KitPlus | Articles

Ask the Experts with Dolby

Q: Dolby has recently been making waves in imaging with its PRM-4200 Professional Reference Monitor, but isn’t Dolby an audio company?Dolby has been involved with imaging technology for years, beginning with Dolby® Digital Cinema in 2005, then launching Dolby 3D for the cinema in 2007, and then in 2010 we introduced the Dolby PRM-4200 Professional...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 June 2012

The evolution from audio to PIX

Sound Devices has built a strong reputation throughout the world as a leading manufacturer of high-quality audio field recorders and mixers renowned for rugged reliability, operational flexibility and pristine audio quality. While our users are quite familiar with our folks in sales, marketing and technical support areas, they may not be aware of t...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 June 2012

Testing mixed signals

It is fitting that a lot of the avid readers of this article are broadcast manufacturers flying over the Atlantic to NAB in Las Vegas so I have a captive audience to influence with an open invitation to come and visit us in the North Hall N5015. Whereas the new product range has been designed for applications in traditional settings such as enginee...

Submitted by Will Strauss#

Published 01 May 2012

Every Cloud has a Purple Lining.

Cloud computing has been around a long time. I seem to remember right back in the 1980s the phrase distributed processing describing one, if not the first, evolutionary step towards the concept of the Cloud. I am not sure when it acquired the nomenclature Cloud but most people in IT have been aware of it probably for a decade or more. It seems that...

Submitted by Will Strauss#

Published 01 May 2012

Taking the pain out of collaborative editing

Broadcast and post-production companies face the daily challenge of delivering more for less – both in terms of time and money. Whilst the industry has been quick to embrace the efficiencies of file-based workflows and enhancements in the creative editing process, the reality - for companies of all sizes - is that the effective and secure managemen...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 April 2012

BVE 2012 in no particular order.......

The big story at BVE 2012 was BVE 2013. With the Earls Court exhibition site scheduled for redevelopment, BVE relocates next year to the ExCel exhibition site in London’s Docklands. The distance is only about 10 miles but, in the minds of many BVE exhibitors, the move is comparable with moving the NAB Convention to the Mississippi Delta. If you rea...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 April 2012

The new world of live acquisition

While the debate rages over the future of broadcast television with discussion of OTT (OTT – over-the-top delivery – think iPlayer on Virgin Media as a key example – or LoveFilm. It means an on-demand content service that is delivered over the top of another network) and time-shifting increasingly hogging the limelight, there’s one arena in which t...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 April 2012

Sam Usher, Managing Director, Red Handed TV LTD

Name & Title? Sam Usher, Managing Director, Red Handed TV LTDWho are you? (about yourself and who you work for)?Started life as a contemporary dancer, living in Brussels dancing and choreographing for some of the great companies. The aim was always to become a choreographer. Decided to move back to the UK and realized quite quickly I wasn't going t...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 March 2012

How much RAM do I need to edit video?

When talking to video editors who are looking to get into editing for the first time, one of the questions I’m asked most is, “how much RAM should I have?”First of all let me explain what RAM is and what is does. RAM (or Random Access Memory) provides space for your computer to read and write data to be accessed by the CPU (central processing unit)...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 March 2012

Eye to Eye: Video Post-production

This column’s previous excursion into video post-production was just before the 2011 NAB Spring Convention, always a dangerous time to talk about new hardware or software when a deluge of upgrades, lookalikes and lite-editions are about to hit the aisles of the Las Vegas Convention Center. Quite a lot has happened in this category over the past 12...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 February 2012

Stereoscopic 3D legalisation

Since its foundation in 1989, ONSIGHT has expanded from a London-based broadcast hire business into a full-service production facilities company. Also located at Shepperton Studios, ONSIGHT specialises in film and television production, post production and distribution. ONSIGHT’s activity encompasses every link in the signal chain and is certainly...

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

3D is moving fast

Helicopter Film Services (HFS) have been a specialist in aerial filming for 20 years, but recently, they have successfully added another element to their diverse services: Aerial 3D. HFS are the only company in the world to have designed and built a custom 3D rig for aerial filming. Their “Da Vinci” rig for the Stab-C Compact allows for ‘hyper-ster...

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