KitPlus | Articles

Streamlining operations at BFBS

British Armed Forces around the world rely on British Forces Broadcasting Service (BFBS) to provide them with entertainment and information via their TVs and radios. Operating from studios in Buckinghamshire, BFBS is part of Services Sound and Vision Corporation (SSVC), a not-for-profit charitable organization that makes a considerable contribution...

Submitted by Adrian Richmond

Published 07 December 2016

Smart audio - the way foward for live broadcast productio...

Today\'s broadcast facilities are facing ever-increasing demands on their resources as they strive to keep up with consumers who expect more content on more devices, both where and when they want it. Amongst all the various elements broadcasters have to handle (including video, graphics, data, captions and subtitles), the importance of audio should...

Submitted by Anthony Wilkins

Published 07 December 2016

Yonsei Church Preaches to the Masses

Yonsei Central Baptist Church in Seoul is a thriving church community on a massive scale. Having outgrown several previous buildings, the church purchased a 9.8 acre plot of land in order to build a church big enough to house its congregation, which amounts to hundreds of thousands of members. The church building itself covers 427,000 square feet....

Submitted by KitPlus

Published 25 August 2016

Dance hall days are over for professional lighting

Photon Beard has made lights since before the days of electric power. "What\'s that, you say"? Well, it\'s true. Photon Beard started in 1882 when the founder, R.R. Beard, invented the automatic gas regulator. Yes, the thing that allows you to barbeque that steak in summer sunshine, or any time of year that you fancy grilled food. In the days befor...

Submitted by Peter Daffarn

Published 24 August 2016

The new world of playout

Consumers know what they expect from a television channel. They expect programmes, of course, but they also know they are going to get commercials, trailers, station idents, graphics, break bumpers, squeezebacks and hot starts, bugs and brand identities, and more. Significantly, they expect these to arrive smoothly and seamlessly, in consistent hig...

Submitted by James Gilbert

Published 22 July 2016

A virtual world but call it cloud if you must

I prefer not to use the word "cloud". It's useful for eight points in Scrabble, but in broadcasting, if we can still call it that, what you're really describing is storing data on someone else's computer or, on an industrial scale, a whole lot of someone else's computers (data centres). Cloud is just a convenient way of saying "shedload of capacity...

Submitted by Jan Weigner

Published 01 April 2016

Media asset management: the key to business success

by Kevin Usher Issue 109 - January 2016 Media asset management: the key to business success By Kevin UsherIn todays media environment enterprises are under intense pressure to improve content monetization and maximize operational efficiency. Theyre expected to do moreto create more content for more platforms and deliver it to more peopleso they hav...

Submitted by Kevin Usher

Published 21 January 2016

Why you might regret automating QC workflows

by Bruce Devlin Issue 107 - November 2015 In todays electronic media environment, broadcasters and content owners live and die according to the quality and versatility of their media assets. Not only do consumers expect the best quality viewing experience, but they also expect that viewing experience to be possible on the widest range of devices, a...

Submitted by Bruce Devlin

Published 01 December 2015

Three days to launch a TV station

by Neil Hutchins Issue 104 - August 2015 We go on-air in less than 100 hours is an alarming statement when the studio and control room in question contain no technical equipment whatsoever. But this was the situation that we faced upon arrival at the new Local TV channel in Manchester for the first time as we began to unload the van late on a Thurs...

Submitted by Neil Hutchins#

Published 01 September 2015

Back to the future

by Dick Hobbs Issue 103 - July 2015 I was recently talking to the estimable James Gilbert, who runs the equally estimable graphics and automation specialist Pixel Power. He said something that made me think. We were talking about scalability, and he said that it works in two directions. There is the sort of scalability that we all readily understan...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.

Published 01 August 2015

A box of delights

by Dick Hobbs Issue 101 - May 2015 In the immediate aftermath of NAB and its bombardment by new gizmos, I want to talk about Professor Noriaki Kano. In the 1980s, at the Tokyo University of Science, he came up with a simple model of product design for customer satisfaction. His original work was more complicated than this diagram, but fundamentally...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.

Published 01 June 2015

Big rush with little fuss at new Birmingham broadcaster

by Neil Hutchins Issue 99 - March 2015 Big Centre TV is the latest of the new wave of UK Local TV stations, having launched on 28th February. But behind the calm and successful appearance was a frenzied period of activity, as Ofcom had only confirmed their licence just three months earlier. To get from nothing to on-air in such a short timescale wa...

Submitted by Neil Hutchins#

Published 01 April 2015

Archiving as a service at BBC Studios and Post Production

by Kevin Shaw Issue 97 - January 2015 BBC Studios and Post Production (BBC S&PP) is a commercial subsidiary of the BBC that competes for work from both the BBC and the market at large. In the Digital Media Services (DMS) department, we provide an end-to-end solution for what we refer to as "post-post production.\" Our services include digitization...

Submitted by Kevin Shaw

Published 01 February 2015

Now that is how you do a newsroom

by Neil Hutchins Issue 97 - January 2015 "That\'s TV\" is a brand new TV network for the UK that first launched in the South of England in the fourth quarter of 2014. That\'s TV is designed to emulate the most popular local TV news format in the US and bring it to the UK in the form of live sports, phone-ins and entertainment. Every That\'s TV affi...

Submitted by Neil Hutchins#

Published 01 February 2015

Four must-haves for modern media workflows: Enhancing you...

by Laurent Fanichet Issue 97 - January 2015 It\'s always been about the struggle to manage lots of assets and adapt your MAM to suit in the world of digital media workflows. In the early years, enterprise storage infrastructure couldn\'t keep pace with the demands of SD, so the first non-linear editing systems were turnkey solutions with proprietar...

Submitted by Laurent Fanichet

Published 01 February 2015