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Eye to Eye: Content Protection 2009

In the early days of audio and video recording, the limitations of analogue devices provided a fairly high level of content protection by ensuring that any captured signal was either inferior to the original or fairly soon became so. Optical digital media changed all that, allowing practically perfect copies of speech, music, still images and movin...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 November 2009

Automation in Uncertain Times

In light of the unfavourable economic outlook broadcasters need to protect their investment in technology like never before. There is a high chance that some products designed to make the broadcast environment more efficient will become obsolete and this in turn will have a knock-on and negative effect on workflow in transmission suite. Although br...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 October 2009

Automation in Uncertain Times

In light of the unfavourable economic outlook broadcasters need to protect their investment in technology like never before. There is a high chance that some products designed to make the broadcast environment more efficient will become obsolete and this in turn will have a knock-on and negative effect on workflow in transmission suite. Although br...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 September 2009

Eye to eye Picture displays and multiviewers 2009

The transition from cathode-ray tubes to flat-panel display devices for broadcast picture monitoring was a long time coming but is now almost complete. Grade 1 CRTs from suppliers such as Ikegami and Sony are still purchased in small numbers for monitoring in quality-conscious playout centres and post-production houses. For every other broadcast ap...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 September 2009

Modern multiviewers

The monitoring of multiple video sources has been simplified and costs greatly reduced by the use of multiviewers. These make use of two principle technologies: large high-resolution video screens and the real-time resizing of video. The market is now well developed and provides a wide choice of specifications such as the number of inputs and their...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 September 2009

Beating the Blu-ray coding blues

Tommy Simonsson runs SitoCad in Stockholm, Sweden, a professional video production company specialising in industrial work, conferences and weddings. He shoots in high definition on a Sony PMW-EX3 camcorder, and finishes his projects using the Grass Valley EDIUS nonlinear editor. “When I show them what HD looks like, most of my customers choose Blu...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 August 2009

Automation in Uncertain Times

In light of the unfavourable economic outlook broadcasters need to protect their investment in technology like never before. There is a high chance that some products designed to make the broadcast environment more efficient will become obsolete and this in turn will have a knock-on and negative effect on workflow in transmission suite. Although br...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 August 2009

NAB 2009 report

By general consensus, this year's NAB Spring Convention, or 'NABshow' as it styles itself, was one of the best ever. Wider aisles and a respectable rather than manic level of attendance made the event, in the words of one exhibitor, 'Business Class'. NAB was always the prototype show where you could sense the directions in which manufacturers were...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 July 2009

PHABRIX storming ahead at NAB with eye and jitter

It is not often that a product is released that encapsulates so distinctly the essence of British ingenuity but the new SxE hand held test and measurement instrument with eye and jitter functionality from PHABRIX may just have set itself in that mould. Having successfully launched the PHABRIX SxA, a three in one portable testing device at IBC2008,...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 June 2009

Audio acquisition and production

Remembering the days when the average 'portable' sound recorder was heavy enough to induce a hernia, I have high respect for the capabilities of modern digital audio devices. Not least the solid-state recorders that have emerged as successors to the Sony-originated DAT and MiniDisk formats. But avoid anything that lacks XLR connectors unless you ar...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 February 2009

Back in the days before microprocessors

Back in the days before microprocessors, Character Generators were members of the Graphics Department armed with sheets of Letraset and cardboard. The finished caption cards were then handed over to the stage crew who acted as "Caption Pullers". For a title caption sequence, cards were stacked in shooting order alternately into two separate piles (...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 November 2008