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State of the Nation
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I am writing this in the middle of a record-breaking heatwave in southern England. Yet it is time to be thinking about the mists and mellow fruitfulness of autumn, or at least the predictably damp and chilly Amsterdam when IBC hits town.
What will be the hot talking points of IBC this year? I am not in a position to talk about what the big vendors will be showing: I have so far received just the one preview press release (take a bow, Calrec).
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| Tags: iss132
| ibc
| ibm
| watson
| ai
| Dick Hobbs - new
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Contributing Author Dick Hobbs - new
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What is next after University
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I currently find myself in between two landmark moments. A few weeks ago I was completely immersed in producing live television content, and in a few weeks time I will become an official BSc (Hons) Television & Broadcasting graduate from the University of Portsmouth. When I look back at who I was in my first year of university, I remember a shy girl from the other side of Europe, unsure at whether a career in television was the right path to take. Now, after three years of university, I can definitely say that I made the best choice of my life by choosing this degree. I’m leaving university confident and motivated, knowing that I made the right choice in study, and I really want that career in the television industry.
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| Tags: iss132
| portsmouth university
| ccitv
| graduate
| bsc
| degree
| education
| cv
| Ruta Kairyte
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Contributing Author Ruta Kairyte
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Click to read or download PDF
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How machine learning might affect media
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I have a curious relationship with technology. I’ve been doing it all my life and I see topics come and go over the years. This is the 3rd time around that I’ve seen Artificial Intelligence become trendy and this time, I think it will stick. There are 4 things that are different this time around and they are (in alphabetical order) Amazon, IBM, Google, Microsoft. All of those companies have had AI research programs running for years, but the big change now is that there is enough ubiquitous compute resource in the form of the cloud to make it commercially viable to build products around the platforms. |
| Tags: iss132
| class
| machine learning
| ml
| watson
| ibm
| Bruce Devlin - new
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Contributing Author Bruce Devlin - new
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Click to read or download PDF
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Investing in the Future of Broadcast Media
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At the time of writing, the summer World Cup is providing its usual challenge to camera crews trying to televise the bright sunlight of the stadium without losing detail in shaded areas such as the covered terraces. It is a perfect demonstration of the need for high dynamic range. Several broadcasters are experimentally covering this year's tournament in 4K HDR, including the BBC which is streaming dozens of matches via its iPlayer service. HDR is also accompanied by a wider colour space, meaning millions more colours can be displayed than previously. Yet another advance is the adoption of 50p delivery rather than traditional 50i. |
| Tags: iss132
| finepoint
| hire
| 4k hdr
| Clive Northen
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Contributing Author Clive Northen
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Click to read or download PDF
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A Sound in Motion QA
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“A Sound in Motion started as a camera test for the new Sony VENICE CineAlta 6K Digital Cinema Camera and evolved into a much bigger project. The film, presented by Golpe Filmes and released this summer, was directed/edited by Ricardo Teixeira. It is a fictional story based on the way deaf people adapt themselves to daily life situations. The intent of the film is to be a positive influence in the way people think about the ‘differences in human beings’ and about issues related to social inclusion, but without turning it into something moralistic or that seems fundamentalist. Through sounds not speech, words or verbal expression we want to relay a positive message and display a clear gaze upon that difference.” |
| Tags: iss132
| miller
| arrow x7
| tripod
| atomos sumo
| sony
| venice
| Antonio Morais
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Contributing Author Antonio Morais
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TVFutures : Bouncing Back
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When I arrived at the University of Portsmouth three years ago, I would never have thought in my wildest dreams I would end up where I am now. My time at university has been eye opening, informative and fun. Of all the lessons I have learned in the past three years, resilience is the one that has taught me the most. Starting out in the television industry is hard. Like many others, I’ve applied for graduate job after graduate job and been pipped to the post and rejected many times. I have also started projects and been faced with a variety of unexpected setbacks. Yet, my drive to enter this industry remains just as strong because bouncing back is the joy of resilience. |
| Tags: iss131
| portsmouth uni
| graduate
| job
| Jane Lawrance
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Contributing Author Jane Lawrance
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Click to read or download PDF
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How to shoot the perfect lighting mix
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Advances in high-quality LED lighting over the past couple of decades might be one of the best things that’s ever happened to broadcast and cinema production. Compared to traditional tungsten fixtures, LED lights offer powerful operational and financial benefits from longer life and lower energy bills to brighter, more consistent light and greater control over color temperature. LEDs generate much lower heat and are relatively cool to the touch, meaning they can be used in much smaller rooms and studios without sweating out the talent and crew or damaging property. Plus, compared to traditional tungsten bulbs, LED lights are virtually maintenance-free and can deliver tens of thousands of hours of lamp life. |
| Tags: iss131
| litepanels
| led
| lighting
| 2 person interview lighting
| Alan Ipakchian
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Contributing Author Alan Ipakchian
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Click to read or download PDF
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UHD 4k and HDR Picture Quality
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And as good as it is, and as easy as it is to do, one of the raps on HDR is that some feel that it’s so bright and sharp that it looks odd, unnatural, almost harsh. It’s similar to when we did our first trials with 4K. The resolution was so high you could easily see, for example, even very minor blemishes. It’s perhaps an irony of new technology that the higher the resolution of natural objects the more artificial they tend to look. It’s often a case of capturing images with more resolution or a greater colour space than our eyes and brains can actually perceive. |
