Sky News | General Discussion

I haven't seen that part of Sky News Raw yet, but I'm fairly certain the internation feed content comes from transmission, not the gallery. It was clear from the shots of the gallery on Sky News Raw that while the UK and international feeds were on a break, the gallery programme output was often showing the ident, not the international filler. The only screen in the gallery I could see with the international content was in the group with the TX returns. Also international often opts out of sports segments/programing, while the gallery is running the UK output.



A lot of these feeds are actually the same thing, there's really only 3 feeds: UK, Ireland and International. The HD DOG's are keyed on downstream for the HD services, which obviously doubles this to 6 feeds, but the only difference is the DOG. The ones you list as "Sky News Intl HD" and "Sky News Intl HD for Youtube" are definitely the same thing, YouTube is showing the base feed.


The SD services are actually HD, but downscaled prior to distribution. This is what you see in HD on the UK streaming services, which Sky do for all their channels on Sky Go for some reason, you'll notice they're all in HD but have the SD DOG's.

Just to really complicate it though, at one point Sky played out the ads seperate for each platform, so Sky, Cable and Freeview all had their own feeds, which was occasionally used to show separate promos. Not sure if they still do this however.

OK, that largely makes sense.

So Gallery 21/22 outputs a single programme, "Sky News". This is in HD with the clock, ticker and a plain 'Sky News' DOG keyed. There is nothing in the breaks other than the logo holding slide.

This feed is picked up at transmission who split this into three channels, Sky News UK, Sky News Ireland and Sky News International. All still in HD, the difference being the commercial breaks.

Further down the chain, the official 'HD' versions have an HD-branded DOG keyed over the top of the one in the source programme.

I'm not sure about the Youtube version though....
During a Sky Sports News segment, I am pretty sure that in the past I have seen the whole thing go out on UK/IE feeds, a partial bulletin on the DSAT International feed and the whole thing swapped out with an old and quite dry interview with Gareth Southgate (or a three days out-of-date badly edited SSN bulletin). All three feeds have the ticker.

Is the ticker still coming from the on-air gallery, despite the program output on the international feeds being played out in TX? Presumably, I'm missing something here?

Also throw the clock into the mix too, is the clock on the base feed and the 3rd stage of the chain when the HD dog is added also covers up the clock with Skynews.com on the Youtube and International feeds?

Always remember galleries and gallery vision mixers can have multiple outputs - so you can key up a clock on one DSK but take a pre-DSK or DSK-clean feed of the mixer that won't have the clock on it.

With modern mixers you can upstream key differently on different mixer outputs too... (And although you don't see a vision mixer panel in the Sky gallery, there will still be an engine or crate doing the same things under automation control - the mixer panel is effectively just a keyboard...)

Or you can have a clean mixer output and then within the gallery (or between the gallery and TX) downstream key different graphics for different platforms, but with the same data controlling them (or different)

Of course, makes sense.
This was presumably how they used to provide the HD variant with completely separate gfx and the 'HD Wing'?

I'm not sure the ins and outs of how the ticker works, but I do know it comes from Sky Central and is available to both galleries and TX. You'll notice the multiviewer in the galleries has the ticker on its own screen.


If I was to take an educated guess, I would say it's on an independent feed from the graphics system. Usually it's keyed on to the gallery programme output, but when international opts out I suspect TX key it in. Also often on the UK channel when they show a feature programme (e.g. A Plastic Ocean) they will play it from TX, which you can tell as the show starts clean, and then the DOG and ticker are manually keyed in by TX, slowly fading in anytime from a few seconds to up to a minute after the start of the show.

Regarding YouTube I was sure they didn't do anything special for it, but if you've seen something different on International DSAT then that does raise some questions.


The clock is on the base feed, it's on the ticker. The cover up on International is part of the DOG, they always come on and off together. If you watch the YouTube stream you'll notice you usually get a frame or two of the clock before the cover up DOG is switched on.

The following grab is of a SSN bulletin that's just happened in the Kay Burley Show.
The pic on the left is Sky News International (19.2E feed) via my TV server. The shot on the right was what was going out on YouTube. Both are within a couple of frames of each other when showing the same programming.



International DSAT is taking the SSN bulletin while International YouTube is taking the tired Southgate filler. Both were introduced and ended with the Vitality sponsorship credit (YT crashes into the out bumper).

It's not a perfect example, as I am pretty sure I have previously seen the ticker played atop of the Southgate filler.

In that case YouTube is clearly running from its own feed. Usually it does take the international SSN bulletin, so I'm guessing there's some sort of streaming rights issue with whatever is being featured today.

There's a clip from the cricket, but that's in the pre-break tease with Bala. That tease is going out on both international feeds.

Interesting that the tease goes out everywhere but the actual bulletin fails to materialise on YT.

Otherwise, there's only training clips and clips from press conferences.

I do have Sky News's YT feed on in the background quite a bit when at work. The SSN segments rarely (if ever) go out the same as the domestic feed.

I've seen SSN bulletins crash out mid-way to an SSN International promo loop, recorded old SSN bulletins go out (like three to four days old) and more often, the Gareth Southgate interview.

Which TV server do you have?

YouTube will either use filler from Sky Sports or a special pre-recorded bulletin (sometimes a day old) as they don't have the rights to show EPL content. The YT stream will also show a different feed of US presidential debates.

Sky News International shown on linear platforms has the same sports content as the UK and Ireland, but has the filler instead of commercials in some markets.

The ticker doesn't come from Sky Central (that's where the glass box is, but there's no newsroom there). It's produced and played out in the newsroom - most recently from the on air gallery. Hope that makes sense!