KitPlus | Articles

Manipulate and Edit

Issue 93 - September 2014 Company mergers can be no fun. Staff panic about ‘efficiencies’ and therefore their jobs. The press speculates about ‘what really happened?’ And there are always lawyers involved. And no one likes that. When DiGiCo revealed that it would merge with fellow audio console manufacturers Calrec and Allen & Heath, following a bu...

Submitted by Will Strauss#

Published 01 October 2014

Manage and Monitor

Issue 93 - September 2014 In less than a month’s time, British television producers will be asked to deliver their programmes to broadcasters as files rather than tape. Some have been doing it for years. For others, it’s a whole new world. Fundamentally, the change is just replacing physical items like tapes, labels and VT reports with their zeros...

Submitted by Will Strauss#

Published 01 October 2014

Move and Deliver

Issue 93 - September 2014 In an industry that hands out a lot of awards, it can be easy to take the revelation of each golden statuette or glass embossed brick with a pinch of salt. When NATAS hands out a Technology and Engineering Emmy, however, people sit up and take notice. This month Video Services Forum, Media Links, Nevion, DVBlink, Inc, Harr...

Submitted by Will Strauss#

Published 01 October 2014

Is bingeing the new black?

by Dick Hobbs Issue 92 - August 2014 Recently BBC4 has been showing the classic 1985 television drama Edge of Darkness. Troy Kennedy Martin masterfully captured the nuclear paranoia of the era, at a time when the Thatcher government was making a virtue out of secrecy. The idea that global forces were casually trading in weapons-grade material and w...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.

Published 01 September 2014

Green storage Fat wallets

by Ben Pearce Issue 91 - July 2014 Its not just eco campaigners that want to reduce their carbon footprint. Its also the financial director. Whether youre a small company or a transnational enterprise, you run the risk of losing control of your data and buying more and more disk space. You may be storing many copies of each file on multiple externa...

Submitted by Ben Pearce

Published 01 August 2014

Seamless and automated online publishing

by Rino Petricola Issue 91 - July 2014 In todays anywhere/anytime/any screen media environment, companies and advertisers have an unprecedented opportunity to connect with audiences. Consumers appetite for Internet-enabled gadgets and devices is showing no signs of abating, driven by improvements in encoding technology and bandwidth infrastructure....

Submitted by Rino Petricola

Published 01 August 2014

The right MAM solution

by Michael Shore Issue 91 - July 2014 The best way to determine what features you need in a media asset management system (MAM) is to start at the end. So, when trying to decide what goes IN to your asset management system, you need to first establish what it is that you are trying to get OUT. Several factors need to be considered, including: the p...

Submitted by Michael Shore

Published 01 August 2014

Software defined workflows

by Steve Reynolds Issue 91 - July 2014 The rising popularity of over-the-top video offerings and TV Everywhere services continues to transform the media and entertainment business. Whether through pure-play OTT services from dedicated providers, catch-up TV offerings from broadcasters or authenticated TV Everywhere services from pay-TV operators, t...

Submitted by Steve Reynolds

Published 01 August 2014

The Challenges of streaming media

by Larry Jordan Issue 91 - July 2014 Internet streaming. It sounds easy, but doing it is surprisingly difficult. I know, Ive been streaming live audio every week for the last seven years for my podcast Digital Production Buzz. And Im streaming video from my website for the last three years as part of my on-going software training. If everything is...

Submitted by Larry Jordan#

Published 01 August 2014

Proprietary vs. off the shelf hardware for OTT video deli...

by Nivedita Nouval Issue 90 - June 2014 What are the main equipment at stake in an OTT video delivery system?An OTT video delivery system consists of an array of video servers that are able to store and stream content according to different formats defined by standards (e.g., HLS, HSS, HDS, and MPEG-DASH). Traditionally, there is an origin server,...

Submitted by Nivedita Nouval

Published 01 July 2014

The Evolution of TV to the Bus Train and Park Bench

by John Mills Issue 90 - June 2014 A Digital RevolutionSince the not-quite-fully-electric late nineteenth century, Television has been evolving. The first major, modern change to the way people experienced TV was when technology enabled them to decide when they were going to watch the programmes they wanted to watch. VHS recorders and then DVD play...

Submitted by John Mills

Published 01 July 2014

RTS Thames Valley NAB 2014 Review

by Simon Tillyer Issue 90 - June 2014 A sunny, early summer evening welcomed over 40 people to the annual RTS NAB review on 14th May. This annual get together features a panel of guests, chaired by Dick Hobbs discussing their experiences and thoughts of NAB. The panel consisted of Maya Severyn (Head of Technical Services & Support - Chellomedia), J...

Submitted by Simon Tillyer

Published 01 July 2014

Problems and solutions in audio

by Mike Law Issue 89 - May 2014 BCD Audio is a UK manufacturing and design company specialising in audio products for the global broadcast and professional market. Mike Law is company managing director and also head of design. He is a member of the IET and the AES. He presents here several case studies to illustrate how the company has been able to...

Submitted by Mike Law#

Published 01 June 2014

Head in the cloud

by Dick Hobbs Issue 89 - May 2014 Ive just had a look back through the archives, and I am pretty certain that this was my 25th NAB: a couple in the eighties and every year since 1992. In many peoples eyes this makes me just a beginner, I know. In the past I have spent the week on a stand, trying to sell something. My first ever NAB in Dallas, Texas...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.

Published 01 June 2014

A splunking in the thames

by Andrew Morris Issue 88 - April 2014 Betsy boo is my 3 year old daughter. She is Amazing, Unique, Talented, Individual, Sensitive, Thoughtful, Indestructible, Cool. She is also AUTISTIC. To be honest we didnt know what autism was and are still learning; it is a problem within the brain; it happens when kids are born, and is often not picked up un...

Submitted by Andrew Morris

Published 01 May 2014