KitPlus | Articles

Using Panasonic AG-AF101 HD Camera

Introduction When award winning film maker and photojournalist Fiona Lloyd-Davies announced her latest project to embark on a journey to The Democratic Republic of Congo, she described the place as “probably one of the toughest environments that a camera can work in - very hot and very, very dusty” but, this was to be just one rigor amongst many du...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 August 2011

KVM enterprise and video matrix switchers in broadcast ap...

KVM enterprise and video matrix switchers in broadcast applicationsEngineers within the professional broadcast world are comfortably familiar with video routers for the control of uncompressed video and audio signals within live studio and editing locations. However there is less familiarity with the use of KVM enterprise and video matrix switchers...

Submitted by Kieron Seth#

Published 01 August 2011

Meeting the Demands Of The Market

Much has been said about audio loudness and there can be few people in broadcast who are unaware of the new legislation being introduced by various countries to control this problem. The UK and Italy have already set limits on loudness levels and in 2010 the US introduced the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act (CALM), making it illega...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 July 2011

Whats new in broadcast test and measurement

The test and measurement product category continues to expand as the broadcast business itself diversifies. Notable recent developments include higher resolution displays and a gradually increasing number of analysers which, having detected a fault, endeavour to fix it. No sign at NAB 2011 of any tablet-based test and measurement equipment but perh...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 July 2011

Eye to Eye: Video Post-production

My first direct experience of video post-production involved hauling a heavy Sony U-Matic tape machine up a flight of stairs before going back for an equally heavy playback deck, a bulky CRT monitor and a large box of interface giblets. That was in 1978. 33 years on, an Apple Mac does the whole editing job a great deal better, faster and more econo...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 May 2011

BVE 2011 retrospect

BVE 2011 had much of the buoyancy and buzz of an IBC. The organisers claimed an attendance of over 15,500 visitors and 240 exhibiting companies. Many of the UK-based stalwarts who make the annual pilgrimage to Amsterdam could be seen exploring the show, confirming that BVE is now taken seriously by mainstream broadcasters. It is perhaps over-optimi...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 April 2011

The revolutionary PHABRIX SxA.

The revolution in screen technology has seen a massive miniaturisation of most test equipment in the last ten years, and this coupled with a large increase in the amount that can be fitted into a small package courtesy of VLSI has meant that a new breed of hand held test and measurement devices have come onto the market. The PHABRIX Sx range is jus...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 March 2011

tv-bay IBC2010 double takes

Tv-bay Double Takes..!Acquisition For-A VFC-7000 Camera HD Variable Frame Rate CameraASA1800 Sensitivity, Native 720x1280 resolution with inbuilt up-convert to 1920x1080 and will output at 50 or 59.94 frame rates. 120 - 700 Frames per second recording speed. Two HD-SDI outputs enabling live and recordings to be viewed simultaneously. Standard onboa...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 November 2010

Eye to Eye: Storage and archiving

In 1986 or thereabouts, I visited the London headquarters of a stripling company named Lightworks which had developed an innovative and relatively low-cost video editor based around a 1 gigabyte hard-disk drive. The drive was the size of a standard British housebrick and, bought in at £1,000, was considered mightily good value. A typical 1,500 giga...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 October 2010

Tape is dead. Long live Tape

An area that has been a vital part of television – defining much of ‘how’ and ‘what’ things are done – is recording. At first film was the medium, then in 1956, Ampex invented the video tape recorder with the prime aim of providing delayed programmes across the USA. Soon video tape editing, and other applications rapidly expanded and the 2-inch qua...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 October 2010

Wireless Mic review

JTS has launched the KA-10 a new wireless microphone system designed for the video camera market . The system comes complete with an omni-directional microphone, a rechargeable beltback transmitter and camera mounted receiver, charger and cable adaptors for most cameras. We recently used the system with Panasonic’s AG-HMC151 handheld camcorder for...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 September 2010

USB 3 King of Connectivity

They call it SuperSpeed, and for a very good reason. USB 3.0 boasts a data throughput of 4.8 Gb/s. We’ve long known this ubiquitous I/O technology as the Universal Serial Bus, and the improvements gained by USB 3.0 over USB 2.0, along with its backward compatibility, have already shown the USB king of connectivity is going to undoubtedly retain its...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 September 2010

Expanding Video Monitoring to Meet Todays Demands

With the rapid evolution of the industry, new technologies must offer users both value and performance in the short term, as well as the promise of continued utility in the long term. A number of key advances in the design of video monitoring solutions are giving broadcasters and other media companies the means to manage monitoring of a growing num...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 August 2010

AVCHD and NXCAM

I’ll be honest – up until recently I had not been a big fan of AVCHD. It promised great things but, having hired out consumer AVCHD cameras for the last few years, we knew there were still a few hurdles for it jump over. For corporate customers, to just ‘plug and play’ in terms of simple playback was impossible – some form of software was always re...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 March 2010

Eye to Eye: Whats new in audio 2009

Part of my day at SATIS recently was sent discussing with Neutrik the dodgy issue of sexual compatibility, a subject not mentioned in my report from the show for TV-Bay last month. I had recently invested in a Roland Edirol R-44 solid-state audio recorder. Used in conjunction with four Rode phantom-powered capacitor microphones, it makes an excelle...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 January 2010