KitPlus | Articles

League of Legends European Masters

ESL, the world’s largest esports company, relied on a full Blackmagic Design live production workflow at the inaugural League of Legends European Masters tournament. The new league launched this Spring, with the first split taking place in the UK, specifically, at the historic Haymarket Theatre in Leicester. The European Masters tournament is the p...

Submitted by Sam Deans

Published 18 July 2018

G-Teching Storage to another level

That heart-dropping, cold-sweat evoking moment your external hard drive fails to connect to the computer and you realise the precious project you’ve been working on for weeks is lost for good (unless you want to spank hundreds on a recovery service that may or may not retrieve some of the mangled data!)Ah, the fun of video storage - it may not be t...

Submitted by Phil Vinter

Published 18 July 2018

Slow Motion Video Techniques

Well, those kinds of higher frame rates still pretty much belong to the big guns. The Phantom Flex will give you 2,000 frames a second at ultra HD or 1,000 fps at 4K. It produces truly stunning images, but at a price that is beyond the reach of all but those with the biggest budgets. The camera retails at a cool £100,000 (I’ll have three please) wi...

Submitted by Phil

Published 07 June 2018

Tips and Tricks to Giving Sci-Fi a New Look

From Terminator to Blade Runner, Alien, and even E.T., science fiction is a genre that will never fail to capture an audience’s imagination. It’s also a genre that encompasses so much more than just space crafts or time travel: frequently providing filmmakers with a platform from which to not only highlight social and political issues, but also exp...

Submitted by Mathieu Marano

Published 07 June 2018

The Pitfalls of Online File Sharing and Sending Services

Easy-to-use, readily-accessible, and consumer-oriented, online file sharing platforms such as Dropbox and Google Drive are, to end users, a pleasant replacement to older file transfer methods such as FTP. FTP is complex to use and requires IT intervention to make almost any change. The pain associated with FTP, which was developed in the 1970s, is...

Submitted by Mike Nash

Published 07 June 2018

Betting Industry Transformed by Video Technology

In the betting and gaming industry, the streaming of live sports from across the globe is a big business. It’s proven that revenues increase when bettors are able to watch the event that they have placed a bet on, providing a far more engaging experience. At Sports Information Services (SIS), we transmit in excess of 620,000 hours of live sports co...

Submitted by chris thornton

Published 07 June 2018

Capturing the spirit of Mexico

Filmmaker, director and editor, Leonardo Dalessandri first came to fame with his stunning video ‘Watchtower of Turkey,’ which with more than 200 million views, garnered the accolade of Best Vimeo Video in 2014. His vibrant images are combined with a unique editing style, incorporating slow motion, hyper lapses and invisible match cuts to produce ge...

Submitted by Leonardo Dalessandri

Published 12 February 2018

Steadicam M-1 Volt: Tried and Tested

Early in November some of us lucky Steadicam Operators from around the UK were invited to try out the new Tiffen M1 Volt, which is essentially an electronic motorized horizon assist unit attached to the gimbal of the latest Steadicam M1. Is it a good idea? As experienced Steadicam Operators, directors or producers, why would we be interested? Let’s...

Submitted by John E Fry

Published 12 February 2018

2018: A Changing of the Guard

The guys at KitPlus asked me if I could write about what I think is going to happen in 2018 – a feel, or mood, piece of what we might see this year. I’m not sure why they asked me but perhaps it’s because I’ve been around the industry a long time. Anyway, to look forward I think sometimes it’s best to look back as history has a habit of repeating i...

Submitted by Peter Savage 2

Published 12 February 2018

State of the Nation - Telling Imaginary Stories

In mid-October, Nokia issued a press release from its headquarters in Finland, announcing a refocusing of its business, with a growing emphasis on digital health. Read on a few paragraphs, though, and you find this statement: In digital media, the slower-than-expected development of the VR market means that Nokia Technologies plans to reduce invest...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs - new

Published 02 November 2017

Looking back at IBC 2017

IBC feels like a bit of a dim and damp memory now, but a few over-riding memories do remain however, not least of which was the Arri party to celebrate its 100th year. It was like an old-school manufacturers IBC/NAB party, back when manufacturers had marketing budgets, and lots of sales people. It got IBC off to a great start; thanks Arri. Among th...

Submitted by Duncan Payne

Published 02 November 2017

Video Tape recorders cannnot die.

In its simplest form, Tape Archiving requires:- 1) Playback decks 2) Tape Cleaning Facilities 3) Tape Baking Incubator/Oven 4) Ingest Platforms 5) Storage This article concentrates on what is often described as the weakest link, namely 1) above i.e. the Playback Decks and what could be another weak link, namely 2) i.e. Tape Cleaning Facilities. I h...

Submitted by KitPlus

Published 02 November 2017

Leveraging licensed broadcast spectrum assets

There are several different approaches to transmitting live and file-based content from the field to the studio. Traditional microwave Electronic News Gathering (ENG) provides high bandwidth, high-quality transmission with low latency. Using the secure, dedicated BAS spectrum keeps control in a broadcasters hands. The past few years have seen a shi...

Submitted by John Payne

Published 02 November 2017

State of the Nation - part 2

This is, of course, the IBC issue of this splendid magazine. Much of the rest of its pages are filled with what you will see there, or (in some cases) what vendors and their marketing communications agencies want you to see there. This year’s IBC is a particularly special event, though. It is 50 years – almost to the day – since the very first Inte...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs - new

Published 19 October 2017

Image processing with Ikegami

What do you see as the trend thats most impacting the image-processing sector at this moment in time? Audiences are moving towards a world where it is an expectation that when consuming content they want complete immersion. The explosion of virtual reality (VR) in to our market is testament to that. Progression has been a trend that has run through...

Submitted by Michael Latzch

Published 19 October 2017