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Distribution in the UHD Era

by Paul Briscoe Issue 103 - July 2015 Once upon a time, there were few broadcast TV standards. Each used its own regional image formats, color encoding scheme and sound and vision modulation standards. High-power over-the-air (OTA) transmitters broadcast the signal on internationally coordinated and regionally allocated radio frequency (RF) channel...

Submitted by Paul Briscoe

Published 01 August 2015

Cautionary notes from GTC Member number 001

by Dick Hibberd Issue 101 - May 2015 Recently I was invited to be on the panel of judges charged with selecting the winners of the 2014 \'Bill Vinten GTC University Awards\'. This was just the second year of this excellent scheme and, if the submissions from universities increase annually pro rata, then we will soon have a major logistics problem i...

Submitted by Dick Hibberd

Published 01 June 2015

A box of delights

by Dick Hobbs Issue 101 - May 2015 In the immediate aftermath of NAB and its bombardment by new gizmos, I want to talk about Professor Noriaki Kano. In the 1980s, at the Tokyo University of Science, he came up with a simple model of product design for customer satisfaction. His original work was more complicated than this diagram, but fundamentally...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.

Published 01 June 2015

NAB 2015 Highlights

by Beth Zarkhosh Issue 101 - May 2015 For those of us lucky enough to visit this year\'s annual NAB Show in Las Vegas, we know how amazing and mesmerising it was, but for those who didn\'t get the chance to make it, then here\'s a lowdown on what we thought was the highlights of the biggest post production and broadcast conventions in town!Las Vega...

Submitted by Beth Zarkhosh

Published 01 June 2015

CALM - A crucial act to follow

by Martin Moore Issue 101 - May 2015 Sudden jumps in sound level between television programmes and commercials first came to the notice of legislators after a loud commercial interrupted a family dinner at the home of US House of Representatives member Anna Eshoo. The technical parameters adopted in the draft were based on an existing recommended p...

Submitted by Martin Moore

Published 01 June 2015

REDucation - Real world RED camera training

by Ben Sherriff Issue 101 - May 2015 Saturday 28th and Sunday 29th March saw the REDucation training workshop arrive in London at the Met Film School in Ealing Studios West London. I\'ve used a Red One but have yet to work on a shoot where I can get my hands dirty with the newer cameras they manufacture (Epic-X, Scarlet, Dragon and now Weapon). Whe...

Submitted by Ben Sherriff

Published 01 June 2015

DOPs discuss minicams, lenses, 4k and all

by Mel Noonan Issue 100 - April 2015 If anyone knows about the practical reality of using minicams and lenses it has to be the DOPs who are out there using them. We are now seeing minicams used in all areas of production, some with 1080p and 4K capability at prices you would not have believed possible a few years back. I spoke to some of the DOPs I...

Submitted by Mel Noonan

Published 01 May 2015

From newspaper to broadcaster: VG (Norway) and LiveU

by Ronen Artman Issue 100 - April 2015 VG is a tabloid-format newspaper established in Oslo in 1945. Faced with the challenges that all newspapers face in the age of the video and the internet - fresh competition for readership and rapidly changing viewer expectations of what news is and how it\'s delivered - VG began using video online as early as...

Submitted by Ronen Artman

Published 01 May 2015

From VoD to Linear TV

by Nikos Kyriopopoulos Issue 100 - April 2015 Content owners, broadcasters, and operators worldwide typically provide a sizable library of VoD content and a limited offering of live/linear programming. This unbalanced ratio between VoD and linear TV offerings is historically shaped by two factors:- The cost associated with linear TV production, a b...

Submitted by Nikos Kyriopoulos

Published 01 May 2015

What a difference a decade makes

by Dick Hobbs Issue 100 - April 2015 If you have got to the back of this magazine, you cannot fail to have noticed that it is issue number 100. I asked Simon Tillyer and Matt Robbins, the dynamic duo behind the publication, how it all started. "The website was initially just a project,\" Simon said, "and when Matt arrived in the summer of 2005 we c...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.

Published 01 May 2015

Loudness normalisation for podcast streaming

by Jon Schorah Issue 99 - March 2015 For media companies steeped in traditional workflows, the exploding demand for over-the-top (OTT) content on many different devices is offering up significant new opportunities as well as challenges. If content owners can re-purpose their assets effectively, they can reach existing and new audiences through chan...

Submitted by Jon Schorah

Published 01 April 2015

Venice live productions tools go to the consumer

by Tim Felstead Issue 98 - February 2015 The objective of most studio production is to cost effectively create live or as live television to which audiences will be drawn. During the process of creation, recording into media servers can either be a separate process used only for immediate replay, or can be part of a media workflow serving multiple...

Submitted by Tim Felstead

Published 01 March 2015

The road to Sundance Film Festival

with Kivu Ruhorahoza Issue 98 - February 2015 Things of the Aimless Wanderer, the latest feature from Rwandese filmmaker Kivu Ruhorahoza (Grey Matter) is a beautifully crafted narrative about paranoia, mistrust and misunderstandings. Premiering at this year\'s Sundance Film Festival, audiences can expect an arresting film that reveals a series of c...

Submitted by Kivu Ruhorahoza

Published 01 March 2015

Now that is how you do a newsroom

by Neil Hutchins Issue 97 - January 2015 "That\'s TV\" is a brand new TV network for the UK that first launched in the South of England in the fourth quarter of 2014. That\'s TV is designed to emulate the most popular local TV news format in the US and bring it to the UK in the form of live sports, phone-ins and entertainment. Every That\'s TV affi...

Submitted by Neil Hutchins#

Published 01 February 2015

Emphasising Television in streaming television

by James Gilbert Issue 96 - December 2014 There have been all sorts of doom and gloom stories, over a decade or more, about how television is changing. Budgets are being slashed, workflows are becoming automated, and standard IT hardware is taking over from bespoke broadcast kit. But despite all this, television still looks good. If you watch telev...

Submitted by James Gilbert

Published 01 January 2015