KitPlus | Articles

Edirol R-09HR records Obama inauguration

When sound recordist Alan O’Duffy was contracted to travel to the USA to record interviews and atmospheres for a “feature documentary” about Barack Obama becoming the 44th President of the USA, one of the first pieces of kit he packed was Edirol’s R-09HR digital recorder. Irish film company, Alpha Films, wanted Alan to record on location first in N...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 May 2009

Eye to Eye. Whats new in test and measurement 2009

The transition from analogue to digital programme production, storage and delivery lulled some innocent folk into anticipating a world without need for test equipment. If required at all, so the thinking went, all signal analysis would be performed in software. Maybe someday. For now, the T&M sector remains alive and well. The following summary out...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 May 2009

What to do about staff in a recession 2009

In the second of a four part series, Peter Savage looks at the staffing minefield you encounter as you consider cutting staff costs to survive the recessionLast day of the calendar month and, yes, another batch of companies goes bust. The recession is biting, and probably harder than any I can remember. I shan’t get on my high horse again – about p...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 May 2009

JVC introduces new Final Cut Pro 6

Victor Company of Japan, Ltd. (JVC) further expands its ProHD camcorder line-up by introducing two professional solid state camcorders, the industry's first to store files in the native QuickTime format for Apple's Final Cut Pro™ onto reliable and inexpensive SDHC media cards. The compact hand-held GY-HM100 3-CCD camcorder is introduced in January...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 April 2009

Filters for HD Cinematography

The availability of low-cost HD camcorders with film-style tools, like 24 frame-per-second imaging and quality lenses, has put filmmaking capability in the hands of many. To achieve a film-style look, a director of photography can add a compliment of optical filters. Such filters can not only make color and other corrections to the image as it is s...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 April 2009

Mobile communications Eye to Eye

Point to point communication via satellite is one of the most useful tools available to television and radio reporters in a world of fast news distribution. This short summary looks first at some of the newest SNG link kit and then at broadcast-related telecoms. Advent Communications has introduced an enhanced version of its 1.5m and 1.8m NewSwift...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 March 2009

How The SADiE LRX2 Is Making Location Multitrack Recordin...

Nearly twenty years ago I saw one of the first SADiE Digital Audio Workstations, which were just starting to make their mark as the first cost effective computer sound editor. I was so impressed with the concept that I immediately wanted one, even though I had no professional use for it whatsoever. Most of my work (particularly then) was in TV docu...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 March 2009

Surround Sound For HD Broadcast

While 2008 may not be fondly remembered as a classic year if you work in certain industries, it's a fascinating time to be working in video media production or broadcast television. The steady move to high-definition at all stages of the video production process, is causing the biggest shake-up in technology and working practices since the introduc...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 February 2009

The future of Audio

Total audio has been around for 12 years now and I worked for the BBC for 13 years prior to that, I resigned in 1996 as a senior sound supervisor based at Pebble Mill. I firmly believe that sound is only noticed twice, the first time it was distorted and the second time it wasn’t there. When it all goes swimmingly it’s rarely mentioned. In the last...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 February 2009

RF Condenser Microphones why they are so good in the wet

A question I am often asked when people discover who I work for is “Why are ‘RF condenser’ microphones so good in the wet, being so much less susceptible to humidity problems than the more common ‘AF condenser’ microphones?”Basically, AF capacitor microphones use the capsule as a capacitor to store charge. With one fixed plate and the other free to...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 February 2009

Audio acquisition and production

Remembering the days when the average 'portable' sound recorder was heavy enough to induce a hernia, I have high respect for the capabilities of modern digital audio devices. Not least the solid-state recorders that have emerged as successors to the Sony-originated DAT and MiniDisk formats. But avoid anything that lacks XLR connectors unless you ar...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 February 2009

How to choose a Microphone

The microphone is probably the most important tool we use when recording sound. Plugging it into the best pre-amplifier will optimise the quality of the signal but no amount of processing will fix the wrong sound coming from your microphone. The device for turning movements in the air into an electrical signal is a creative instrument and should be...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 February 2009

The morality of meltdown

Apologies for breaking away from my usual broadcast-orientated comments but, when looking at the micro of our own world, sometimes big macro economic tsunamis crash in – and can have hugely damaging effects on our own small, flat, micro economic island. I’m writing this over the weekend when the US Congress is deciding whether it should bail out th...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 January 2009

Back in the days before microprocessors

Back in the days before microprocessors, Character Generators were members of the Graphics Department armed with sheets of Letraset and cardboard. The finished caption cards were then handed over to the stage crew who acted as "Caption Pullers". For a title caption sequence, cards were stacked in shooting order alternately into two separate piles (...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 November 2008

A brief history of television graphics

Thirty years ago, television captions were routinely created by sticking white Letraset characters onto black card. Credit rolls were possible using special devices which used long strips of black material onto which the Letraset was stuck, and which were literally rolled, either by an electric motor but sometimes even by hand. There were, of cours...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 October 2008