in order to ensure that all deliverables are being recorded, edited and stored within...

Submitted by Jonathan Aroesty

Published 22 July 2016

Saving your laptop from spills

by Beth Zarkhosh Issue 109 - January 2016 Saving your laptop from spills!Whether you\'re a wedding videographer or a small production company, we all know the stress of the edit process, nothing adds to that stress more than the full destruction of your PC or Mac. So its the New Year and youre finishing off that last bit of mulled wine from over Ch...

Submitted by Beth Zarkhosh

Published 21 January 2016

Creating native looks in alien worlds: the making of The...

with Richard Baker Issue 107 - November 2015 Prime Focus Worlds Richard Baker explains how Mars was brought into stereo 3D with the help of Fusion Studio for Ridley Scotts new SciFi survival epic, The Martian Directed by SciFi master Ridley Scott, this years The Martian has all the makings of a space exploration epic to remember. The film stars Mat...

Submitted by Richard Baker

Published 01 December 2015

Studio furniture at the cutting edge

by Graham Buchanan Issue 97 - January 2015 Custom Consoles was established in 1996 to meet the market demand for efficient and robust studio furniture at accountant-friendly prices. That may sound trite but we were working in SI roles ourselves and knew from direct experience how difficult it was to commission third-party desks built to the high st...

Submitted by Graham Buchanan

Published 01 February 2015

Emphasising Television in streaming television

by James Gilbert Issue 96 - December 2014 There have been all sorts of doom and gloom stories, over a decade or more, about how television is changing. Budgets are being slashed, workflows are becoming automated, and standard IT hardware is taking over from bespoke broadcast kit. But despite all this, television still looks good. If you watch telev...

Submitted by James Gilbert

Published 01 January 2015

Do Not Be Cheap With Your Data

by Kieron Seth Issue 94 - October 2014 Everyone used to leave a Betacam or DVCPro tape on the shelf for years. It would probably work fine a decade later (as long as the VTR still worked). Now production companies are stacked high with external hard drives full of archived video projects and media files. It\'s a recipe for catastrophe - apparently...

Submitted by Kieron Seth#

Published 01 November 2014

Exposed to ideas

by Dick Hobbs Issue 94 - October 2014 I did not get the chance to attend much of the IBC conference this year. But I did make sure I was there for the interview with Professor Brian Cox, which was excellent. He is witty, charismatic and exceptionally clever. Once a keyboard player in a rock band, Cox is now a particle physicist and one of the leade...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.

Published 01 November 2014

The Power of the Rebrand

by Peter Savage Issue 93 - September 2014 This month as a change from the normal finance article the editor asked me to voice my views on rebranding as this is something the magazine is undergoing as I write. Rebranding is for businesses looking to revamp their image, customer base, or offerings. When done correctly, it offers a multitude of benefi...

Submitted by Ben Baldwin

Published 01 October 2014