KitPlus | Articles

Honey, I shrank the data. How DNA storage could reduce th...

By A3 Communications Capacity, cost, and performance. Three of your top data storage priorities? No wonder, and it’s the same for most organisations across the media and entertainment sector. The volume of data M&E organisations produce is in overdrive, with its global storage market size predicted to reach almost $18bn by 2027. That is likely...

Submitted by KitPlus

Published 17 March 2023

The Future of Broadcast Technology

What vision do you have of the broadcast technology business moving towards 2030 and beyond?We are currently in the middle of a transition phase with migration to several new technologies, from the move to IP-based infrastructure and the shift from linear to video-on-demand (VOD). The question for all of us is how long that transition phase will l...

Submitted by Sebastian Richter

Published 18 August 2022

In Ear Monitors Help The Cast And Crew of Americas Got Ta...

Capturing performances for television is a stressful business, especially if the programme is being filmed live. You want everything to be perfect but you are also aware that many things can go wrong, even with the best laid plans. Reducing the list of potential disasters is therefore high on any production crew’s agenda and one area where it is po...

Submitted by KitPlus

Published 21 December 2020

Solving Rigorous Digital Workflow Challenges

Headquartered in New Zealand, The Rebel Fleet offers digital workflow services to top film and television production companies. Clients address broad creative needs and retain total image control across multiple shooting units with fast turnarounds. Recent projects include The Meg, Adrift, Ash vs Evil Dead, and The Shannara Chronicles. The company...

Submitted by Michael Urban

Published 03 November 2019

The University of the Third Age

Here's a cliché - "We all get to be old one day - if we're lucky". There comes a point when things like ".... mastered in Dolby Vision Domestic and SDR Rec 709.....\" become just a touch unimportant (and actually I never really understood that stuff in the first place). I retired for the third time last year - BBC producer, and before that camerama...

Submitted by Bernard Newnham

Published 10 September 2019

Why MADI is Still Relevant

While the original idea for MADI was to cater to a very narrow recording studio application, the standard remains a viable go-to multichannel audio technology. Beginning as a standard in 1991, MADI was first introduced to the world as digital production was beginning to come of age. MADI was put together in 1988 by Solid State Logic, AMS-Neve, Sony...

Submitted by Stephen Brownsill

Published 10 September 2019

Keeping the Show on the Road

There is long-established saying in the media business that, if something goes wrong, at least nobody dies. It is almost true unless you happen to be a TV producer suffering a cardiac arrest because your primary video feed has gone blank during a high-budget programme. First-line maintenance is usually in the hands of the user. If a device malfunct...

Submitted by Andy McKenzie

Published 10 September 2019

Review: JVC GY-HC900 Camera

JVC has a long history of developing relatively low price-point equipment, dating right back to its success in the 1970s with the VHS tape format. JVC products sometimes impact the broadcast mainstream but generally find greatest success in niche market segments such as news production where price and portability take priority over the no-comprise...

Submitted by Andy McKenzie

Published 16 July 2019

State of the Nation - If Winter Comes

Here’s an important fact that might get lost in all the noise of the moment. HBO’s Game of Thrones, which is relentlessly covered in the press as well as being talked about by its fans, is not actually terribly popular. The opener of the current (and last, thank goodness) series attracted a consolidated audience of about 3.5 million – that includes...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs - new

Published 04 June 2019

IMF Adoption

The Interoperable Master Format isn’t new. It’s been around for more than six years. Despite this longevity, the broad adoption since the publication of SMPTE 2067 has been pretty slow. This is perhaps more because of the age old mantra “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it,” than the ease with which many could interpret the standard. However, it is safe...

Submitted by Howard Twine

Published 04 June 2019

Preserving the British Film Institute Archive

Today, the media and entertainment industry faces numerous challenges. To remain successful and competitive, these organisations must be ever innovative, agile and cost efficient in the way they produce, store, manage and distribute their digital assets. Content creators have traditionally relied upon outdated storage models, comprised of legacy in...

Submitted by David Feller

Published 21 March 2019

Looking for the Silver Lining

According to the World Meteorological Organisation, there are 10 different types of cloud, each of which can be divided further into sub-types. They range from the cirrus, the thin floaty clouds which generally serve only to make the sky look beautiful to the towering, all-embracing cumulonimbus which can deliver fearful quantities of rain – the bi...

Submitted by Harry Grinling

Published 21 March 2019

21st Century Technology for 20th Century Content

A big challenge facing owners of legacy content is rationalising and archiving their tape and film-based media in cost effective and efficient ways, whilst also adding value. Normally the result of this is to find a low cost means of digitising the content – usually leaving them with a bunch of assets on HDD. But then what? How can content owners h...

Submitted by James Hall

Published 25 January 2019

State of the Nation - November 2018

There is an interesting seminar called Size Matters at the KitPlus Show – organised by the publishers of this fine magazine – at MediaCityUK in Salford on 6 November. It’s a talk by cinematographer Alistair Chapman on the way that camera technology is changing, and in particular the size of the electronic device which creates the image is growing....

Submitted by Dick Hobbs - new

Published 09 November 2018

An Obituary to Timecode

A stoic and persistent character that stubbornly refused to change with the times, Timecode has finally passed on, but no-one has noticed. A long-lasting industry veteran, Timecode was brought into this world at an uncertain date in the late 1960s due to the needs of analogue tape workflows and the demand for synchronisation between audio and video...

Submitted by Bruce Devlin - new

Published 09 November 2018