KitPlus | Articles

Building Out Storage for UHD

As the next big thing in video, from capture and production through to display in the home, 4K and ultra-high-definition (UHD) video offers many benefits. Most notable of these is an eightfold increase in resolution as compared with 1080i, the established standard for HD broadcast. A number of other significant enhancements to image quality are als...

Submitted by Andy Warman

Published 14 June 2016

Smaller, Lighter, High-Capacity Batteries

Issue 113 - May 2016 The desire for longer run-times from smaller and lighter batteries, has always been keenly felt by users of high power consumption digital cinema style cameras. The new generation of cameras is smaller but the power consumption, in most cases, has increased. High-capacity Li-Ion batteries of 150Wh or more provide longer run-tim...

Submitted by Steve Emmett

Published 20 May 2016

A Marathon Filming Review

Issue 113 - May 2016 A marathon filming review... 60+ interviews filmed, edited and promoted within 24 hour... A 26 mile marathon in anyone\'s world is a long way with cobbles, uneven surfaces, steps and thousands of people in your way. However I\'m not talking about the recent London Marathon but our ‘adventures\' at NAB 2016 in Las Vegas. If you...

Submitted by Simon Tillyer

Published 20 May 2016

Remote Production

by Jim Green Issue 113 - May 2016 Ten years ago,remote production was the stuff of dreams,a glimpse into a brave new world. The prospect of providing real-time audio control of live events thousands of miles away,without even leaving the studio,was as enticing as it was unlikely. But broadcasters are already reaping the benefits of remote productio...

Submitted by Jim Green

Published 13 May 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

Traveling Safely with Lithium Ion - Tips and Tricks

by Mike Dolan Issue 110 - February 2016 For any location production, organization and pre-planning is key. This mantra goes beyond thinking of shoots and equipment placement to actually how your equipment will get from point A to B. This is particularly crucial when selecting batteries for air travel due to the set limit on lithium ion (Li-Ion) bat...

Submitted by Mike Dolan

Published 16 March 2016

Editing broadcast video in a mobile app a ridiculous noti...

by Jason Cowan Issue 109 - January 2016 A trend appears to be developing in broadcast technology development the more ridiculous an idea initially seems, the better the chances are that it will turn the whole industry on its head. Ten years ago editing over an internet connection was a pipe-dream, and the suggestion that broadcast equipment might b...

Submitted by Jason Cowan

Published 21 January 2016

The 4K Conundrum

by Eric Achtmann Issue 108 - December 2015 2015 has confirmed once more that 4K remains the TV industrys Holy Grail. While 4K TV screens are becoming more affordable and Netflix, Amazon Prime and even YouTube are beginning to offer some 4K content, mass adoption is still sluggish as the increases in bandwidth required for distribution make 4K busin...

Submitted by Eric Achtmann

Published 17 December 2015

Virtually there - media monitoring goes beyond hardware

by Simen Frostad Issue 108 - December 2015 Being a hardware manufacturer is a great thing. It allows you to design the totality of the product and the users experience of it, to create a plug-and-play appliance that is uniquely fitted to its task. And there are plenty of tasks that are best done with the help of a piece of dedicated hardware, for m...

Submitted by Simen Frostad

Published 15 December 2015

The future is smaller, more powerful batteries

by Steve Emmett Issue 106 - October 2015 High-quality cameras are getting smaller and lighter all the time, making them suitable for new applications. Nearly every production we see today includes shots acquired by drone and gimbal mounted cameras. The batteries required to power these cameras have to meet new criteria. They must be able to withsta...

Submitted by Steve Emmett

Published 01 November 2015

Matrox VS4-based Multi-channel Recording System

October 2015 Skehan Communications, a leading video production and transmission company provides multi-camera HD video production, webcasting, satellite uplinks and other unique services to broadcasters, Fortune 500 companies, professional associations and government agencies. Though based in the Washington-Baltimore region, their projects have tak...

Submitted by KitPlus

Published 01 November 2015

Shoot safe, shoot dynamic

by Nick Allen-Miles Issue 104 - August 2015 Todays craze for shooting from a UAV or drone is not for the faint hearted. Unless used legally and in very limited situations, its a dangerous way of capturing dynamic shots. Wherever people are involved or height restrictions apply, there are more useful ways of filming safely that deliver a more intere...

Submitted by Nick Allen Miles

Published 01 September 2015

Tapeless Workflows, MAM and Archive: Back to Basics

by Mike Shore Issue 103 - July 2015 The broadcast industrys appetite for file-based workflows existed long before the technology required to implement them was available. With the emergence of cheap capture hardware, the continually decreasing cost of storage and the ever-increasing capabilities of inexpensive computing power, the transition from t...

Submitted by Michael Shore

Published 01 August 2015

The business case for media asset management

by Kevin Usher Issue 103 - July 2015 You could argue that, so far, there have been two stages of commercial justification for asset management systems in broadcasting. First, it was a necessary evil: if broadcasters, production companies and other media organizations wanted to store content as filesat least some of the timethey needed a means of fi...

Submitted by Kevin Usher

Published 01 August 2015

UHD: a long road travelled

by Julian Fernandez Issue 103 - July 2015 Theres no denying it, Ultra HD (UHD) is impressive and the clarity of image is captivating, but its going to take a while for UHD to become mainstream in the home. A fairly expensive large screen TV is a must to get the best picture quality and since the majority of the world isnt yet watching television in...

Submitted by Julian Fernandez

Published 01 August 2015