KitPlus | Articles

A Broadcasters Guide to Microservices

The word “microservices” has been creeping into the conversation about software-centric systems recently. Is it really a different approach, what does it mean, and what are the advantages? Anyone who has ever designed a software device will understand the basic principles of modular design. It is easier to keep track of what the whole system is doi...

Submitted by Roger Persson

Published 31 March 2021

State of the Nation - The chances of anything coming from...

Among the autumn dramas the old-fashioned broadcasters have offered us this year was a new adaptation of the HG Wells classic The War of the Worlds. Writer Peter Harness stayed pretty faithful to the book, retaining its setting of leafy Surrey and focusing on the human stories. But any mention of The War of the Worlds inevitably brings up the CBS R...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs - new

Published 27 January 2020

Class: Pragmatism In Engineering

A couple of years ago, Hermann Popp from ARRI came to me and talked about putting MXF in ST 2110. My initial take away was that his proposal felt like exactly the right way to solve the problem he presented, but was completely counter-intuitive to the IP Engineering purists who would push back on the concept of double wrapping the content. It took...

Submitted by Bruce Devlin - new

Published 03 November 2019

Solving Rigorous Digital Workflow Challenges

Headquartered in New Zealand, The Rebel Fleet offers digital workflow services to top film and television production companies. Clients address broad creative needs and retain total image control across multiple shooting units with fast turnarounds. Recent projects include The Meg, Adrift, Ash vs Evil Dead, and The Shannara Chronicles. The company...

Submitted by Michael Urban

Published 03 November 2019

REVIEW Canon UJ111x8_3B UHD Lens

Shooting in ultra high definition and high dynamic range has become the preferred option for all television productions with a potentially long commercial life. The hir-ing charge and indeed the outright purchase cost of cameras of this standard are not significantly greater than those of high definition standard dynamic range models. With half the...

Submitted by Andy McKenzie

Published 10 September 2019

NAB 2019 Highlights

The NAB Show in Las Vegas never loses its capacity to surprise. With NHK already transmitting in 8K and the Tokyo Olympics just a year away, this might have been the year that 8K equipment prices descended from the stratosphere to just plain expensive. The main trends at NAB 2019 were an increasing focus on HD-HDR, Media-over-IP and 4K. 8K was pret...

Submitted by Paul MacKenzie

Published 04 June 2019

Battery Power Management

There are many obvious ways a modern battery is better than one that would have been common just a few years ago and is light years ahead of what was available a generation ago. In everything from form factor to battery life to charge time, things have vastly improved. Consider cycle ratings, an indication of how many times a pack has or can be use...

Submitted by Ross Kanarek

Published 24 January 2019

Accelerated Workflows with eGPU

Customer:Creative BlokeIndustry: Media & EntertainmentChallenges:To enable a small independent visual effects facility, Creative Bloke, with a versatile GPU that contains a combination of portability and performance to cater to their wide and varied portfolio of clients. Solution:Creative Bloke utilized the AMD Radeon Pro WX 9100 graphics card in t...

Submitted by Mike Griggs

Published 09 November 2018

How to shoot the perfect lighting mix

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...

Submitted by Alan Ipakchian

Published 07 June 2018

A Pandoras Box to empower the filmmaker

The setting was Celebro Studios London, home to their fully 4k television studios, where journalists and industry commentators gathered late last November to witness the launch of the revolutionary Rotolight Anova PRO 2. This was no ordinary unveiling though, the launch was streamed live on Facebook and YouTube and hosted by award winning news anch...

Submitted by KitPlus

Published 12 February 2018

Supporting creativity and driving better workflows

For decades videographers and filmmakers have been pushing the boundaries when it comes to creativity all with the aim of delivering a visually spectacular and engaging experience to viewers. For the most part they rely on artistic vision and innate skill, but over the last few years technology has been playing more of a role in enabling that creat...

Submitted by Rod Aaron Gammons

Published 19 October 2017

Managing colour from aquisition to delivery

Start with calibration The right colour management process can be the difference between being certain of what the end results are going to be, and having to spend time fixing things in post production. When we talk about colour management whether it is for photography or video it has got to start with calibrated monitors. Many people think about...

Submitted by Ollie Kenchington

Published 19 October 2017

Advances in LED lighting innovation with Rotolight AEOS

i There\'s no doubt that lighting plays a critical role in videography, filmmaking and photography. It\'s the area of content capture that brings added creativity to shoots, whether that\'s filming a wedding, producing a commercial or making a movie. Much like cameras have evolved over the past few years, lighting has also evolved; from the traditi...

Submitted by Rod Aaron Gammons

Published 07 September 2017

Does the cloud have substance?

Just at the moment, every customer we talk to wants to move to the cloud. It is not just a techno-buzzword: people are really attracted by it. The idea of getting rid of all hardware and letting someone else worry about keeping machine rooms alive seems like a good plan. And they sometimes feel a bit deflated when we talk quietly and calmly about w...

Submitted by Ciaran Doran

Published 04 April 2017

The now and how of LED Lighting

LED lighting has come a long way from the days when companies like Outsight were ridiculed by major manufacturers at trade shows because, the manufacturers asserted, technology couldn\'t be entrusted with the requirements of our industry. During this time the market has moved from that initial question, "What is LED?\" to "Is LED ready?\" and final...

Submitted by Tama Berkeljon

Published 15 March 2017