KitPlus | Articles

Ten Top Tips For OB Operators Fuel Economy

As fuel prices around the world hit a record high, every driver is looking for ways to squeeze as many miles as possible from every precious gallon or litre. If you are a broadcaster with a fleet of Outside Broadcast vehicles, how do you stop fuel overheads from rocketing and eating in to your hard earned profits?Recognising that fuel is not a disc...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 January 2012

Top ten from a top gun

Another IBC has come and gone. I peaked early: for me the highlight came before we even set out for Amsterdam when, as I wrote here last month, I met Sir David Attenborough, winner of the International Honour for Excellence. On site two things stand out. One was a delightful lunch, courtesy of my old and esteemed friend Roger Thornton of Quantel. I...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 November 2011

Getting Social

There are, apparently, 200 million tweets a day. Given that Twitter claims 200 million active users that seems a modest output, it is true, but the Twitterati have a disproportionate reach because large numbers of people – many of them lazy journalists – follow other people’s trending topics without contributing themselves. YouTube users download c...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 September 2011

The Red Epic has landed

Finally the Red Epic has started to appear in facilities companies around the world, S+O Media is one of the first in the UK to receive a handmade Epic-M. I’ve taken the camera out on a couple of shoots and I have to say I’m pretty impressed. I’m sure everyone is aware of the Red One, the first camera from Red. Billionaire Jim Jannard decided he co...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 September 2011

Operating at the cellular level

The live coverage of outside broadcast events, news or sports has always been an expensive and logistically cumbersome business. The need to invest millions of pounds in specialist satellite trucks can take years to recoup, putting the ability to service live sports contracts beyond the economy of a very few suppliers. Even the live presentation of...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 September 2011

Thanks for the memory

If I need to impress on someone just how old I really am, I explain that my first computer had 32kB of Ram. Then we go through the “you mean 32 meg” “no, I mean 32 k” routine. It does seem implausible that, while I managed to write letters on my BBC Model B, today I need half a million times the memory to bash out columns for TV Bay. This is, of co...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 July 2011

Navigating uncharted waters

I’m home again from the annual pilgrimage to Las Vegas. It must be something to do with getting older, but this year both key performance indicators (good dinners versus greasy hamburgers, and early nights versus late night carousing) fell on the conservative side. And my flight home landed 45 minutes early, rather than a week or so late. I was hea...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 June 2011

Challenging times

I am writing this on 18 March, but only 77 days in 2011 is proving to be a momentous year for global events. We started out with catastrophic floods in Australia, then the earthquake in Christchurch. I once spent a wonderfully happy day in Christchurch, and it was, at least until 22 February, without doubt the loveliest small city I have ever visit...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 May 2011

A day in the life of a Royals videographer

Times have changed; no more phone calls, telexes or faxes, - remember them? Now it’s E-mails; what would we do without them?A quiet day in the office-come-edit-suite, the FCP rendering yet another set of archive clips, and the other Mac illuminated with Thunderbird, when ‘ping’ (the Mac version of “You got mail”) wakes one up from the hypnotic tran...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 May 2011

Watching Television

The pictures on this page give you a small insight into my life. The first is a picture of the television in my living room. At the time of taking the picture I was watching the English cricket team losing in high definition. The second picture is of my desk. Again you will see that it is dominated by a large screen (I’m afraid I still have a sneak...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 March 2011

Tape goes West at UWE

Three years ago a convoy of white vans arrived at the Faculty of Arts at the University of West of England in Bristol. An hour later its entire stock of SVHS camcorders, linear editing decks and analog tape were history. In came Adobe Premiere, Final Cut Pro and Panasonic digital camcorders. Now 20 professional tapeless HD camcorders have taken up...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 March 2011

Control and Monitoring with Snell

For broadcasters and content origination facilities, a single issue with content or within the transmission chain can have an impact on millions of viewers. In some cases this can even lead to large financial penalties and affect commercial contracts. To guarantee uptime, minimize disruption of broadcast services, and keep revenue streams flowing,...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 March 2011

Television, the limits of the possible

When I was a young scribbler in 1970, my then employers allowed me to launch and run on their behalf a magazine called Studio Sound. It was one of my better career moves and survived (mainly thanks to me leaving it in 1974) for about 35 years. Fairly good going for a trade publication. The upside of editing Studio Sound was being invited to a bean-...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 February 2011

Broadcast Batteries, Today and Tomorrow

As consumers, we all have experience of being let down by batteries (think rusty Italian cars in the 1970s!). But thankfully the world of batteries has moved on: the global battery industry is today worth $71 billion and is estimated to be growing at nearly 5% a year. Of this, broadcast batteries make up a tiny fraction but the manufacturers that s...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 February 2011

Lighting Q and A

I AM SETTING UP A STUDIO WHAT IS THE MOST EFFICIENT AND PRACTICLE WAY TO LIGHT IT Modern studios and current camera technologies have changes the way efficient image capture can be achieved. No longer do we need huge 5K and 10K lamps in our small to medium studios, but a new generation of lighting tools is now available, and has actually been aroun...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 January 2011