KitPlus | Articles

CLASS - FIMS: A plug-and-play solution

by Bruce Devlin Issue 106 - October 2015 No two broadcasters are alike. Meaning, that just about every broadcaster in the world uses its own, customized workflow comprised of any number of proprietary tools and solutions, specially designed to work together. With so many systems with proprietary interfaces in existence, IT-based media projects requ...

Submitted by Bruce Devlin

Published 01 November 2015

The future is smaller, more powerful batteries

by Steve Emmett Issue 106 - October 2015 High-quality cameras are getting smaller and lighter all the time, making them suitable for new applications. Nearly every production we see today includes shots acquired by drone and gimbal mounted cameras. The batteries required to power these cameras have to meet new criteria. They must be able to withsta...

Submitted by Steve Emmett

Published 01 November 2015

ITTP Approved Skills scheme: A progress report

by Bernard Newnham Issue 105 - September 2015 Back in January 2015 the ITTP the Institute for Training in Television Production - held its second annual conference at Pinewood. Its a way of bringing together people from education and the industry to discuss the problems that affect both. The conferences have been highly successful, with platform se...

Submitted by Bernard Newnham

Published 01 October 2015

CLASS - Where do captions & subtitles live?

by Bruce Devlin Issue 104 - August 2015 Its not uncommon to see ability to insert/extract captions/subtitles as part of a tender requirement or product specification. But in a file-based world, what does this mean and where are we inserting/extracting to/from?For this article, well define captions and subtitles as text overlay that the user turns o...

Submitted by Bruce Devlin

Published 01 September 2015

The evolution of vision mixers

by Liam Laminman Issue 104 - August 2015 At the heart of any multi-camera production is a vision mixer or production switcher as some people call them. Its core role is the switching of different sources, primarily cameras, often VTs and sometimes incoming external sources such as remote feeds from broadcasters. Even for non-TV types, thats relativ...

Submitted by Liam Laminman

Published 01 September 2015

SDV - Shaping the Next Generation of Linear TV Service Of...

by Lionel Bringuier Issue 103 - July 2015 Software-defined video (SDV) solutions are shaping the next generation of linear TV service offerings for both content distributors and content programmers. Live-to-VOD services such as catch-up TV, start-over TV, nPVR and delay TV offer new ways to enrich live TV experiences and package live content alongs...

Submitted by Lionel Bringuier

Published 01 August 2015

Distribution in the UHD Era

by Paul Briscoe Issue 103 - July 2015 Once upon a time, there were few broadcast TV standards. Each used its own regional image formats, color encoding scheme and sound and vision modulation standards. High-power over-the-air (OTA) transmitters broadcast the signal on internationally coordinated and regionally allocated radio frequency (RF) channel...

Submitted by Paul Briscoe

Published 01 August 2015

How HEVC technology is revolutionizing field-based broadc...

by Eli Garten Issue 103 - July 2015 High-Efficiency Video Encoding (HEVC), also known as H.265, is the subsequent generation of H.264 and tapped to be the next widely adopted standard for video compression. As with any MPEG evolution, the new standards goal is to make compression more efficient and allow for reducing OPEX and CAPEX in various video...

Submitted by Eli Garten

Published 01 August 2015

Is working for free, training or a pathway to paid work?

by Graham Reed Issue 102 - June 2015 I suspect like a lot of KitPlus readers I often have a look at a websites that advertise jobs, but mainly un-paid. I have frequently thought that these job offers are really just trying to get free or cheap labour for the benefit of the director/producer. One recently advertised for .... a cameraman thats enthus...

Submitted by graham reed

Published 01 July 2015

Crossing the TV Divide

by Kieron Seth Issue 102 - June 2015 From corporate to TVFor years, Reels in Motion has been associated with producing high quality live events and corporate video. Its ongoing project with The Property Investors Network is typical of the kind of long term projects the midlands-based company is involved in. Tasked with recording all day training wo...

Submitted by Kieron Seth#

Published 01 July 2015

Every election counts

by Charlie Watts Issue 102 - June 2015 "We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard.\" - JF KennedyThis may seem slightly overblown, but that is how we face things here in the University of Portsmouth. It\'s possibly because we have to try that little bit harder due to our...

Submitted by Charlie Watts

Published 01 July 2015

Hungerford and the 10 rules of making a Microbuster

by Miles Bullough Issue 101 - May 2015 On April 27th 2015 Wildseed Studios\' debut feature film, \'Hungerford\', launched on iTunes and begins what we hope will be a digital voyage around the world to success. We coined the term \'Microbuster\' to describe movies made on micro budgets but with blockbuster ambitions - and it perfectly captures what...

Submitted by Miles Bullough

Published 01 June 2015

A box of delights

by Dick Hobbs Issue 101 - May 2015 In the immediate aftermath of NAB and its bombardment by new gizmos, I want to talk about Professor Noriaki Kano. In the 1980s, at the Tokyo University of Science, he came up with a simple model of product design for customer satisfaction. His original work was more complicated than this diagram, but fundamentally...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.

Published 01 June 2015

Digital media services need more than just standard prote...

by Simen Frostad Issue 101 - May 2015 Standards are conceived in abstract. They are set up and negotiated between interested parties in a process that can last several years, with each party to the negotiations pressing its own case, and the standard that emerges at the conclusion is usually compromised in some way. At worst it can simply be a lowe...

Submitted by Simen Frostad

Published 01 June 2015

Full reference testing helps ensure quality audio deliver...

by Adam Schadle Issue 101 - May 2015 With the ever-increasing amount and variety of programming, devices, screen sizes, quality levels, and delivery methods today, broadcasters and delivery networks must be able to measure the quality of audiovisual content - and their processes for delivering it - to ensure it will meet standards that satisfy audi...

Submitted by Adam Schadle

Published 01 June 2015