KitPlus | Articles

The evolving art of sports television

Given the choice of watching a major live event on site or via television, most people would opt for the real thing. Sure, you have to get to the venue, perhaps queue to buy a ticket, find your seat or maybe stand for hours. If it is a football match, the audience in front will probably stand up for a better view of each goal, completely blocking y...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 April 2012

Want to take the road?

3D Storm, the distributor of NewTek products in EMEA integrated a MINI Countryman with a complete and fully operational HD Live Production system. When 3D Storm started the MINI LiveManTM project, the concept was to showcase the latest production systems developed by NewTek TM. Two key words: Compact, all-terrain. MINI cars were used at several occ...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 April 2012

Audio loudness for video post

For decades audiences have been complaining about the differences in perceived loudness between different parts of a television service, most commonly that the commercials seem louder than the programmes. Finally broadcasters, prompted in many cases by regulators, have addressed the issue. Over the last decade research has determined what it is tha...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 February 2012

Real-Time Frame Rate Conversion in a Tapeless Workflow

Introduction - (for the full diagramatic version of this article please click on the magazine cover above.)When content moved within facilities and around the world on tape or via live feeds, frame rate and format conversions were easily achieved using real-time hardware converters such as Snell's Alchemist Ph.C-HD. As broadcasters and content owne...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 February 2012

COUNTING DOWN TO BVE NORTH

The engines are revving in the countdown to BVE North, the new event that is designed to serve the needs of the rapidly growing broadcast and production industry in the North. The exhibition and seminar program will address the myriad challenges facing broadcast professionals, from multi-platform broadcasting to the realities of 3D for television,...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 November 2011

IBC2011 must sees

Over 1,300 exhibitors will be supporting IBC2011, each bringing perhaps one, two or three new or enhanced products. My task is to distill these down to the 20 devices likely to be of greatest interest to TV-Bay readers, so far as that is possible several weeks before the show opens. As a recent convert to OS X, I note with gloom that Apple remains...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 September 2011

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

tv-bay Questions

Who are you?I have the pleasure of being CEO of two companies! First being the diRoom, which is boutique post-production facility for colour grading, digital intermediates and delivery masters. We are all filmmakers at diRoom, so we tailor every project workflow to be an entire picture post solution for filmmakers or a service that can fill the gap...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 March 2011

TV Bay Questions

Who are you? (about yourself and Online Creative)I am the owner of Brighton based post production facility, Online Creative Ltd. I started the company in 1999 primarily as an edit facility which has since developed further into a production company and training facility. We have recently invested in a fully equipped grading suite to add to the serv...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 January 2011

Eye to Eye New post-production kit at IBC 2009

This alphabetical overview of new video and film post-production kit at IBC 2009 was going to start with Apple but the company pulled out of both NAB and IBC in 2008. I begin instead with Avid which has certified its Media Composer, NewsCutter, Symphony and DS software to run on the new HP Z series Workstations – the HP Z800 and HP Z400. Avid custo...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 October 2009

Converting for displays

Behind every great display there’s a great converter. Ever since television started to go digital in studios and post production, the number of digital formats has grown. For a while the television standards bodies got a grip and succeeded in pulling nearly everyone along the ‘SDI’ track; now itself expanded to HD-SDI and 3G-SDI – carrying a multit...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 September 2009

Eye to eye on Broadcast content management 2009

Content asset management is one of the fastest developing areas of the entire broadcast business. Its advantages over old-style film and videotape libraries are so widely recognised that they hardly need repeating. NAB provided an opportunity to look at new advances from some of the key players. AP introduced a new module for its ENPS 6.0 and 7.0....

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 August 2009

Eye to Eye File-based content distribution 2009

The rapidly divergent pattern of broadcast market development resembles the branches of a fast-growing tree. But there is one crucial aspect in which the industry is quite obviously converging: the transition from video and audio to file-based content distribution and delivery. This would have happened anyway given the increasing popularity of the...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 June 2009