Articles

Articles, opinion and reviews from the industry. It is free to add your own articles, just login / register and follow the links in your KitHub panel.

Your search for playout has produced 0 results.Clear filter

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

AdVision TV: Editing... Live


Glastonbury - it's on TV. Premier League Football? On TV. Not subscribing to the right satellite channel? Worried about missing a big event? Try Googling it, try YouTube. You would have thought that live events would struggle to survive in the face of this wall of media coverage. But rock concerts, sports matches, conferences and venues across the...

Submitted by Kieron Seth#
Published 01 May 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

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

Camp, ash, irritation and embarrassment


I am writing these words in the last days of December and you are reading them in the first days of January, so it seems like a good opportunity to look back on 2010 and see what we toilers in television have learnt. Against the odds there were some good programmes on the box. Astoundingly, ITV delivered a drama series that was just like the good o...

Submitted by Bob Pank#
Published 01 February 2011

Expanding Arqiva into HD playout


ATG Broadcast recently completed a major SD to HD upgrade for Arqiva broadcast transmission centre at Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire. The expanded system enables Arqiva to process and transmit four fully-operational 1080i HD channels as well as six new SD channels. It includes the installation and equipping of a server-based ingest suite, playout...

Submitted by Bob Pank#
Published 01 December 2010

Ravensbourne 21st Century Broadcast Education


Just over eighteen months ago, Adrian Scott of the Bakewell House Consultancy was commissioned to guide Ravensbourne through the EU Tendering process to appoint a Systems Integrator to transform the broadcast facilities of Ravensbourne as it moved into its new multi-million pound home at Greenwich Peninsula. Winning the contract, TSL rose to the ch...

Submitted by Bob Pank#
Published 01 December 2010

Deskilling or reskilling


I recently went to a demonstration of some really terrific new technology. This is not a technology column so I do not propose to go into too much detail about why I was impressed. I mention it because it started me thinking about a more fundamental issue about our industry today. The demonstration was at the offices of Ibis, a company which has al...

Submitted by Bob Pank#
Published 01 December 2010

3D to see at IBC 2010


IBC2010 marks the fourth year when the new wave of Stereoscopic 3D took hold at the show. That’s three years of time for development and implementation. While cinema is racing ahead, taking a good extra percentage of people at the door who pay a 3D premium price – television in Europe is only just beginning. Sky is the pioneer for the UK, going on...

Submitted by Bob Pank#
Published 01 October 2010

Digital Archiving in Media Workflows


Why is there a growing need for digital archiving in the broadcast and post-production industry?Across all segments of the media and entertainment industry, the past decade has seen a fundamental transformation, where virtually the entire industry moved from tape or film to digital media. This change required investing in digital equipment and proc...

Submitted by Bob Pank#
Published 01 October 2010

Ensuring the longevity of an archive


The role of the archive has changed dramatically over the last few years. Every broadcaster in the world, regardless of their size, has the tools at their disposal to unlock their assets, digitise and repurpose their content for renewed monetisation and, in some cases, for the benefit of historic value. Tapping into new revenue streams is essential...

Submitted by Bob Pank#
Published 01 October 2010

Making the content factory a reality


The expression “content factory” has been around for a while and in a number of contexts. Is this a realistic concept? Can we – producers, facilities, broadcasters – embrace the idea of process in the manufacturing sense, or is making content for television and the new digital platforms too different to making biscuits or cars?We are naturally resi...

Submitted by Bob Pank#
Published 01 September 2010

Game, Set and Media Management


A week into Wimbledon and my chances of getting there this year seemed to be dwindling fast. A late call on Friday afternoon though from Timeline TV rekindled my hopes of not only seeing a bit of tennis but getting an exclusive tour around the Wimbledon Broadcast Centre. Always one to grab the opportunity to see both tennis and kit in action my nex...

Submitted by Bob Pank#
Published 01 August 2010

How to create and brand a live TV experience online


Late last year, Pixel Power worked closely with the Perform Group to brand the first ever live England football match online, a landmark event. Before we discuss that in detail, there is a wider question to answer: what do we mean by “branding”? Branding is fundamentally how you differentiate your channel; how you make it stand out in the crowd and...

Submitted by Bob Pank#
Published 01 July 2010

Does one size fits all


Economic realities are driving most technical industries toward considering solutions that combine what began as stand-alone, discrete devices into single, multifunction systems. In the broadcast and multimedia production arenas, character generators (CGs) are among the discrete systems now being offered in multifunction platforms. The assumption i...

Submitted by Bob Pank#
Published 01 June 2010