Mass Media & Technology

How did they make the 2001 BBC World Breakfillers?

(October 2018)

This site closed in March 2021 and is now a read-only archive
LS
LewisS
Thanks again!!

128 days later

HA
harshy Founding member
Will we ever see a breakfiller on bbc world like that again I think never sadly, it was exciting in the fact of course that it would completely fall over at times and when it worked it was a brilliant piece of tv presentation.
GE
thegeek Founding member
Deejay, Sorry! I meant the centre square you’d see with branding on it that animates. ( At the start of the 2001 ABF Weekday for example )

UKTV's Lambie Nairn look used a very similar interstitial; I think BBC Prime and America probably did too.
JA
james-2001
BBC News 24 did in the early days too.
NG
noggin Founding member
BBC News 24 did in the early days too.


Yes - during the N9 News 24 flags era there were very short interstitial bumpers/blips between promos - which were small flag animations in the centre of a black frame. They pushed the automation system quite hard.
TO
theTOTHlad2002
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IS
Inspector Sands
noggin posted:

Yes - during the N9 News 24 flags era there were very short interstitial bumpers/blips between promos - which were small flag animations in the centre of a black frame. They pushed the automation system quite hard.

Which is odd considering that break bumpers have been used for decades before News 24 came along, and of course Channel 5 that started a few months earlier had one between every advert.

Or was it just a quirk of the automation system, which I suppose wasn't specifically for channel playout
JA
james-2001
I imagine the automation might have struggled to play something that was only a few frames long, whereas that's not an issue when it was a break bumper attatched to the film or videotape of commercials.

I think the reason many ITV regions didn't use the break flash between adverts in the early 00s is because their automation couldn't handle something so short?
NG
noggin Founding member
noggin posted:

Yes - during the N9 News 24 flags era there were very short interstitial bumpers/blips between promos - which were small flag animations in the centre of a black frame. They pushed the automation system quite hard.

Which is odd considering that break bumpers have been used for decades before News 24 came along, and of course Channel 5 that started a few months earlier had one between every advert.

Or was it just a quirk of the automation system, which I suppose wasn't specifically for channel playout


ISTR Channel 5's original inter-commercial animation was generated by a solid-state box designed specifically for the purpose. News 24 played them from a server separately to the trails either side...
SP
Spencer
I imagine the automation might have struggled to play something that was only a few frames long, whereas that's not an issue when it was a break bumper attatched to the film or videotape of commercials.

I think the reason many ITV regions didn't use the break flash between adverts in the early 00s is because their automation couldn't handle something so short?


IIRC it was the regions played out of Leeds that didn’t have the break-flash as the kit there couldn’t handle it, whereas the regions handled by London did.
JA
james-2001
I know ITV Central started playing out the break flash from the same day CITV started going out in 16:9- which suggests that they had an equipment upgrade at that time.

I think this was before London & Leeds were the only playouts, after all this was a few months before the Carlton & Granada merger.

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