KitPlus | Articles

Bob Pank looks at Editing and the Cloud

By Bob PankHistorically video editing has been one of those operations shaped by technology. For decades it depended on VTRs to play and record. You had to go to an edit room, usually darkened and with loads of buttons and winking lights, to get your edit done by a video editor. It was not cheap. Then, with video stored on computer discs, editing w...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 February 2013

Loudness measurement: One year on

By Jon Schorah, creative director, NUGEN Audio. With, much of Europe and the U.S. now producing broadcast audio to meet loudness standards, Jon Schorah, creative director of NUGEN Audio, reflects upon the current state of play, the lessons learned along the way, and what’s to come. Playout or Production Normalisation?Commonly there are two ways to...

Submitted by Jonathan Schorah

Published 01 February 2013

Ask the Experts - 3d with BSkyB

This month we had an exclusive opportunity to talk to Cara Cheeseman, Post Production Supervisor for all 3D content, both internally and externally, at BSkyB. The 21 questions are gathered from a variety of industry professionals with an interest, some sceptical and some fanatical, in 3DWhen it comes to 3D conversion... creating 3D images from 2D s...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 January 2013

Twas the issue before Christmas;

As it’s nearly Christmas, I figured, what better way to honor the end of anther year than to celebrate everything that has gone before? To do that, I’ve picked my favourite production technology innovations of 2012. But, as we’re fast approaching the festive season, I’ve compiled them in the form a Christmas shopping list. Yes, I know. It’s genius....

Submitted by Will Strauss#

Published 01 January 2013

Loudness Monitoring: Complacent Wont Get You Compliant

Stricter regulations across the globe, the worldwide need for standardized audio level loudness processing, the need for logging and graphing mixed with long-term records maintenance for compliance verification, and the convergence of SDI/IP and ASI technologies all make for a challenging time in the broadcast industry. Identical and obligatory com...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 December 2012

Issues in surround audio and new technologies to address...

Issues in surround audio and new technologies to address them. Surround audio and the encoding technologies, such as Dolbys AC-3 used to transmit it, have introduced new issues in maintaining audio quality. At a time when skilled audio personnel are getting scarce and budgets are shrinking new technologies hold the key to delivering top quality aud...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 December 2012

Monitoring: Cutting the Wires

Teradek began the wireless monitoring revolution at last year's NAB show. Its Cube wireless encoders are no bigger than a pack of playing cards. They compress a camcorder's video feed into an H.264 signal for transmission to either a WiFi-enabled laptop, iPad or tablet or to a Cube decoder. Straight-away live, remote and affordable monitoring was b...

Submitted by Kieron Seth#

Published 01 December 2012

Ubiquitous Cloud at IBC

It was one of those IBCs that was more consolidation than innovation. There wasn’t any one product or technology that stood out as a game changer. There was more evidence of 4K being pushed as a more realistic alternative to 8K and more of the must-have 84-inch 4K TV screens. Well they do look fabulous but I still had to go and see NHK’s 85-inch SH...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 November 2012

The semantic web made simple

There is a new term creeping in to discussions in the broadcasting business, and particularly around those involved in asset management and research projects. The term is “semantic web” and, I suspect, there are a lot of people who are neither completely sure they know what it means, nor trust its relevance in our business. I aim to provide some si...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 November 2012

Protecting the archive

Over the last 20 years or so we have all become accustomed to the expression “asset management” and, as ever, familiarity has bred contempt. In this case, the expression has become a loose descriptor for almost anything with a bit of a database in it. We need to stop and think about what we are trying to achieve. In any media enterprise, the conten...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 November 2012

Camera innovations from IBC

IBC 2012 – ‘Dam, that was a good showFresh from another trip to Amsterdam, Will Strauss picks his ‘best in show’ camera innovations from IBC. I know, I know. It’s October and the chances are that you’ve already had your fill of ‘round-ups’, ‘reviews’ and ‘what I saw in Amsterdam’ type articles. But with so much stuff to choose from at the show, hop...

Submitted by Will Strauss#

Published 01 November 2012

Building a digital archive

The search for specific content within masses of stored videotape once required a visit to the archive librarian, a great deal of patience, and some luck. Even if one was able to explain successfully the footage you needed, and if the librarian proved able to locate that content, there remained the possibility that tape degradation or generational...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 October 2012

Parting the Cloud

Every so often a trend looms over the broadcast horizon that gathers pace so quickly it soon becomes the buzzword at every launch and trade show. A few years ago it was MAM and more recently stereoscopic; now the big buzz in town is the cloud. But despite its recent rise to fame in the broadcast sector there’s still a lot of confusion regarding how...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 October 2012

Addressing SAN Allocation and Permission Challenges

Facilities today face a number of management complexities when allocating storage resources, especially as frame-based and 3D workflows increase in popularity and the amount of multi-format media that professionals are managing continues to grow. Camera acquisition formats are various, many workflows employ proxy generation to save space and bandwi...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 October 2012

Discussing asset management

Half the stands at IBC claim to have asset management products – do they all do what you do?Yes, it seems like everyone claims to do asset management or workflows. And it confuses the hell out of buyers. So we need to take a step back and think about what we actually mean. So let’s break it down. First: assets. What are your assets? Well, that depe...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 October 2012