KitPlus | Articles

Small post houses delivering a big service

In today\'s fast-paced world of video production, the importance of a well-organized, responsive media asset management system cannot be overstated. After all, time is money, and the more quickly people can find and retrieve the exact content they need, the more quickly they can complete their video projects ¦ and capitalize on the content. This no...

Submitted by Jack Wenzinger

Published 15 February 2017

The future of post production

Love it or hate it, 2016 will certainly be a year to remember, for many reasons. In the world of post-production, we\'ve seen high dynamic range become incorporated into UK studio pipelines for the very first time. We watched Ang Lee demonstrate exactly what you can do by shooting at 120 frames per second in combination with stereo 3D. We\'ve even...

Submitted by KitPlus

Published 15 February 2017

MAM needs to adapt or die

The media landscape has shifted dramatically over recent years. Content providers are under increasing pressure to deliver compelling content to multiple platforms. Also, the production and distribution of video is no longer limited to traditional broadcasters, which face rising competition from a range of media providers. We are also seeing a mass...

Submitted by Tim Child

Published 15 February 2017

Mr MXF thinks the future is bright

I have had the good fortune to spend some time with students at Southampton Solent, The University of Surrey, Ravensbourne and Godalming College in the last few weeks. Although student numbers are down on the technology courses, enthusiasm is high and the passion for the broadcast and media industry is evident in the eyes of the stars of tomorrow....

Submitted by Bruce Devlin

Published 13 January 2017

Television is dead, long live television

After decades of operating within the same fundamental model, the walls around our world - what was the broadcast world, or "vertical", in marketing terms - are crumbling. NAB 2016 clearly showed this and IBC 2016 took it one step further: momentum is strengthening as we push towards an IP future. The TVB2020 conference earlier this year also refle...

Submitted by Ephraim Barrett

Published 07 December 2016

Taking a hybrid approach to the SDI/IP transistion

Broadcasters are not newcomers to technological transitions. As an industry, we\'ve survived analogue to digital, baseband to file-based workflows, SDTV to HDTV and now 4KUHD resolution, not to mention weathering a barrage of new compression formats. Today, we\'re facing one of the most dramatic transformations we\'ve ever undergone: SDI to IP. Unl...

Submitted by Matthew Coleman

Published 07 December 2016

Heading towards brightness regulations

I like IBC in the same way that I find NAB grating. Maybe I have been living in the UK for too long, but the bright morning Amsterdam sun breaking through clouds and reflecting off the canal while fit young things on bicycles pedal to college; snapchatting with their friends and avoiding collisions with practised ease has a certain charm. You just...

Submitted by Bruce Devlin

Published 10 November 2016

Live streams versus srowing files

So, what is the difference between a stream and a file? It may seem like a dumb and obvious question, but it's crucial in the design of many file based workflows and the applications that drive them. Let's start with the basic and obvious answer. "You can random access a file but you sequentially process a stream". This used to be important back in...

Submitted by Bruce Devlin

Published 26 September 2016

Shooting the WRC Rally

Mark bites the dust for his art and lives to tell the tale... A look at my website will confirm I don\'t just shoot cars, I cover a wide range of genres. But I have shot in and around cars through my career. Early on I joined a facilities company specialising in the design and build of onboard camera systems for F1 and Motorcycle GP live TV coverag...

Submitted by Mark Sallaway

Published 25 August 2016

Up in the air with Dick

In the last issue of this magazine was a very interesting article by Lee Sheppard of SGL, talking about the pros and cons of archiving in the cloud. While there is a lot of conversation about cloud storage, its pluses and minuses, I have to confess to still being slightly confused about the practicalities and economics of it. So armed only with Goo...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.

Published 22 July 2016

The modern day media manager

As industry trends move towards all file-based workflows from production to post production, there are several concepts and traditional industry practices that need to be modified and adapted for the transition. This spans throughout the entire production process in order to ensure that all deliverables are being recorded, edited and stored within...

Submitted by Jonathan Aroesty

Published 22 July 2016

Do you have a MAM solution

One of the top questions I get asked at trade shows is, "Do you have a MAM solution?"Well, yes. Of course. It's what we do; but thank you for asking. What you should be asking is, "What differentiates your MAM solution from the rest of the MAM pack?"Now we have something to talk about. For a lot of MAM solutions out there, workflows are designed -...

Submitted by Paul Wilkins

Published 22 July 2016

Ask the experts - Transitioning to IP

1) What has been the broadcast industry's feeling about the move to an all IP workflow?Transitioning from conventional signal transport to an all-IP environment in broadcast or content production operations seems to be a matter of "when\" rather than "if,\" as it brings a great number of advantages with it. IP is touted as offering numerous benefit...

Submitted by Craig Newbury

Published 22 July 2016

The new world of playout

Consumers know what they expect from a television channel. They expect programmes, of course, but they also know they are going to get commercials, trailers, station idents, graphics, break bumpers, squeezebacks and hot starts, bugs and brand identities, and more. Significantly, they expect these to arrive smoothly and seamlessly, in consistent hig...

Submitted by James Gilbert

Published 22 July 2016

It is not is but when it will happen to you

Most businesses use "the cloud", either internally for services like payroll processing or an employee benefits portal, or externally for customer relationship management, data storage or payment processing. But how does this impact your Insurable Risk? No doubt, it definitely complicates things. Many companies will improve their security by shifti...

Submitted by Leighton Chenery

Published 14 June 2016