KitPlus | Articles

Still looking good

by Dick Hobbs Issue 107 - November 2015 The television industry is in crisis, as we all know. Experts everywhere are telling us that consumers want content on demand, wherever they are. Online and mobile platforms will mean the end of the broadcaster and the channel as a brand. But heres the thing. While all these experts are telling us this, consu...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.

Published 01 December 2015

A brief history of time

by Dick Hobbs Issue 106 - October 2015 And another IBC is written into the annals of history. Another week in Amsterdam, sharing knowledge and experience. Say what you like about IBC: it is a great chance to meet, talk and learn. Now at IBC I actually perform a number of tasks behind the scenes which keep me largely occupied and out of trouble. And...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.

Published 01 November 2015

ITTP Approved Skills scheme: A progress report

by Bernard Newnham Issue 105 - September 2015 Back in January 2015 the ITTP the Institute for Training in Television Production - held its second annual conference at Pinewood. Its a way of bringing together people from education and the industry to discuss the problems that affect both. The conferences have been highly successful, with platform se...

Submitted by Bernard Newnham

Published 01 October 2015

Talking Steadicam and Exovest

by David Crute Issue 105 - September 2015 Q: When did you first get into using Steadicam?There were only about 10 UK Steadicam operators when I started, and very few that owned a rig. It was a massive investment for me as a young cameraman. The reason I did it was very simply that I found myself in this unusual position of doing both film and video...

Submitted by David Crute

Published 01 October 2015

Hold up the weather

by Dick Hobbs Issue 105 - September 2015 Its no go my honey love, its no go my poppet. Work your hands from day to day, the winds will blow the profit. The glass is falling hour by hour, the glass will fall for ever,But if you break the bloody glass, you wont hold up the weather. It is not often I inflict poetry upon you, so why have I turned to Lo...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.

Published 01 October 2015

Are you a trainer? Keeping up to date is vital

by Graham Reed Issue 104 - August 2015 When you are a tutor in a training organization, or if you are a lecturer teaching TV production in a university, it can be very hard to keep up-to-date with all that is going on and changing in the world of broadcast. Keeping up-to-date with developments is also very hard for those working in the industry lik...

Submitted by graham reed

Published 01 September 2015

Streaming graduation

by Charlie Watts Issue 104 - August 2015 Graduation is a big deal for students, families and for the degree awarding institutions, and so it has been this way in Portsmouth since 1995. Now twenty years later it should come as no surprise that the University of Portsmouth has elevated the Graduation Ceremony Broadcasting Operation into something so...

Submitted by Charlie Watts

Published 01 September 2015

The production desk finally gets innovative

by Kieron Seth Issue 104 - August 2015 The video switcher (aka vision mixer) is at the heart of all live television, all AV and many a live webcast. But despite its core role, its remained essentially the same concept for decades, consisting of a digital video effects processing unit, matrix switcher and control panel. Fundamentally this hardware-b...

Submitted by Kieron Seth#

Published 01 September 2015

Chasing ratings

by Dick Hobbs Issue 104 - August 2015 As everyone is no doubt aware, the BBCs core structures are being investigated at the moment as part of the renewal of its charter. The political bodies set up to do this are made up largely of anti-BBC people, so we are in for interesting times. I have a view on the BBC and its funding, and maybe one day in on...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.

Published 01 September 2015

An end-to-end solution

by Kevin Shaw Issue 102 - June 2015 BBC Studios and Post Production (BBC S&PP), a commercial subsidiary of the BBC, provides an end-to-end solution for what we refer to as post-post-production. Our services include preservation of media in our Front Porch DIVArchive and an end to end service that includes digitization of film and tape, quality cont...

Submitted by Kevin Shaw

Published 01 July 2015

Is working for free, training or a pathway to paid work?

by Graham Reed Issue 102 - June 2015 I suspect like a lot of KitPlus readers I often have a look at a websites that advertise jobs, but mainly un-paid. I have frequently thought that these job offers are really just trying to get free or cheap labour for the benefit of the director/producer. One recently advertised for .... a cameraman thats enthus...

Submitted by graham reed

Published 01 July 2015

High-speed archiving in a high-res world

by Lee Sheppard Issue 102 - June 2015 SGL has partnered with Avid for the past 11 years and the companies continue to deliver solutions that are required by today\'s modern broadcast facilities. SGL FlashNet, the engine that drives Avid Interplay Archive, provides customers around the world with an integrated MAM/PAM archive solution. Built around...

Submitted by Lee Sheppard

Published 01 July 2015

Cautionary notes from GTC Member number 001

by Dick Hibberd Issue 101 - May 2015 Recently I was invited to be on the panel of judges charged with selecting the winners of the 2014 \'Bill Vinten GTC University Awards\'. This was just the second year of this excellent scheme and, if the submissions from universities increase annually pro rata, then we will soon have a major logistics problem i...

Submitted by Dick Hibberd

Published 01 June 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

CALM - A crucial act to follow

by Martin Moore Issue 101 - May 2015 Sudden jumps in sound level between television programmes and commercials first came to the notice of legislators after a loud commercial interrupted a family dinner at the home of US House of Representatives member Anna Eshoo. The technical parameters adopted in the draft were based on an existing recommended p...

Submitted by Martin Moore

Published 01 June 2015