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Articles by Dennis Lennie

Modern multiviewers

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The monitoring of multiple video sources has been simplified and costs greatly reduced by the use of multiviewers. These make use of two principle technologies: large high-resolution video screens and the real-time resizing of video. The market is now well developed and provides a wide choice of specifications such as the number of inputs and their...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 September 2009

OLED vs LCD

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There was a rapid change in image display technology within the last few years. Nowadays CRTs are history, flatpanels substitute them everywhere. Even in the broadcast industry. Different technologies dominate the market;Plasma - a self-lighting principle - mostly used for large screens;TFT-LCDs - a concept that always needs a backlight - most comm...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 September 2009

Filming for the army on Salisbury Plain

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The ApproachIt’s no secret. Soldiers are trained to feel invincible, They develop a whole persona around focussed “toughness” and the ability to take care of themselves. But nobody is tough enough to withstand being crushed between a 70 tonne Warrior and a Land Rover. The problem is how to explain this to men who as a day job, get shot at. That was...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 September 2009

Why choose a broadcast or professional monitor

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Just as it’s unlikely that anyone would purchase a family vehicle to set trailblazing records around a race track and a sports car is not going to be the best choice for off-road use, the same principle is true of monitors – the key is to match the product to the demands of the task. So what are the differences between the major monitor families?Co...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 September 2009

Beating the Blu-ray coding blues

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Tommy Simonsson runs SitoCad in Stockholm, Sweden, a professional video production company specialising in industrial work, conferences and weddings. He shoots in high definition on a Sony PMW-EX3 camcorder, and finishes his projects using the Grass Valley EDIUS nonlinear editor. “When I show them what HD looks like, most of my customers choose Blu...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 August 2009

Ask the Experts on the Topic of Distribution and Delivery

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NAB 2009 was fascinating with respect to how many customers were looking for solutions and insisting that manufacturers work together to provide solutions, as opposed to just supplying products. File-based workflows were the talk of the town (well, at least the talk of NAB) and there certainly continues to be significant discussion and implementati...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 August 2009

Eye to eye on Broadcast content management 2009

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Content asset management is one of the fastest developing areas of the entire broadcast business. Its advantages over old-style film and videotape libraries are so widely recognised that they hardly need repeating. NAB provided an opportunity to look at new advances from some of the key players. AP introduced a new module for its ENPS 6.0 and 7.0....

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 August 2009

The filming of Lands End to John OGroats

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I’ve been here for several minutes now. Standing in the pouring rain with a camera pointing at the road sign for Somerset, the drops of rain tapping on the camera rain cover add a certain atmosphere to the wild track. I stood trying to work out who was the madder, the two cyclists I was waiting for, or me. Here they come, 10 seconds on the tape, ba...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 August 2009

Broadcast management systems specialisation not generali...

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“Broadcast management systems” is used here as a collective term to encapsulate all of the processes involved from capturing and creating content, to distribution and monetisation. There are so many points of decision making in a broadcast production chain that automating the processes can be mind boggling in complexity. Taking just a view of frame...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 August 2009

Polecam on Safari

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Safaricam"No, you can’t get out of the car", the voice replied. "Why not?’ I asked. "Because you might get eaten by a lion."I put the phone down and contemplated what it was I had just agreed to do. The Kenya project started with a call from a French production company expressing an interest in hiring my Polecam system for three weeks. The series,...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 August 2009

Longevity of media archives

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The role of the archive has evolved rapidly, delivering not only new revenue opportunities but crucial conservation possibilities for historical and cultural libraries that have lain dormant for many years. The economic downturn means that now more than ever cost saving is a huge issue; facilities need to create new revenue opportunities whilst red...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 August 2009

Its A Bigger DAM Picture

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There’s a lot of fuss these days about “Digital Asset Management.” Why? Because organizations (and their hard drives) are busting at the seams with digital assets that are multiplying faster than hamsters at a rave. Many of these organizations already have enterprise management software solutions in place, so DAM often becomes a new, isolated plane...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 August 2009

A Guide to Testing IPTV: Technologies and Challenges Par...

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High consumer expectations have put pressure on content producers, network operators and equipment manufacturers to deliver consistently high quality audio and video to their end users. The proliferation of enabling technologies has resulted in a wide variety of formats and standards adding to the complexity of the challenges faced in establishing...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 August 2009

Jargon Buster

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IPTV: The delivery of broadcast quality video over an IP network. Set-Top Box: The consumer equipment which acts as the interface between the user and the IPTV services provided by the network (converts signal to content which can then be displayed on the television screen) VoD: Video on Demand NDVR: Network Digital Video Recording (allows fe...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 August 2009

Brand New School Makes the Move to Uncompressed HD

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What did you do over Christmas 2008? I spent the whole two-week break rebuilding the post production workflow at Brand New School, the prestigious commercial production and design firm in Santa Monica, CA, and the experience let me stretch every technology muscle I had built up in 10 years as a video engineer. At the time, Brand New School was usin...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 August 2009