KitPlus | Articles

Making Metadata Work

I dare say that if you’re a keen reader of my column then you will be brushing up on your Dutch pronunciation and acclimatising yourself to mayonnaise on your chips rather than ketchup. If you’re really keen then you’ll also be making sure that you practise your Dutch jokes about the Flemish to ensure you don’t accidentally tell a Flemish joke abou...

Submitted by Bruce Devlin - new

Published 10 September 2019

The Pace of Change

The youngest human to stand on the moon (so far) was Charles Moss, the lunar module pilot of Apollo 16. Charlie had a wonderful claim: his father witnessed the Wright Brothers’ first flight at Kitty Hawk, and lived to see his son on the moon. Does anything capture the speed of technological advance better than that? The whole of the history of powe...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs - new

Published 08 September 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

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

Delivering on the 4k Promise

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 cust...

Submitted by Lorna Garrett

Published 07 June 2018

Getting started with IMF

i Why is the Interoperable Master Format still exciting? Content is still King, but only if you can get it out to the consumer. I have just had the privilege of doing a live episode of Bruce\'s Shorts at the EBU IMF Workshop in Geneva. It was a privilege because I was able to talk about real world issues in making IMF compositions rather than talki...

Submitted by Bruce Devlin - new

Published 07 September 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

The true benefits of the media factory ideal

As an industry we know that to be successful in the new multi-platform, multi-format environment there are hurdles that broadcasters and other content owners must overcome. These include: the introduction of non-linear offerings, which require different services to be managed in parallel; the reduction of revenues from conventional linear channels,...

Submitted by Julian Fernandez-Campon

Published 22 July 2016

CLASS - Where do captions & subtitles live?

by Bruce Devlin Issue 104 - August 2015 Its not uncommon to see ability to insert/extract captions/subtitles as part of a tender requirement or product specification. But in a file-based world, what does this mean and where are we inserting/extracting to/from?For this article, well define captions and subtitles as text overlay that the user turns o...

Submitted by Bruce Devlin

Published 01 September 2015

Vision for the future of TV

Issue 92 - August 2014During the Commonwealth Games BBC Research and Development took the opportunity to unveil a range of new trials and public demonstrations as part of its Games showcase. These experiments brought together a wide range of industry partners and are helping to shape BBC R&D’s vision for the future of TV, and included a number of b...

Submitted by KitPlus

Published 01 September 2014

War House goes live in 4K

Issue 87 - March 2014In the next chapter of the War Horse story, National Theatre Live in collaboration with Sony, are pushing the technological boundaries of live entertainment to a new level. For the first time worldwide, the multi-award winning stage production will be broadcast live in 4K. On February 27th 2014, National Theatre Live (NT Live)...

Submitted by KitPlus

Published 01 April 2014

Embracing the 4K future with next generation encoding tec...

by Kevin CookIssue 83 - November 2013 Whats keeping todays media and broadcast operators up at night? To find out, just walk the floor of any 2013 broadcast industry trade show. Only a few short years ago we were obsessed with the digital transition and migrating to HD operations, followed by adoption of 3-D technologies. And now, todays big challe...

Submitted by Ludovic Pertuisel#

Published 01 December 2013

Powering a richer media experience on set-top boxes

by Achim BosseIssue 80 - August 2013 Todays television viewers are increasingly using the Internet to download, share, and consume media on a variety of devices. Traditionally, DTV and IPTV service providers have relied on DVB MPEG-based technologies to deliver linear television services and IP technologies like multicasting or RTSP for VOD. Howeve...

Submitted by Achim Bosse

Published 01 September 2013

Good words from Dick Hobbs

by Dick HobbsIssue 79 - July 2013 I have a new hero. His name is Dr Brij Kothari. Hes the guy on the left of the picture. Yes, I know that his achievements will be well known to many of you, but I have just discovered his impact so humour me and let me tell you about him. Kothari was born in Nanded in India, in 1964. His parents encouraged his acad...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.

Published 01 August 2013

8 questions about QC and language-based tools for caption...

by KJ KandellIssue 79 - July 2013 What are Captions?Captions (also known as subtitles) are coded signals that are sent along with the video and are decoded at your television or cable box to provide the audio track of the programming as white or colored text over a background. Captions can be open or closed. Open captions are always visible while t...

Submitted by KJ Kandell

Published 01 August 2013