KitPlus | Articles

Ask the experts with Shotoku

by James EddershawIssue 82 - October 2013 Shotoku has been around for quite some time, but for those who may not be familiar, can you explain who you are and what you do?Shotoku Broadcast Systems is an international leader in the manufacture and marketing of a full range of camera support products including manual and robotic pedestals as well as v...

Submitted by James Eddershaw

Published 01 November 2013

Den Lennie talks to Nigel Wilkes from Panasonic

by Den LennieIssue 82 - October 2013 Den hosted a half-hour live show from our studio at IBC in Amsterdam where he talked to Nigel about the latest developments from Panasonic. You can find the full show on our website at http://broadcastshow.com/liveTell me whats new at Panasonic. Okay, when we talked last, we spoke about a new camera called the P...

Submitted by Den Lennie

Published 01 November 2013

Why broadcasters need to be aware of the advent of HEVC

by Kanaan JemiliIssue 82 - October 2013 High-Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), or H.265, has been the talk of the industry since gaining international standards approval earlier this year. HEVC is a new video compression standard and the successor to H.264/MPEG-4 AVC (Advanced Video Coding). Developed by the ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group and I...

Submitted by Kanaan Jemili

Published 01 November 2013

A runaway success at Graduate Fashion Week with Blackmagi...

Issue 79 - July 2013 Encouraging and nurturing raw young talent, Graduate Fashion Week (GFW) is one of the largest international platforms of its kind. Showcasing the future of fashion, over 1,000 aspiring designers descended on London during June for Graduate Fashion Week 2013. Made up of 22 catwalk shows and an exhibition with more than 40 univer...

Submitted by KitPlus

Published 01 August 2013

Do you have firmware deficiency syndrome?

For 5 days in June 2013 we did a survey on Facebook and our own website and asked how often camera users had gone online to check for firmware updates…Checked online for a firmware upgrade….. …within last 30 days 18%…within last 90 days 9%…within last 12 months 3%…never checked online 70%We could have gone further to see which users used what camer...

Submitted by KitPlus

Published 01 July 2013

The evolution of camera connectivity and the HPX600

Tape in, tape out. Cable in, video out. Card in, card out. Simpler times: productions orchestrated by an army of runners, tape op’s and engineers, with transmission to TV, ingest via a VTR and a room dedicated to storing media. Today’s production team has changed. It’s become a small elite squad, tasked with multi-channel playout, multi-resolution...

Submitted by Kieron Seth#

Published 01 July 2013

Live from the supermarket car park

What’s Cooking? is the new daily daytime TV show beamed from a temporary studio in the car park of a supermarket. As chefs prepare dishes live on air, a roving camera crew relays pictures from the aisles of the shop while Channel 4 viewers interact with the presenters and cooks via social media. Produced by Superhero TV, technical integration and i...

Submitted by Kieron Seth#

Published 01 May 2013

Mobile news gathering with Will Strauss

by Will StraussSo, here’s a scenario. You’re a TV news editor and a story breaks. Your reporter and cameraman (or reporter/cameraman) can get to the scene no bother. But all your satellite trucks are someplace else. What do you do? Umm…. Thanks to developments in transmission technology the ENG scenario described above is pretty much redundant thes...

Submitted by Will Strauss#

Published 01 May 2013

A very useful tool: Atomos Samurai reviewed

By Stephen J. BrandInternational cameraman Stephen J. Brand’s work takes him to some far-flung places. As well as work for BBC Channel 5, ITV and Channel 4, Stephen recently spent 6 weeks in the Middle East filming a wildlife commercial for Qatar TV using a Sony EX3 and an Atomos Samurai, which he describes as a ‘‘very useful little tool”. Here, he...

Submitted by Stephen J. Brand

Published 01 April 2013

The joy of field editing

In the world of remote working, cloud storage and instant news, the ability to edit on location at a shoot has become a pre-requisite. Only a few years ago, field editing used to be merely about the quick rough cut, the assembly of proxy files or simply the ingest of media in an edit-friendly format. These days, however, energy efficient, high perf...

Submitted by Kieron Seth#

Published 01 February 2013

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

Next generation monitoring - in the studio and in the fie...

HD pan, tilt and zoom cameras are very popular in self-operated studios, conference rooms, theatres and houses of worship. Typically, PTZ systems are remotely controlled by RS-422 or over Ethernet, with video signals routed over SDI cable into the production desk. Previously, live monitoring was only possible via the switcher that could be as remot...

Submitted by Kieron Seth#

Published 01 December 2012

Understanding and Managing the Piracy Continuum

Content owners, content distributors and security vendors have traditionally characterized digital “pirates” as a single malicious group with ill intentions. This, however, is seriously short-sighted because it is an overgeneralization that not only overshadows true consumer behavior, but results in misguided piracy mitigation tactics and missed re...

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

An Epic Journey for the Summer Games

With the abundance of international sporting events taking place this summer, broadcast technologies and logistics are being put to the test across the board. Beyond the typical coordination and on site expertise required for broadcasts, many companies face not only longer engagements but aggressive turnaround times and long travel distances betwee...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 September 2012