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

A decaying elephant...filmed

Assignment: To film 24/7 the six week decay of a dead five tonne adult elephant in the wild. Reason: to learn how the death creates six million calories of fat, meat and guts, feeding a whole new cycle of life. It was in early March 2010 when Tigress productions put in the call to TX for a meeting of minds, to discuss the idea of filming an elephan...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 May 2011

tv-bay questions

Name & TitleChristopher Pitbladdo, Creative Director at DB Creative TVWho are you? (about yourself and DB Creative)?I'm an editor who's been cutting broadcast television documentaries and commercials since 1997. Having spent time living and working in London, I decided to make a lifestyle choice, and go back to my hometown of Edinburgh. DB Creative...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 May 2011

Why do broadcasters need to take an interest in connected...

Why do broadcasters need to take an interest in connected TV?With ever-increasing amounts of content available, we’re heading towards a world where catch-up TV will enable you to access last week’s content as easily as today’s. This doesn’t mean to say that linear broadcasts are over; I would expect broadcast delivery to continue to dominate and fo...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 April 2011

HD Video on your website

IntroductionVideo has become an affordable way to effectively connect with your customers. Whether you are a content producer or equipment manufacturer there are fewer ways to communicate a message more quickly, concisely and with as much impact. This article looks at how the current state of online video, what the opportunity is, and how to get st...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 April 2011

BVE 2011 retrospect

BVE 2011 had much of the buoyancy and buzz of an IBC. The organisers claimed an attendance of over 15,500 visitors and 240 exhibiting companies. Many of the UK-based stalwarts who make the annual pilgrimage to Amsterdam could be seen exploring the show, confirming that BVE is now taken seriously by mainstream broadcasters. It is perhaps over-optimi...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 April 2011

The 4 Golden Rules of Streaming

In November 2009 a Florida-based web design company ran a series of tests on their website. Their bounce rate (the % of visitors to their site that hit their home page but go no further on a site) started at 45% - a barely acceptable rate. Over the course of a month, they added graphic after graphic to their site. The effect was catastrophic with a...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 April 2011

Eyeballing 3D errors

Standard-issue human eyeballs are very adaptive and clever. Of course it’s the massively powerful image processing in the visual cortex of the brain that really allows us to resolve 3D images. Stereographers have been very practised over the years in achieving good camera set-up with only simple tools. The most common test uses a picture monitor sh...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 March 2011

Ask the experts - Monitoring

What are the latest innovations in monitoring?For both film and broadcast work, in addition to the fact that the picture must be true, without motion artifacts or aliasing, for a lot of applications you can also add that the picture must be processed in real time - less than one frame or one picture in progressive mode – so the main innovations are...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 March 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

True Colours Shine Through With CCS

When you are a broadcast engineer working in front of a stack of LCD monitors, seeing a significant difference between the brightness and colour of each monitor can be both annoying and tiring on the eyes. Worse still, if you in a Master Control Room and the pictures have taken on a sickly green hue, how do you know that it is just the monitors at...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 March 2011

Tape goes West at UWE

Three years ago a convoy of white vans arrived at the Faculty of Arts at the University of West of England in Bristol. An hour later its entire stock of SVHS camcorders, linear editing decks and analog tape were history. In came Adobe Premiere, Final Cut Pro and Panasonic digital camcorders. Now 20 professional tapeless HD camcorders have taken up...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 March 2011

The revolutionary PHABRIX SxA.

The revolution in screen technology has seen a massive miniaturisation of most test equipment in the last ten years, and this coupled with a large increase in the amount that can be fitted into a small package courtesy of VLSI has meant that a new breed of hand held test and measurement devices have come onto the market. The PHABRIX Sx range is jus...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 March 2011

Monitoring digital TV signal quality

The new R&S®DVMS1 and R&S®DVMS4 DTV monitoring systems keep track of the quality of digital TV signals – they detect all relevant errors at the RF and transport stream levels. They provide parallel monitoring of up to four signals and carry out in-depth signal analysis. These capabilities combine with an ultra-compact size of just one height unit a...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 March 2011

Using Multipoint Monitoring to Ensure Reliable Digital Vi...

Because the quality and bandwidth-efficiency advantages of digital over analog methods have made digital transport preferred, the world continues its migration to an all-digital approach to delivering video signals – from the studio through distribution networks to the end-viewer. As with any new technology, adopting and integrating digital video d...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 March 2011