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Run Leaner, More Agile and Scalable OTT Operations
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The migration to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) for media processing is underway and growing as broadcasters and content service providers explore new ways to increase agility and operational efficiencies. With media processing SaaS, content and service providers can quickly and easily deploy new channels, deliver a better quality of experience (QoE) to their audiences from anywhere in the world with low latency across all screens. |
| Tags: iss132
| ott
| harmonic
| saas
| cmaf
| vod
| delivery
| Olivier Karra
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Moving to an IP Platform Considerations
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Audio transport methods have remained virtually unchanged in the broadcast industry for more than half a century. Common approaches to routing audio around large broadcast facilities have closely followed methodology employed in telco central offices, with the use of X-Y crossbar or crosspoint switching. |
| Tags: iss131
| ip
| smpte
| st2110
| Stephen Brownsill
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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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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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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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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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Informed Disruption
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The industry is currently going through an enormous amount of disruption, and while many are charging in to embrace the changes, others are wringing their hands with indecision. |
| Tags: iss131
| boxer
| ip
| hdr
| 4k
| Marc Risby
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Security, Identity and Privacy
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Put your hand up if you have more than one online-identity. Keep your hand up if the adverts for your latest online purchase follow you between identities as you surf the web. You can now let your hand fall into your lap because adverts that follow you indicate algorithms that have merged your multiple identities into the one and only you. |
| Tags: iss131
| class
| Security
| Identity
| Privacy
| gdpr
| Bruce Devlin - new
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Why is ST2110 important
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Presenting to a capacity audience at a joint meeting of the RTS Thames Valley Centre and SMPTE in Reading, research engineer and industry commentator Tony Orme opened the evening with the assertion - “SMPTE’s ST2110 is the most important development to hit broadcast television since John Logie Baird went head to head with EMI-Marconi at the 1936 BBC trials in Alexandra Palace, London”. |
| Tags: iss131
| st2110
| rts
| aes
| madi
| st2059
| wcg
| hdr
| Penny Westlake
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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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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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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
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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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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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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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Reliable back-up at the Music City Bowl
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WLEX – LEX18 – is the NBC affiliate in Lexington, Kentucky, and part of the Cordillera Communications Group. As a very popular local station with a broadcast area that covers 40 counties across central Kentucky we have a big commitment to news, broadcasting more than seven hours of live programming on a typical day. |
| Tags: iss130
| wlex-tv
| dejero
| engo
| gobox
| cellsat
| Sam Gordon
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Out of the box: Sennheiser Ambeo VR microphone
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The use of 360 video, especially on platforms like Facebook and YouTube is really starting to take off. Gone are the days when you needed to buy multiple GoPros and rigs in order to get something decent looking. Now players like Insta360 and even GoPro with their fusion 360 camera are providing single camera, high quality solutions, enabling the masses to put out reasonable quality, certainly watchable, 360 video. |
| Tags: iss130
| vr
| virtual reality
| audio
| ambiosonic
| Jon Pratchett 2
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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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TV Futures, Tales on Location
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If I think back to last May, I was just finishing my second year at the University of Portsmouth, studying Television and Broadcasting, and winding down for the summer. Then out of the blue I got a message from my course leader, saying I might be getting a call from someone who was a location manager working for Raider productions, you know, the production company behind the upcoming Tomb Raider film, I mean, what!? |
| Tags: iss130
| portsmouth university
| tomb raider
| cci tv
| ccitv
| Georgia Thirtle
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Somewhere down the latency river
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Some people have been, understandably, getting fairly excited over the prospect of being able to deploy wireless cameras to capture and transmit 4K UHD. Manufacturers and developers are closing in on the ability to deliver systems that will offer up almost endless creative options at the highest – to date – possible picture quality. |
| Tags: iss129
| latency
| 4k
| wireless
| rf
| presteigne
| Ben Hawker
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2018: A Changing of the Guard
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The guys at KitPlus asked me if I could write about what I think is going to happen in 2018 – a feel, or mood, piece of what we might see this year. I’m not sure why they asked me but perhaps it’s because I’ve been around the industry a long time. Anyway, to look forward I think sometimes it’s best to look back as history has a habit of repeating itself. |
| Tags: iss129
| azule
| finance
| Peter Savage 2
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Epictech makes headway: A case study
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Founded in January 2014, EpicTech Media have been providing high end video production to companies and musicians across the U.K. for over three and a half years. When approached earlier this year by the band Bodkin Lane, we relished the challenge of producing a video of their charity concert, in aid of Headway (www.headway.org.uk), despite the challenging size of the venue. |
| Tags: iss129
| polecam
| epictech media
| ptz
| povcam
| Daniel Harker Barnes
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Steadicam M-1 Volt: Tried and Tested
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Early in November some of us lucky Steadicam Operators from around the UK were invited to try out the new Tiffen M1 Volt, which is essentially an electronic motorized horizon assist unit attached to the gimbal of the latest Steadicam M1. Is it a good idea? As experienced Steadicam Operators, directors or producers, why would we be interested? Let’s investigate KitPlus fans! |
| Tags: iss129
| steadicam
| volt
| tiffen
| m1
| John E Fry
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Canon C200: Tried and Tested
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There are many reviews about this camera online and a heap of incredibly detailed comparison and behind the scenes footage that will really give you a full insight into what it can do. So first a disclaimer - this review is less detailed and based on my personal reading of what this camera means for Canon and all other camera manufacturers and us – the users of these technologies. So, what’s all the fuss about? |
| Tags: iss129
| spellbinder
| canon
| c200
| c100mkii
| c300
| red
| alexa
| asx-r7
| Ben Sherriff
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Studio Invate - Case Studio
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Studio INVATE is a video company based in Bangkok, with an inventive reputation. Its public persona is everyday commercial work, such as producing highly creative videos, live broadcasts and commercials, for companies ranging from large industrial brands and retail businesses to educational institutions. But in between the studio and on-location work for clients, the company’s crew of 14 employees and a few dozen freelancers enjoy live-streaming video game tournaments. |
| Tags: iss129
| invate
| newtek
| tricaster 8000
| 3play
| 4800 replay
| blonde robot
| KitPlus
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IP for everyone and 4k everywhere - that will be 2018
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My first prediction for the coming year is that the use of IP to move broadcast content will increase dramatically. Ultimately, it will become the commonplace, just as the use of IP has become part of our everyday, consumer lives. Live sports are closely linked to this growth, as conversion of broadcast signals for transportation across established telecos networks enables content to be viewed in real-time, regardless if it’s in the next room or across the globe. |
| Tags: iss129
| medialinks
| 4k
| ip
| vr
| ai
| John Smith -new
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