| Tags: iss131
| sonovts
| uhd
| 4k
| hdr
| oled
| Tobias Kronenwett
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Contributing Author Tobias Kronenwett
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Click to read or download PDF
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What is Next for Broadcast
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The Broadcast industry is always chasing new technology. Some of that technology is further than it appears to be, and some of it is closer to adoption than it seems. In part, early adopted technology is accelerated because of customer or business demands, and in the case of IP based environments, the driving factors are speed, cost reduction, and flexibility of workflow. To counterbalance these efficiency-based factors is a desire by content creators and customers to see more 4K HDR content on their new big screens. In some ways the push to deliver 4K workflows also makes the need to manage cost/performance even more urgent. |
| Tags: iss131
| 4k
| primestream
| hdr
| hls
| mpeg dash
| rtsp
| rtmp
| streaming
| David Schleifer
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Contributing Author David Schleifer
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Click to read or download PDF
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Slow Motion Video Techniques
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Well, those kinds of higher frame rates still pretty much belong to the big guns. The Phantom Flex will give you 2,000 frames a second at ultra HD or 1,000 fps at 4K. It produces truly stunning images, but at a price that is beyond the reach of all but those with the biggest budgets. The camera retails at a cool £100,000 (I’ll have three please) with a daily hire out charge of around £3,000 (including lighting and a technician). IDT’s OS series cameras produce equally high quality images at a cheaper price, but you’re still talking tens of thousands. |
| Tags: iss131
| slo-mo
| phantom
| idt
| fs7
| fs5
| rx10 mk111
| hfr
| Phil Vinter
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Contributing Author Phil Vinter
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What is Serial Communication
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Don’t get me wrong - the advent of IP technology has done wonders for the broadcasting universe, especially here in Special Cams land where changing a setting could have involved a rather long walk and climb to a remote camera location! Nevertheless, this said, I still feel that serial communication is a huge contender - not only just in the realm of odd robotics systems, but also across broadcast in general.
In this article, I will walk through the very basics - introducing a few different types of serial and how they work.
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| Tags: iss131
| rs422
| rs232
| parity
| rs485
| Mike Colyer
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Contributing Author Mike Colyer
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Click to read or download PDF
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Delivering on the 4k Promise
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It’s happened. Consumers are demanding 4K UHD content. They have the TVs, smartphones, tablets and other devices they need, and with much of Netflix and Amazon original content in 4K, as well as sports coverage from BT and Sky, consumers have tasted the future of content quality and are hungry for more. But broadcasters need not worry if their customers have enough bandwidth to receive 4K content - the solutions are ready to make 4K distribution a reality. New viewers are waiting if you’re ready to get to them first. |
| Tags: iss131
| garland
| 4k
| uhd
| hevc
| hc11000
| media excel
| Lorna Garrett
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Contributing Author Lorna Garrett
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Click to read or download PDF
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VR and the importance of tracking
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I would like to begin this article by clarifying what we at Shotoku mean when we talk about VR in live production. It’s not the production of immersive, 360 content where you need to wear a headset; we are talking about virtual studio (VS) and augmented reality (AR) work, such as placing graphics into a green screen environment or physical set. The technology used for this work is entirely different, though equally specialist – therefore it is important to understand the challenges of this kind of production in order to make informed kit choices. |
| Tags: iss130
| shotoku
| vr
| live production
| KitPlus
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Contributing Author KitPlus
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Click to read or download PDF
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Grand slam IPTV and digital signage platform
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Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri, is home to major league baseball’s Kansas City Royals. Built in 1973, “The K” has a proud baseball legacy, and goes down in history for winning two World Series championship titles; one in 1985 and another in 2015 — exactly 20 years apart. The most recent win brought a resurgence of baseball fever to the stadium, hosting more than 2.7 million fans during its 2015 winning season. |
| Tags: iss130
| iptv
| vitec
| eztv
| Joe Walsh
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Contributing Author Joe Walsh
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Click to read or download PDF
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State of the Nation
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On the most recent occasion I was trimmed, my hairdresser had just returned from a holiday in Hawaii.
Where she thought she was going to die. She thought this because the state’s emergency alert system was triggered, sending messages across all available platforms, for 38 minutes, that a ballistic missile was about to strike. That, I suspect, is the sort of thing that casts a pall across your holiday.
Why did it happen? Essentially it happened because an operator selected the wrong menu item. “I feel very badly from what’s happened,” he is quoted as saying, in a somewhat mangled version of English which may at least in part explain his difficulties with menu items.
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| Tags: iss130
| alertsense
| Dick Hobbs - new
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Contributing Author Dick Hobbs - new
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Click to read or download PDF
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Tried and tested: DPA d:vice
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KitPlus recently took delivery of an interesting piece of equipment for review. We like our iPhone gadgets here. For us, useful iPhone gadgets started when the Olloclip lens gave us a wide angle adaptor. This was a good start, finally evolving into a proper tool when Ziess produced the Exolens system for the 5,6 & 7 series iPhones. Around the same time as the Olloclip came out we were testing the Fostex AR4i which was a very exciting development at the time. You have a portable device, that you carry everywhere with you, connected to the world but with very limited audio capabilities. A stereo interface with decent microphones was a real boon! |
| Tags: iss130
| dpa
| dvice
| iphone
| journalist mic
| filmic
| ios
| microdot
| KitPlus
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Contributing Author KitPlus
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Click to read or download PDF
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