KitPlus | Articles

The holistic approach to fighting piracy

by Rory OConnor Issue 102 - June 2015 Now more than ever, consumers are driving the way that their content is delivered and consumed across platforms. Content owners increasingly need to be able to respond and adapt in an agile manner to deliver quality content across every consumer device from the day they hit the market. To stay relevant, operato...

Submitted by Rory O Connor

Published 01 July 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

What a difference a decade makes

by Dick Hobbs Issue 100 - April 2015 If you have got to the back of this magazine, you cannot fail to have noticed that it is issue number 100. I asked Simon Tillyer and Matt Robbins, the dynamic duo behind the publication, how it all started. "The website was initially just a project,\" Simon said, "and when Matt arrived in the summer of 2005 we c...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.

Published 01 May 2015

Loudness normalisation for podcast streaming

by Jon Schorah Issue 99 - March 2015 For media companies steeped in traditional workflows, the exploding demand for over-the-top (OTT) content on many different devices is offering up significant new opportunities as well as challenges. If content owners can re-purpose their assets effectively, they can reach existing and new audiences through chan...

Submitted by Jon Schorah

Published 01 April 2015

Archiving as a service at BBC Studios and Post Production

by Kevin Shaw Issue 97 - January 2015 BBC Studios and Post Production (BBC S&PP) is a commercial subsidiary of the BBC that competes for work from both the BBC and the market at large. In the Digital Media Services (DMS) department, we provide an end-to-end solution for what we refer to as "post-post production.\" Our services include digitization...

Submitted by Kevin Shaw

Published 01 February 2015

Fixing it in parallel

by Daniele Siragusano Issue 97 - January 2015 Whenever something went wrong in television production, the cry was always "We\'ll fix it in post". Except that there was rarely enough time, in a broadcast schedule, to fix anything. Today we expect every programme - even routine television programmes like daily dramas - to look and sound perfect. But...

Submitted by Daniele Siragusano

Published 01 February 2015

High Resolution graphics for 4k and beyond

by Jesper Gawell Issue 96 - December 2014 It seems like 4K is everywhere these days - it\'s the dominant topic at broadcasting trade shows. Is there substance behind the hype? Will it transform television the way HD broadcasting did? Clearly, one of the "next big things\" in the media and entertainment world is higher resolutions and 4K delivery o...

Submitted by Jesper Gawell

Published 01 January 2015

4k Streaming: a Key OTT Differentiator

by Keith Wymbs Issue 96 - December 2014 OTT streaming providers are amongst the first to offer 4K UHD TV services. In fact, 4K UHD may be seen as a key differentiator for OTT services such as Netflix and M-GO as they compete with pay TV operators according to a recent report from ABI Research. Netflix has launched 4K video streaming of shows such a...

Submitted by Keith Wymbs

Published 01 January 2015

File-based QC systems for small and mid-sized media organ...

by Vikas Singhal Issue 95 - November 2014 Companies across the media value chain have departed the tape-based realm and migrated to file-based workflows. In making this transition, they left behind common, well-established technologies that had ensured the smooth flow of content from creation through to delivery. In their place, companies implement...

Submitted by Vikas Singhal

Published 01 December 2014

Capture and Produce

Issue 94 - October 2014One of the hot topics at this year’s IBC was undoubtedly the growing adoption of end-to-end IP production and the imminent death of SDI. During a panel session, hosted by Mediasmiths and Cognizant, and including representatives from BBC, Sony and more, the key point made was that the adoption of IP production technology and w...

Submitted by Will Strauss#

Published 01 November 2014

Capture and Produce

Issue 93 - September 2014 Amongst all the new cameras, support and other production kit being touted prior to IBC, it was a less tangible announcement that really captured the imagination: Atomos’ announcement that it wants to standardize its Start/Stop Trigger connectivity for HDMI by making it available to other manufacturers. Locking SDI interfa...

Submitted by Will Strauss#

Published 01 October 2014

Communicating via IP

by Andy Covey Issue 93 - September 2014 At the turn of the 21st century the concept of IP-based systems first started to emerge, and with all things new, there were those who said it couldn’t be done with intercom systems. Communication, some reasoned, was simply too important to trust to perceived IT infrastructure issues of bandwidth and latency...

Submitted by Andy Covey

Published 01 October 2014

How to Produce and Stream a Live Production Part One

by Chris Waddington Issue 93 - September 2014 With recent advances in camera technology, services that can send your content across the internet to any web-connected device and desktop streaming production systems like NewTek’s TriCaster, even beginners can create sophisticated video content that looks great and stream it live to the web. In this t...

Submitted by Chris Waddington

Published 01 October 2014

A Closer Look at DVB-S2X

by Joerg Rockstroh Issue 93 - September 2014 Is DVB-S2X a feature set on top of DVB-S2 or a complete new signal form?DVB-S2X is an extension of the DVB-S2 specifi cation that formalizes existing features (e.g., smaller roll-offs) in addition to introducing completely new features (e.g., higher MODCODs). This enables operators to achieve substantial...

Submitted by Joerg Rockstroh

Published 01 October 2014

The right MAM solution

by Michael Shore Issue 91 - July 2014 The best way to determine what features you need in a media asset management system (MAM) is to start at the end. So, when trying to decide what goes IN to your asset management system, you need to first establish what it is that you are trying to get OUT. Several factors need to be considered, including: the p...

Submitted by Michael Shore

Published 01 August 2014