KitPlus | Articles

Key Grip Woolf Secures the Gear for GUILLERMO DEL TOROS P...

Jonathan Woolf has gathered a wealth of trade secrets from half a century working in the motion picture industry. His recent chapters have led him to key grip the miniatures unit on Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings Trilogy and act as a lighting technician on the 2022 Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio. Woolf’s big job on Pinocchio was to find reliable...

Submitted by Kathryn Ferentchak

Published 08 September 2023

Taking a Stand at IBC - The Future of Exhibiting Clouds

If you’re reading KitPlus you probably don’t need us to tell you that, each year, the IBC Show attracts 1,700 exhibitors, each parting with a significant sum of money for the privilege of touting their wares from the darkened halls for five whole days. For the last eight years Blue Lucy has been one of these exhibitors and the show has always more...

Submitted by Julian Wright

Published 14 November 2019

Moving to an IP Platform Considerations

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. This began to change with the arrival of sol...

Submitted by Stephen Brownsill

Published 07 June 2018

Manage and Monitor

Issue 94 - October 2014In the month that digital files become the preferred method of delivery for television programmes in the UK, it will come as a blessed relief to many in both post and production that one of the biggest bugbears of file-based delivery – how to deal with insert editing - may have been solved, just in the nick of time. It didn’t...

Submitted by Will Strauss#

Published 01 November 2014

How To Record The Perfect Voice Over

by Beth Zarkhosh Issue 94 - October 2014 Ever wonder how much time and effort goes into creating the perfect voice over and how to record them yourself? As most of us hear the voices on the screen we rarely think about the person who has recorded it or the professional level of technique used to create it. Where can you record? So firstly let\'s ex...

Submitted by Beth Zarkhosh

Published 01 November 2014

Centralised tapeless workflow at BT sport studios

by Steve Montgomery Issue 88 - April 2014 Part of the former International Broadcast Centre at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London has been transformed into the new home of BT Sport with state-of-the-art production and broadcasting systems for BTs new television broadcast operations. BT sport is a broadcasting station with 24-7 operational c...

Submitted by steve montgomery

Published 01 May 2014

HTML5 and H.264. Friends United....

H.264 - The Success StorySome technologies like DVD, CD, TV and the PC prove themselves over time. They are practical, flexible, reliable - even universal. Is H.264 one of those magic bullet technologies?H.264, also known as MPEG-4 Part 10 or AVC, is the video codec that has taken the broadcast and consumer world by storm. In 2008, Anthony Rose, fo...

Submitted by Kieron Seth#

Published 01 August 2011

Eye to Eye: Distribution and Delivery 2010

Distribution and Delivery are two elements of in the broadcast chainthat get taken pretty much for granted but both are highly important. My focus in this summary is on equipment and software introduced since IBC 2009 and in the run-up to NAB 2010. Distribution linksThese come in many shapes and flavours, over copper, optical fibre, RF, point-to-po...

Submitted by Bob Pank#

Published 01 May 2010

Good cop, bad cop

Peter Savage looks at the tricky subject of asking customers to honour their commitments and, possibly, debts – without ruining your customer-supplier relationship or losing what you are owed. How do you keep your customer sweet whilst making sure they pay?This is a question that I have been asked numerous times over the last few months, as draggin...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 February 2009

The morality of meltdown

Apologies for breaking away from my usual broadcast-orientated comments but, when looking at the micro of our own world, sometimes big macro economic tsunamis crash in – and can have hugely damaging effects on our own small, flat, micro economic island. I’m writing this over the weekend when the US Congress is deciding whether it should bail out th...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 January 2009

When trouble looms phoenix your company

So, the US Federal Reserve (broadly equivalent to the Bank of England – it influences the availability and cost of money and credit in the US economy) is about to bail out Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac, the two largest US mortgage providers. This comes on the back of the Bank of England helping, in no small way, Northern Rock. One rule for them, anothe...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 November 2008

Selling your business Part 3. Gearing up for sale

In the final article in his series about preparing your business for sale, Peter Savage outlines the strategy that leads to success even in a slowing economy. Last month we were left with a conundrum: how do you sell a business when the company clearly has a value but the market, and consequently the performance of the business, is in reverse? This...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 September 2008

Flexiscope from Hamlet

A number of years ago Hamlet gave itself the impossible task of developing the worlds first HD and SD video and audio measurement and monitoring instrument that could be packed into one small handheld device. The new instrument would need to provide waveforms, vectors, audio bar graphs, measurement cursors, a range of error detection, decoding of b...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 September 2008

Lender of the last resort or good use of your assets

Recently several people have asked me why companies use factoring or invoice discounting as a way of dealing with debtors. “Are they in trouble?” and “Is it the last straw before throwing in the towel?” were the most common questions. So I thought I would talk you through these types of sales finance, dispelling a few myths by explaining when they...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 June 2008

Setting up in business: Le Christmas Crunch

Well, I just fancied having a break as we have been slogging away for almost six months – planning, starting, measuring and then employing. So, phew, it’s the Christmas break. Well haven’t we done well to get here? You certainly have. And now for a little topical help: the credit crunch that is currently the focus of so many media reports. What doe...

Submitted by Dennis Lennie

Published 01 May 2008