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Top Gear Test Drive Hovercam

Hovercam were contacted to work on some new ideas for Top Gear back in January 2009. The production team were keen on trying new ideas to put a different perspective on the cars that are tested for performance around their test track at Dunsfold, Surrey. Typically the program has featured two-dimensional imagery of super cars, so the idea was to br...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 September 2009

How to choose a broadcast display

How to choose a broadcast display…10 years ago, buying a CRT monitor was simply a case of buying the latest version of your facilities favourite brand in either Grade I or II. The advent of the LCD, HD and the demise of the CRT means we have now to try and decipher all the marketing jargon to work out which display best fits our needs. To help de-m...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 September 2009

Guide to Testing IPTV Technologies and Challenges Part 2

In Part 1 of this series we gave a background to IPTV and explained that the two-way nature of IPTV networks offers many advantages over traditional broadcast technologies, but also presents a number of technical challenges. In this part we will begin to examine some of the challenges faced by IPTV service providers, and the importance of Quality o...

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

A Guide to Testing IPTV: Technologies and Challenges Par...

High consumer expectations have put pressure on content producers, network operators and equipment manufacturers to deliver consistently high quality audio and video to their end users. The proliferation of enabling technologies has resulted in a wide variety of formats and standards adding to the complexity of the challenges faced in establishing...

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

From little acorns....

So what do we do? We have done little for television – our market place is much more modest. Parafotos has its origins in the early sixties when I started filming free fall parachuting– having to cope with a Bolex H16 strapped to the side of my helmet during the opening of the parachute was an interesting experience which no doubt accounted for an...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 May 2009

Eye to Eye Video acquisition and production

BVE2009 in London, February 17-19 offers UK-based programme-makers a useful opportunity to try out the latest video acquisition and production equipment ahead of NABshow2009 and its loud after-echo, IBC. The following outlines some of the new front-end kit likely to be on display at Earls Court. Cameras and camcordersARRI will be exhibiting its D-2...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 April 2009

Mixing with the wildlife on Big Cat Live

A crew of 73 travelled out from the UK for 6 days of BBC’s ‘Big Cat Live’ programmes from Kenya early in October. Most of us were flown in on single engine cessnas which took us from Nairobi across the great Rift valley & down towards Tanzania. From the moment we touched down on the rough dirt & asphalt landing strip in the middle of the Masai Mara...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 March 2009

Mobile communications Eye to Eye

Point to point communication via satellite is one of the most useful tools available to television and radio reporters in a world of fast news distribution. This short summary looks first at some of the newest SNG link kit and then at broadcast-related telecoms. Advent Communications has introduced an enhanced version of its 1.5m and 1.8m NewSwift...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 March 2009

How The SADiE LRX2 Is Making Location Multitrack Recordin...

Nearly twenty years ago I saw one of the first SADiE Digital Audio Workstations, which were just starting to make their mark as the first cost effective computer sound editor. I was so impressed with the concept that I immediately wanted one, even though I had no professional use for it whatsoever. Most of my work (particularly then) was in TV docu...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 March 2009

Camera rigs and lighting

The biggest single story at IBC this year, apart from the usual company-eats-company rumours, was the continuing progress of stereoscopy or '3D' as it is currently undersold. A stereoscopic snapshot may well be 3D (displaying length, width and height) but a stereoscopic movie is in fact 4D as it includes a timeline. John Logie Baird set the stereos...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 January 2009

New editing essentials

I like to think of myself as a bit of a pioneer at the frontier of the new age of HD Digital Cinematography. Investigating the best of the new technology available to our industry and evaluating its possible impact. I ‘d like to explain the impact of some of the particular examples of this today starting with:-XDCam EX Tapeless HD Camcorders. One w...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 December 2008

The largest fibre and Ethernet video SAN network in the w...

Out of the Ashes of the old Anglian TV studios EPIC has risen like a phoenix to become not only a major broadcasting hub in Norfolk but to rival traditional studios throughout Europe. With the financial backing of Norfolk County Council and the East of England development agency, EPIC has converted the old TV studios and installed a state of the ar...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 December 2008

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