KitPlus | Articles

Review on the Autocue SSP17 Starter Series

The time has come. My home made “autocue”, although working well, needed to be upgraded. It had served me well for a couple of years, but I needed something a bit higher quality and slightly bigger. So Autocue kindly loaned me one of their SSP17 Starter Package prompters. Their Starter Series of prompters is exactly that, it’s their lower end promp...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 February 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

Thinking of buying an OLED - read this first...

It may surprise some people that Autocue, known worldwide as the leader in broadcast, educational and corporate teleprompting, is also highly experienced in providing broadcast quality reference monitors. We’ve parlayed our experience in quality prompting screens to specify the manufacture of broadcast monitors for OB trucks, vision galleries and Q...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 December 2011

3D a Geographic Thing

It may just be coincidence but, in the last week, two stories about 3D in Scandinavia have landed on the 3D Diaries desk. Of course two swallows do not a summer make but maybe there is a trend here, with some nations embracing the third dimension more than others. Sony Professional is currently building what they claim is Scandinavia’s first 3D-rea...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 September 2011

Question and Answer with Trilogy

Question 1: What bandwidth would I need to allow on my network to reliably support IP communications and what other issues would I need to take into consideration?The bandwidth required to support IP based intercom or talkback communications really depends on the quality of audio you want to achieve. Therefore the higher the quality, the greater th...

Submitted by Kieron Seth#

Published 01 August 2011

Meeting the Demands Of The Market

Much has been said about audio loudness and there can be few people in broadcast who are unaware of the new legislation being introduced by various countries to control this problem. The UK and Italy have already set limits on loudness levels and in 2010 the US introduced the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act (CALM), making it illega...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 July 2011

Introducing Emma and her commentaries

My name’s Emma, and I am currently in my first year working as a freelance production assistant. In these commentaries I’ll be sharing with you what I get up to, the n00by mistakes I’ll inevitably make, but hopefully some successes!This month I was fortunate enough to be a part of the Tony Hawk Twitter Hunt. If only the life of a production assista...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 June 2011

NAB and the format wars

By the time you read this article you may be sitting comfortably on the plane ready to take-off to Vegas. Every year the show comes at a strange time – just after the shooting season has started in the northern hemisphere. As a result, most of the camera companies at the show will have already sorted their purchasing needs for the year ahead, espec...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 May 2011

Applying the milkshake theory

In last month’s column I sounded off at a few of the crackpot ideas going around at the moment, like connected television. The point, if there was one, was that we seem to be overloaded at the moment with new technologies that exist solely for one of two reasons: that a bunch of engineers found they could do it, and/or a big manufacturer thought th...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 April 2011

Mobile Cameraman Extraordinaire

I had wanted to work in television since my teens and, at 20, started as a trainee assistant cameraman at Mersey Television on 'Brookside' in Liverpool and then joining Thorn-EMI Facilities in London. Thorn-EMI put me in charge of a studio used to shoot links for companies like Children's Channel using very bulky early tubed Betacams. Five years la...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 April 2011

True Colours Shine Through With CCS

When you are a broadcast engineer working in front of a stack of LCD monitors, seeing a significant difference between the brightness and colour of each monitor can be both annoying and tiring on the eyes. Worse still, if you in a Master Control Room and the pictures have taken on a sickly green hue, how do you know that it is just the monitors at...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 March 2011

Ring out the old, ring in the new

At the start of a new year many of us will look back on the highs and lows of the last 12 months and try to predict what’s in store for us in the coming months before seeking advice on how to protect our business against the unknown. Before making predictions for 2011 I thought I’d take a look back at key industry and business milestones over the p...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 February 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

TV Bay Questions

Who are you? (about yourself and Online Creative)I am the owner of Brighton based post production facility, Online Creative Ltd. I started the company in 1999 primarily as an edit facility which has since developed further into a production company and training facility. We have recently invested in a fully equipped grading suite to add to the serv...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 January 2011

What does the Royal Wedding mean for us

The recent announcement of the royal engagement has triggered a wave of national euphoria – at least at the thought of an extra bank holiday in April next year. But, for us broadcast professionals, it also brings a welcome boost and a much hoped for additional income to our cash-tied industry. It is one of only a few indicators showing that the lon...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 January 2011