KitPlus | Articles

Eye to Eye: Video Post-production

My first direct experience of video post-production involved hauling a heavy Sony U-Matic tape machine up a flight of stairs before going back for an equally heavy playback deck, a bulky CRT monitor and a large box of interface giblets. That was in 1978. 33 years on, an Apple Mac does the whole editing job a great deal better, faster and more econo...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 May 2011

Challenging times

I am writing this on 18 March, but only 77 days in 2011 is proving to be a momentous year for global events. We started out with catastrophic floods in Australia, then the earthquake in Christchurch. I once spent a wonderfully happy day in Christchurch, and it was, at least until 22 February, without doubt the loveliest small city I have ever visit...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 May 2011

Mobile Cameraman Extraordinaire

I had wanted to work in television since my teens and, at 20, started as a trainee assistant cameraman at Mersey Television on 'Brookside' in Liverpool and then joining Thorn-EMI Facilities in London. Thorn-EMI put me in charge of a studio used to shoot links for companies like Children's Channel using very bulky early tubed Betacams. Five years la...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 April 2011

Eye to eye: The changing face of video displays

Video display technology is progressing so fast that the phrase 'More revolutions than a banana republic' inevitably comes to mind. No offence intended if you have just taken over as president. From the 1930s to the present century, television display was dominated almost entirely by cathode ray tubes. Competition then arrived in the form of plasma...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 March 2011

tv-bay questions

Name & Title?Ben Holmes, Owner and Senior EditorWho are you? (about yourself and EditOut)We're a specialist edit company focusing on editing for Outside Broadcast, as well as some corporate work. What do you do? What does EditOut do?My day-to-day work is as a VT and edit supervisor, producing packages for live TV broadcasts. Edit Out supplies Final...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 February 2011

Camp, ash, irritation and embarrassment

I am writing these words in the last days of December and you are reading them in the first days of January, so it seems like a good opportunity to look back on 2010 and see what we toilers in television have learnt. Against the odds there were some good programmes on the box. Astoundingly, ITV delivered a drama series that was just like the good o...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 February 2011

Eye to Eye, Portable power supplies

The true portability of modern HD mini-cameras and flash-RAM video recorders is encouraging programme makers to go way beyond reach of tethered power supplies. But are the battery-makers living up to the demands being placed on them?Recommendation 1 in portable power supplies is so obvious it almost doesn't need stating: rechargeable batteries are...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 February 2011

Broadcast Batteries, Today and Tomorrow

As consumers, we all have experience of being let down by batteries (think rusty Italian cars in the 1970s!). But thankfully the world of batteries has moved on: the global battery industry is today worth $71 billion and is estimated to be growing at nearly 5% a year. Of this, broadcast batteries make up a tiny fraction but the manufacturers that s...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 February 2011

Hows that

A few days ago I umpired a cricket match. It was a very pleasant afternoon, marred only slightly by the almost continual drizzle, but it was August in southern England. The game was held at a lovely village cricket club, and so my fellow umpire and I did not have the benefit of replays or other technology. To be honest, I think they would have been...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 October 2010

Game, Set and Media Management

A week into Wimbledon and my chances of getting there this year seemed to be dwindling fast. A late call on Friday afternoon though from Timeline TV rekindled my hopes of not only seeing a bit of tennis but getting an exclusive tour around the Wimbledon Broadcast Centre. Always one to grab the opportunity to see both tennis and kit in action my nex...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 August 2010

Hawk-Eye Accuracy and Believability in Cricket

In 1999 research began at Roke Manor Research Ltd., a company with over thirty years of vision processing expertise. Led by Dr. Paul Hawkins and funded by The Television Corporation, the concept of “Hawk-Eye” was born. First developed in 1999, Hawk-Eye Innovations Ltd continues to grow and develop with Hawk-Eye recently creating a system for the BB...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 July 2010

What happened after NAB 2010.....

What happened next.......... On Wednesday the 14th April, evening time in Las Vegas, a text message came through from home reporting a Volcano in Iceland was affecting flights back to the UK, a wind up surely...did they not want us back.........?With NAB about to close for another year and 1000’s of Brit visitors and exhibitors at the show it beca...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 June 2010

How to be smart at NAB

Peter Savage continues his discussion on making the most of trade events, combining achievement with enjoyment. NAB is on and, if you are one of the lucky ones, you might be reading this while sitting on the either the Virgin Atlantic or British Airways flight to Las Vegas. I don’t know how many people from the UK go to NAB but I guess it is the eq...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 May 2010

Eye to Eye: Distribution and Delivery 2010

Distribution and Delivery are two elements of in the broadcast chainthat get taken pretty much for granted but both are highly important. My focus in this summary is on equipment and software introduced since IBC 2009 and in the run-up to NAB 2010. Distribution linksThese come in many shapes and flavours, over copper, optical fibre, RF, point-to-po...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 May 2010

Top Tips Audio Monitoring Systems for On-Location Monitor...

1) Audio monitoring systems for on-location monitoring need to be able to handle all formats. This flexibility is crucial for all field applications, in which broadcasters frequently must accommodate a variety of formats, and not always those they anticipated. Formats supported by the audio monitoring system should include 3G/HD/SD-SDI, AES, and an...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 January 2010