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Building Out Storage for UHD

As the next big thing in video, from capture and production through to display in the home, 4K and ultra-high-definition (UHD) video offers many benefits. Most notable of these is an eightfold increase in resolution as compared with 1080i, the established standard for HD broadcast. A number of other significant enhancements to image quality are als...

Submitted by Andy Warman

Published 14 June 2016

Resolute over Resolution

by Leighton Chenery Issue 112 - April 2016 According to an industry think-tank, the end of 2017 will see the tipping point for UHD in the UK. But, ask the people working on the frontline, and that picture is not so clear. As we approach NAB, talk will once again return to the thorny subject of picture resolution. I say \'thorny\' because it has div...

Submitted by Peter Savage 2

Published 25 April 2016

Waveform Monitors in 4K Production

by Alan Wheable Issue 112-April 2016 Waveforms have always been one of the essential tools for anyone working in the video industry and are used for level alignment, grading and quality control to touch on just a few areas. Working with HD and 3G-SDI waveform technology may have been a solution in the early days of UHD/4k to display the waveforms f...

Submitted by Alan Wheable

Published 25 April 2016

Automated Quality Control

by Thomas Dove Issue 109 - January 2016 Automated quality control for file-based media has been available to broadcasters for over a decade. The Vidcheck team designed and produced the very first product in this area. We have been working on this type of software since 2003 and are probably the most experienced team anywhere in the world. Many exis...

Submitted by Thomas Dove

Published 21 January 2016

The future of TV will be more lifelike and immersive - bu...

by Mark Horton Issue 108 - December 2015 Ultra high definition television (UHDTV) offers more resolution (4K), high dynamic range (HDR), high frame rate (HFR) and wide color gamut (WCG) as tools to radically enhance the consumer viewing experience but they also pose some of the biggest questions about what the future of TV will look like. 4K resolu...

Submitted by Mark Horton

Published 17 December 2015

UHD HDR HFR WCG Made for each other, or too much too soo...

by Bruce Devlin Issue 108 - December 2015 The majority of LCD screens rolling out of the huge factories are now 4K-ready. They have a lot of pixels, and were not going to be chopping them up with a hacksaw to make small screens in a hurry. Even cheap mobile phones have more pixels than the big TV set that hangs on the wall of the front room in my h...

Submitted by Bruce Devlin

Published 15 December 2015

Taming the 12Gbs beast and how to T&M it with the Qx

by Philip Adams and Paul Nicholls Issue 107 - November 2015 The one thing you can say about working in the broadcast industry is that there isnt time to get bored! Hesitant, perhaps even frightened these days might be more accurate but bored, certainly not. Such is the case with the planned UHDTV roll out and the need for customers to invest in tec...

Submitted by Phillip Adams

Published 01 December 2015

Sony PXW-FS5 Review

by Alister Chapman Issue 106 - October 2015 I was lucky enough to get some hands on time with a prototype FS5 in Amsterdam at IBC. In case you havent heard about it, the PXW-FS5 is a compact interchangeable lens, super 35mm camcorder from Sony that can record in HD or UHD 4K. It shares many of the features of the already incredibly popular PXW-FS7...

Submitted by Alister Champman

Published 01 November 2015

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

Back to the future

by Dick Hobbs Issue 103 - July 2015 I was recently talking to the estimable James Gilbert, who runs the equally estimable graphics and automation specialist Pixel Power. He said something that made me think. We were talking about scalability, and he said that it works in two directions. There is the sort of scalability that we all readily understan...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.

Published 01 August 2015

Eye to Eye: Video Post-production

Video post-production has long been one of the fastest developing subsets of the broadcast business. It was among the first to lead the shift from hardware into software, bringing huge advantages in terms of affordability and ease of use. I can still remember the high cost, heavy weight and low quality of the early analogue tape to tape video editi...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 January 2015

An artist gets bored of the same colour palette

by Rob Tarrant Issue 95 - November 2014 So the wait is over. The brand new VariCam was launched at IBC in September. Above all else that means extra choice for high end episodic dramas, advertising and movies, where it has to be said the choice has been limited for far too long. Since the introduction of the original VariCam in 2002, the first high...

Submitted by Rob Tarrant

Published 01 December 2014

Sony PXW-FS7

by Alister Chapman Issue 94 - October 2014 At IBC Sony launched a new camera. In fact Sony launched several new cameras. This is nothing new, every year Sony launch cameras. But this year Sony really created quite a stir with one camera in particular, the Sony PXW-FS7. So what is it about the FS7 that is so special? Looking at the specs alone this...

Submitted by Alister Champman

Published 01 November 2014

Back to Basics with Media Transformation

by Craig Newbury Issue 90 - June 2014 With their shift toward use of file-based digital audio and video, rather than tape- or film-based media, broadcasters and other media companies have moved into a world that demands some familiarity with the concept of media compression. Because the video and audio captured by cameras and microphones often resu...

Submitted by Craig Newbury

Published 01 July 2014

Get the 8k WOW factor at NAB

by Bob Pank Issue 88 - April 2014 Once again 4K will be a prominent feature at NAB. There will be a 4K Zone in the North Hall but surely the format is now so popular that its many supporters will make it 4K everywhere and not confined to a dedicated zone. But 4K is only a part of UHD, the other being 8K, which has far more wow factor (why else go t...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 May 2014