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The new world of playout

Consumers know what they expect from a television channel. They expect programmes, of course, but they also know they are going to get commercials, trailers, station idents, graphics, break bumpers, squeezebacks and hot starts, bugs and brand identities, and more. Significantly, they expect these to arrive smoothly and seamlessly, in consistent hig...

Submitted by James Gilbert

Published 22 July 2016

OTT - is it over the top or business as usual

OTT is a term that is casually bandied about as though everyone knows what it is, but is there really a single definition? Hopefully this little guide will have you speaking the jargon like a native!OTT stands for Over The Top. If you're into linguistics, then the first question that comes to mind is "What are A & B in the sentence: A is going over...

Submitted by Bruce Devlin

Published 22 July 2016

Canon C300 MkII Reviewed

The Tech It 's been just over eight months since the release of the updated C300 camera the C300 MkII and almost five years since Vincent Laforet shot Mobius with a pre-production C300. In a landscape dominated by self-shooters and the continued rise of internet video, the C300 perhaps surprisingly like it 's forefather the 5DMkII came to become a...

Submitted by Ben Sherriff

Published 14 June 2016

5 Things I Saw At NAB

by Peter Savage Issue 113 - May 2016 ARRI Trinity stabilisationIt may look like something that was dreamt up for a sci-fi film but the Trinity stabilisation system is a truly remarkable bit of kit that is most certainly real. Available as an upgrade to the Artemis or a third-party camera stabiliser, it consists of a compact and lightweight two-axis...

Submitted by Peter Savage 2

Published 13 May 2016

Our Time At NAB 2016

by Beth Zarkosh Issue 113 - May 2016 We were lucky enough to visit this year\'s NAB Show in Las Vegas, and we must saythere were some real treats on show! Here\'s just a few things that stood out for us and worth keeping your eye on. Virtual Reality & 360 Degree VideosOne thing that really stood out for us was the virtual reality filmmaking devices...

Submitted by Beth Zarkosh

Published 13 May 2016

The Power Of IP

by Jamie Shepperd Issue 112 - April 2016 There is little doubt that the adoption of IP technology across the broadcast workflow can bring significant benefit to broadcasters. IP is ubiquitous, it\'s based on common standards and broadcast can benefit further from the wealth of expertise and technology that exist in other industries. While we are st...

Submitted by Jamie Shepperd

Published 25 April 2016

Square-division versus two-sample interleave

by Kevin Salvidge Issue 110 - February 2016 Square-division versus two-sample interleaveFollowing on from a very successful IBC2015 in Amsterdam, we have been travelling across Europe to hold follow-on discussions with production companies and outside broadcast facility-providers. This series of customer meetings, product demonstrations and evaluat...

Submitted by Kevin Salvidge

Published 16 March 2016

How to Deliver Live and VOD UHD Content With Minimum Band...

by Thierry Fautier Issue 108 - December 2015 Consumers are lighting the path toward worldwide acceptance of Ultra HD (UHD). Recent research from Eutelsat Communications revealed that consumers are willing to pay up to 10 a month to benefit from the increased sharpness, immersion and vivid color that UHD content offers. Theyre also willing to invest...

Submitted by Thierry Fautier

Published 17 December 2015

How to solve a problem like 4k

with Peter Savage Issue 108 - December 2015 A lack of standards and content is holding back sales of 4k television sets and, until that situation changes, there is very little the consumer electronics business can do about it, writes Peter SavageSince the late 1960s and early 70s, when we began to ditch our old black and white TV sets in favour of...

Submitted by Peter Savage 2

Published 15 December 2015

UHD HDR HFR WCG Made for each other, or too much too soo...

by Bruce Devlin Issue 108 - December 2015 The majority of LCD screens rolling out of the huge factories are now 4K-ready. They have a lot of pixels, and were not going to be chopping them up with a hacksaw to make small screens in a hurry. Even cheap mobile phones have more pixels than the big TV set that hangs on the wall of the front room in my h...

Submitted by Bruce Devlin

Published 15 December 2015

Test & Measurement: Ask the expert

by Alan Wheable Issue 107 - November 2015 What should an Eye diagram look like?There are basically two different approaches to capturing the Eye Diagram from an SDI signal. These are real-time capture (employed by Real Time oscilloscopes) and signal subsampling (employed by Sampling oscilloscopes such as the Omnitek Ultra 4k Tool Box). All broadcas...

Submitted by Alan Wheable

Published 01 December 2015

Circles of Confusion

by Graham Reed Issue 106 - October 2015 We seemed to have gone from SD to HD to UHD in a very short time but has lens technology kept up?Most camera manufactures now produce 4K cameras but they often look very similar to HD cameras, are they just the same with a 4k chip and also have they added 4k lens? They publish very little information about th...

Submitted by graham reed

Published 01 November 2015

Back to the future

by Dick Hobbs Issue 103 - July 2015 I was recently talking to the estimable James Gilbert, who runs the equally estimable graphics and automation specialist Pixel Power. He said something that made me think. We were talking about scalability, and he said that it works in two directions. There is the sort of scalability that we all readily understan...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.

Published 01 August 2015

On-camera monitors for today and tomorrow

by Paul Isaacs Issue 102 - June 2015 1) Why is monitoring so important for productions?Image quality is a central concern for users of any video product, so monitoring should be one of the foremost considerations for cinematographers and videographers. Along similar lines, the ability of consumer televisions and a range of personal devices to displ...

Submitted by Paul Issacs

Published 01 July 2015

Those pesky scientists

by Dick Hobbs Issue 102 - June 2015 This month\'s picture is of something I was given on a visit to the Grass Valley camera factory in Breda, maybe 10 years ago. I think it is a thing of beauty, which is why it sits in pride of place on top of the wine cabinet. It is the sharp end an HD system camera: the optical block and a CCD imager. We saw in t...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.

Published 01 July 2015