Articles

Articles, opinion and reviews from the industry. It is free to add your own articles, just login / register and follow the links in your KitHub panel.

Articles by Bob Pank#

Cutting Edge 3D Graphics for the BBCs Election Night

---

Spanish real-time 3D graphics manufacturer, Brainstorm, provided a full suite of data driven 2D and 3D graphics for the BBC’s recent UK Election Night coverage. The BBC’s election coverage includes some of the most technically challenging and innovative graphics on air, providing an excellent showcase for the power and sophistication of Brainstorm’...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 July 2010

Eye to Eye: Sports Production

---

I was somewhat crestfallen to receive the advice 'Lay off 3D' when I rang TV Bay for guidance on the theme for this month's Eye to Eye. For better or worse, 3D looks set to be a major part of sports television in the coming years. But I picked up my crest, closed one eye and carried on running. Long-range opticsIt is by now quite widely appreciated...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 July 2010

A dream budget

---

As the coalition government prepares its emergency budget, Peter Savage looks at what is planned and tells us what he thinks the government should do. Apologies to avid readers of this column that there wasn’t one in the last issue. The editors decided on an article on the effects of the general election on our industries and, sod’s law, the deadli...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 July 2010

Enabling the fans

---

The days when a simple hotdog, a pint of beer, a score board and good lungs were the main ingredients of a great day at a football game are soon to be a thing of the past. Mike Arthur, general manager, sports and live events, at Harris Broadcast Communications, talks to TV-Bay Magazine about the advances in technology which will enable interactive...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 July 2010

Hawk-Eye Accuracy and Believability in Cricket

---

In 1999 research began at Roke Manor Research Ltd., a company with over thirty years of vision processing expertise. Led by Dr. Paul Hawkins and funded by The Television Corporation, the concept of “Hawk-Eye” was born. First developed in 1999, Hawk-Eye Innovations Ltd continues to grow and develop with Hawk-Eye recently creating a system for the BB...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 July 2010

How to create and brand a live TV experience online

---

Late last year, Pixel Power worked closely with the Perform Group to brand the first ever live England football match online, a landmark event. Before we discuss that in detail, there is a wider question to answer: what do we mean by “branding”? Branding is fundamentally how you differentiate your channel; how you make it stand out in the crowd and...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 July 2010

A conversation with Peter Harman, Vinten Product Manager

---

Vinten is celebrating its centenary in 2010. What were the origins of the business?William Vinten was an engineer with a passion for quality. He set himself in business to repair friends’ bicycles at the age of 13, did a full apprenticeship in a machine shop, and worked for Frederick Lamplough, the steam car pioneer. But it was seeing his first mov...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 June 2010

What happened after NAB 2010.....

---

What happened next.......... On Wednesday the 14th April, evening time in Las Vegas, a text message came through from home reporting a Volcano in Iceland was affecting flights back to the UK, a wind up surely...did they not want us back.........?With NAB about to close for another year and 1000’s of Brit visitors and exhibitors at the show it beca...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 June 2010

Precise panning for DSLR cameras

---

After buying a new DSLR camera with video function one usually works hard at getting good shots. It then becomes obvious that the selection of the proper tripod is crucial for clean horizontal and vertical panning. Sachtler, a brand of the Vitec Group, offers a variety of fluid heads in different weight classes that also fulfill the special require...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 June 2010

NAB2010 review

---

Sometimes NAB can be very predictable. For me NAB 2010, or 2010 NAB SHOW as its organisers call it, was not one of those shows. The mail that arrived at my inbox on 5 April from NAB Housing, saying there were hotel room bargains still to be had, lead me to think attendance would be well down. This was certainly not like the old days when rooms were...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 June 2010

19inch Racking, an evolution

---

If you have ever worked with 19” racking you probably have the scars to prove it. From its inception in the 1930’s to the present day the 19” rack has hardly evolved. Standards organisations, from BSI, ISO ANSI and DIN all have their own take on the 19” rack and, as you all know, you never could get that Dell server in the HP rack. With cage nuts,...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 June 2010

B4 to EX3 adapter

---

It’s difficult to get excited about things like adapters but that’s exactly what I was when Mike Tapa of MTF Services sent me his latest creation for review and testing. The “Powered B4 to EX3 Adapter” lets you attach any 2/3” B4 mount lens to your EX3, maintaining full servo zoom, auto iris and VF info. This ability opens up a whole new world of f...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 June 2010

Eye to Eye: Getting a grip

---

Getting a gripCameras and camcorders are shrinking at such a rapid rate that a lot of today's established support devices are looking completely out of scale. In some aisles of the NAB 2010 Central Hall, visitors were at perpetual risk of colliding with excited demonstrators nipping hither and yon with hand-held stabilisers for DSLRs. Most were onl...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 June 2010

Does one size fits all

---

Economic realities are driving most technical industries toward considering solutions that combine what began as stand-alone, discrete devices into single, multifunction systems. In the broadcast and multimedia production arenas, character generators (CGs) are among the discrete systems now being offered in multifunction platforms. The assumption i...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 June 2010

Aston ON

---

In August 2009 leading Spanish real-time graphics manufacturer, Brainstorm Multimedia acquired the Aston 7 character generator from the Softel Group. With over 30 years on the market, Aston is one of the most established brands in the business and has been the gold standard in character generation in the United Kingdom for many years – to the exten...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 June 2010