KitPlus | Articles

What a difference a decade makes

by Dick Hobbs Issue 100 - April 2015 If you have got to the back of this magazine, you cannot fail to have noticed that it is issue number 100. I asked Simon Tillyer and Matt Robbins, the dynamic duo behind the publication, how it all started. "The website was initially just a project,\" Simon said, "and when Matt arrived in the summer of 2005 we c...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.

Published 01 May 2015

Why video codecs matter

by Larry Jordan Issue 99 - March 2015 Video codecs confuse a lot of people. But understanding codecs is critical to just about every element of video production, editing and distribution. Codec is an acronym that stands for "COmpressor/DECompressor.\" It is easy to get intimidated by all the technical jargon surrounding codecs, but, at their core,...

Submitted by Larry Jordan#

Published 01 April 2015

Outside broadcast gets a breath of fresh air

Issue 99 - March 2015Capturing what\'s happening remote from the studio has moved beyond the broadcast truck parked street-side. Your audiences are hungry. While they have the ability to bring the world of news, entertainment, sports and information to their doorsteps - wherever that may be and on whatever device they choose - someone still needs t...

Submitted by KitPlus

Published 01 April 2015

High Resolution graphics for 4k and beyond

by Jesper Gawell Issue 96 - December 2014 It seems like 4K is everywhere these days - it\'s the dominant topic at broadcasting trade shows. Is there substance behind the hype? Will it transform television the way HD broadcasting did? Clearly, one of the "next big things\" in the media and entertainment world is higher resolutions and 4K delivery o...

Submitted by Jesper Gawell

Published 01 January 2015

4k Streaming: a Key OTT Differentiator

by Keith Wymbs Issue 96 - December 2014 OTT streaming providers are amongst the first to offer 4K UHD TV services. In fact, 4K UHD may be seen as a key differentiator for OTT services such as Netflix and M-GO as they compete with pay TV operators according to a recent report from ABI Research. Netflix has launched 4K video streaming of shows such a...

Submitted by Keith Wymbs

Published 01 January 2015

Confidence Monitoring in the Modern Broadcast Environment

by Graham Taylor Issue 95 - November 2014 Monitoring equipment is often the last element considered in a broadcast system build, and getting its deployment just right is not always a top priority. However, most operations managers and broadcast engineers readily acknowledge the critical role that effective monitoring plays in making their jobs easi...

Submitted by Graham Taylor

Published 01 December 2014

Move and Deliver

Issue 94 - October 2014You may not have heard of the open source video company Kaltura. But you probably will have heard of Harmonic. Together the two companies made an announcement at IBC that is indicative of where multi-screen, multi-platform TV is heading. They have teamed up to develop and market a cloud-based video infrastructure and OTT TV p...

Submitted by Will Strauss#

Published 01 November 2014

Manage and Monitor

Issue 93 - September 2014 In less than a month’s time, British television producers will be asked to deliver their programmes to broadcasters as files rather than tape. Some have been doing it for years. For others, it’s a whole new world. Fundamentally, the change is just replacing physical items like tapes, labels and VT reports with their zeros...

Submitted by Will Strauss#

Published 01 October 2014

Move and Deliver

Issue 93 - September 2014 In an industry that hands out a lot of awards, it can be easy to take the revelation of each golden statuette or glass embossed brick with a pinch of salt. When NATAS hands out a Technology and Engineering Emmy, however, people sit up and take notice. This month Video Services Forum, Media Links, Nevion, DVBlink, Inc, Harr...

Submitted by Will Strauss#

Published 01 October 2014

The brains behind a no brainer

by Thomas Dove Issue 92 - August 2014 It’s perhaps not surprising that a lot of professional video and audio editors don’t fully grasp the minutia of file-based media formats and delivery specifications such as those established by the Digital Production Partnership (DPP). After all, an editor’s job is to is to make compelling content, whether for...

Submitted by Thomas Dove

Published 01 September 2014

Centralised Video Solutions for 3M campus

by Neil Hutchins Issue 91 - July 2014 3Ms sprawling headquarters in Minnesotas Twin Cities hosts the companys central engineering, sales and marketing activity. As such, there is a lot of video moving in a lot of different directions: at any point during the day at least one of the campuss 18, fibre-connected venues is in use, whether for a new pro...

Submitted by Neil Hutchins#

Published 01 August 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

Proprietary vs. off the shelf hardware for OTT video deli...

by Nivedita Nouval Issue 90 - June 2014 What are the main equipment at stake in an OTT video delivery system?An OTT video delivery system consists of an array of video servers that are able to store and stream content according to different formats defined by standards (e.g., HLS, HSS, HDS, and MPEG-DASH). Traditionally, there is an origin server,...

Submitted by Nivedita Nouval

Published 01 July 2014

Audio over IP: A more flexible distribution landscape

by Werner Drews Issue 89 - May 2014 In recent yearsx and months IP has become a very important part of the radio broadcasters technical toolkit. As an audio technology company with a fast-developing range of audio distribution products, we have experienced and responded to rapidly mounting demand for IP capability. Broadcasters see IP as a way of a...

Submitted by Werner Drews

Published 01 June 2014

Audio monitoring: critical to visual media services

by Simen Frostad Issue 89 - May 2014 Its a fact of TV broadcasting that audiences will tolerate reduced visual quality much more readily than any impairment to the audio. So long as the audio continues and is intelligible, viewers tend to put up with glitches in the video or even temporary loss of picture. But if a broadcaster lets the audio qualit...

Submitted by Simen Frostad

Published 01 June 2014