KitPlus | Articles

Get the lowdown on HEVC compression

by Keith WymbsIssue 84 - December 2013 The high-efficiency video coding (HEVC/H.265) compression codec, which was standardized earlier this year, brings broadcasters and other content distributors multiple opportunities, including:- Decreased bandwidth enabling the addition of more channels and increased quality while lowering bitrates. - Improved...

Submitted by Keith Wymbs

Published 01 January 2014

Leaping over the top

by Bob LambIssue 84 - December 2013 Around the world, consumers are becoming addicted to viewing over-the-top (OTT) video on the device or screen of their choice, anywhere and at any time. For broadcasters, content owners, and service providers, the ability to deliver broadcast-quality media over the open Internet presents a tremendous opportunity...

Submitted by Bob Lamb

Published 01 January 2014

Will Strauss looks at the growth of MediaCityUK and dock...

by Will StraussIssue 81 - September 2013 Whats up Dock?In less than three years Dock 10 has grown from a mere studio operator with add-ons to a fully-fledged digital media service provider. Will Strauss tracks the changes. MediaCityUK in Salford, Greater Manchester is exactly as the name suggests: a towering metropolis pumping out TV, radio and dig...

Submitted by Will Strauss#

Published 01 October 2013

Making an advert with the Blackmagic Cinema Camera

by Brandon KahnIssue 80 - August 2013 When Mothers Basement came to us with an advert to put on UK cinema screens, I knew my trusty, but basic, XF 305 wasnt going to cut it. Sure, most ads you see in cinema are projected in regular HD and are often shot no higher than 1080, but I felt we needed some extra size. Some extra dynamic range and colour i...

Submitted by Brandon Kahn

Published 01 September 2013

Evolutions in the media cloud with Bob Pank

by Bob PankIssue 80 - August 2013 Years ago my boss, the sales director, warned me that talk of technical revolutions was not good. After all, a revolution ends up where it started. On the other hand evolutions were much better. Of course he was right. Over the years the technology of television has continuously evolved via numerous incremental imp...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 September 2013

Bringing increased efficiencies to file-based workflows

by Reed HaslamIssue 80 - August 2013 Most professionals in todays broadcast and media industries can remember a time when the videotape format was ubiquitous. It was the defacto recording, storage, and playback medium for many years, and fragments of the medium still exist today. What clearly contributed to the success of tape is its compact packag...

Submitted by Reed Haslam

Published 01 September 2013

Do you have the computing horsepower you need? XMac Mini...

by Greg LaPorteIssue 80 - August 2013 In high-pressure audio/video production environments, adequate computing horsepower is critical for handling the volume of tracks and channels to be recorded, played back, mixed, edited and streamed. The Apple® Mac Pro® offers great performance and extensibility but its heavy, bulky tower configuration doesnt l...

Submitted by Greg Laporte

Published 01 September 2013

A preview of this years IBC with Will Strauss

by Will StraussIssue 80 - August 2013 Writing an IBC preview when the show itself is still seven weeks away is never easy. Despite best intentions, lots of exhibitors havent yet shown their hands (or are still deciding which cards to play) and many of those that have, are really not giving much away. However, fear not dear reader. The next two page...

Submitted by Will Strauss#

Published 01 September 2013

A cinematic makeover with Blackmagic Design

With the announcement of Blackmagic Cinema Camera at NAB 2012, Mark Linnhoff, a France based cinematographer, began to see the future of filmmaking in a new light. “Finally, an affordable acquisition tool that doesn’t compromise on image quality,” he recalled. “When I got the camera, I carried out some tests with a series of Carl Zeiss ZF.2 and Nik...

Submitted by Mark Linnhoff

Published 01 July 2013

Cloud STB with Bob Pank

It’s like trying to get to Heathrow in time for your flight. Many of us have to go there by road and the journey will involve travelling on the UK’s busiest motorways. Even outside rush hour the journey may be quick, or not so quick or a real nightmare. This is a bit like live streaming video on the Internet. Yes, we’ve probably all used at least o...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 July 2013

The evolution of camera connectivity and the HPX600

Tape in, tape out. Cable in, video out. Card in, card out. Simpler times: productions orchestrated by an army of runners, tape op’s and engineers, with transmission to TV, ingest via a VTR and a room dedicated to storing media. Today’s production team has changed. It’s become a small elite squad, tasked with multi-channel playout, multi-resolution...

Submitted by Kieron Seth#

Published 01 July 2013

The Cloud, a big hit at NAB with Bob Pank

NAB 2013 will go down in history as the event where the broadcast industry took to the Cloud in a big way. Perhaps it was the number of smaller companies and start-ups that have been successfully operating cloud services for a year or more that persuaded the big names to join in but, more likely, these moves have been in the pipeline for a while. T...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 June 2013

Learning to love IT with Dick Hobbs

There are three clearly defined levels of activity at NAB. There is the buzz which someone is trying to get going, there is the stuff which people are actually trying to buy, and there is the latest collection of buzzwords and catchphrases which provide endless entertainment for those with a love of language. This year, for instance, we were all to...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 June 2013

Cost effective transport of video over long distances

The transportation of live video and audio feeds over the internet has become a widely accepted technique. This has led to a bewildering number of products and techniques becoming available from simple PC plug in cards to very sophisticated encoder / decoder sets. Of course each of these has its own place in the market, as there can be no one size...

Submitted by John Golding

Published 01 May 2013

Planetary scientists stream galaxy worldwide

Sky-live.tv is a website that broadcasts real-time astronomical occurrences. It is the result of collaboration between Ciclope Group, at the Technical University of Madrid’s Montegancedo Astronomical Observatory, and Shelios, a nonprofit organization aimed at promoting and disseminating lectures, courses, exhibitions, and the results of scientific...

Submitted by Raymond Burns

Published 01 May 2013