KitPlus | Articles

The way forward in a changing world

The broadcast and media industries are evolving in all areas to adapt to the challenges of competition from OTT, changing user viewing habits, technological advances in image resolution, dynamic range and colour rendition as well as embracing new video over IP infrastructures. Test and measurement equipment manufacturers also have to evolve to supp...

Submitted by Alan Wheable

Published 21 March 2019

Test, Measurement and Standards

Who are AIMS?The Alliance for IP Media Solutions (AIMS), is a non-profit trade alliance that fosters the adoption of one set of common, ubiquitous, standards-based protocols for interoperability over IP in the media and entertainment, and professional audio/video industries. The members of AIMS are a group of like-minded industry manufacturers who...

Submitted by Alan Wheable

Published 25 January 2019

An Obituary to Timecode

A stoic and persistent character that stubbornly refused to change with the times, Timecode has finally passed on, but no-one has noticed. A long-lasting industry veteran, Timecode was brought into this world at an uncertain date in the late 1960s due to the needs of analogue tape workflows and the demand for synchronisation between audio and video...

Submitted by Bruce Devlin - new

Published 09 November 2018

AI in Media and Entertainment

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a term appearing everywhere these days. What is happening in media and entertainment (M&E) that makes the industry ripe for AI? In other words, why does the M&E industry need AI?In virtually every industry, AI is claiming a growing stake in the supply chain, creating both operational enhancements and business efficie...

Submitted by David Candler

Published 09 November 2018

What content providers need to know about OTT

1.) What are the key elements involved in OTT monitoring? Why is it critical today?As OTT (Over-The-Top) technology has gotten more mature and established robust standards over the years, the concept of OTT monitoring is gaining popularity. With customer expectations soaring, it’s vital for OTT providers to deliver superior quality content. To deli...

Submitted by Hiren Hindocha

Published 09 November 2018

Twenty Years of Transcription

In 1998 Dom Bourne dropped out of university and started a business providing transcriptions to production companies. The company operated from his childhood bedroom and Dom hoped it would keep him in beer money for a year or two before he decided what he really wanted to do with his life. Twenty years later and, this year, Take 1 celebrates two de...

Submitted by Dom Bourne

Published 18 July 2018

Listening to the needs of audio engineers

Monitoring SDI video content within an installation is and has always been straight forwards. If you have a monitor, and you can see the image correctly, all is well. This is not necessarily the case for metadata and especially not for audio. Assuming a SMPTE 352 payload packet is present on the SDI signal, this metadata determines how the video co...

Submitted by Alan Wheable

Published 07 June 2018

The Ongoing Evolution of Subtitling Technology

As a subtitling technology developer and manufacturer we’re currently and frequently hearing remarks along the lines of us ‘having it easy’ at the moment. This has typically spun out from the fact that there hasn’t been any really significant and therefore demanding technology shifts in the industry that have affected us for a while. In the past we...

Submitted by Dean Wales

Published 07 June 2018

Technological advances in the broadcast industry

Since it is Omnitek’s 20th anniversary this year, I thought it would be interesting to look back over the technological advances in the broadcast industry over the last few decades and look at the similarities between then and now. When I started work in the Broadcast television industry in 1975, video was analogue (with only 3 of 4 formats to worr...

Submitted by Alan Wheable

Published 26 March 2018

Class: Do we still need standards

On the 1st January 2018, I officially took on the post of SMPTE Standards Vice President. The role has responsibility for all of SMPTE’s standardisation activities and it fills me with equal measures of excitement and terror. A big thank you to Alan Lambshead who, after 4 years as Standards Vice President is handing over the post to me. I think it...

Submitted by Bruce Devlin - new

Published 12 February 2018

Supporting broadcast quality control

With the ever-increasing number of program channels and range of different program distribution formats, the process of ensuring program quality has become a complex one for contribution/capture, production, post production, server ingest and content distribution. Add to this the complexities of HDR and WCG gamut, it is essential to ensure that the...

Submitted by Alan Wheable

Published 02 November 2017

Leveraging licensed broadcast spectrum assets

There are several different approaches to transmitting live and file-based content from the field to the studio. Traditional microwave Electronic News Gathering (ENG) provides high bandwidth, high-quality transmission with low latency. Using the secure, dedicated BAS spectrum keeps control in a broadcasters hands. The past few years have seen a shi...

Submitted by John Payne

Published 02 November 2017

Modernizing the Cutting Edge

Over the last decade, streaming as a medium has seen tremendous growth. Services like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Video are no longer just post-hoc distributors of broadcast television content, they have become content creators and are producing some of the most well received "television\" content of the past few years. For example, at the 2013 Prime...

Submitted by Myles Carter - new

Published 19 May 2017

Mr MXF thinks the future is made of components

The recent SMPTE IMF plugfest that was kindly hosted by Fox in Burbank gave the vendors, users and content owners a chance to discuss the fine details of the IMF standard and to get excited about where it will take the Post Production community. If you haven\'t heard of IMF then you have not been standing within 500ft of me for the past year. IMF i...

Submitted by Bruce Devlin

Published 15 February 2017

Smart audio - the way foward for live broadcast productio...

Today\'s broadcast facilities are facing ever-increasing demands on their resources as they strive to keep up with consumers who expect more content on more devices, both where and when they want it. Amongst all the various elements broadcasters have to handle (including video, graphics, data, captions and subtitles), the importance of audio should...

Submitted by Anthony Wilkins

Published 07 December 2016