noggin's posts, page 124

Brexit Dramarama

That is almost certainly one factor at play - as ITV were proposing a 1 on 1 (which obviously Corbyn would prefer) and the BBC were proposing a more panel-based approach I believe (which allows viewpoints other than May's and Corbyn's to be represented?)

Brexit Dramarama

It's not the studio floor (or size of it) that's the issue... There is a LOT more involved in producing an election show than the studio.

BBC Scotland channel - service to also launch in HD

If it's on The Street, is that a similar location to where Jeremy Vine presented the graphics for the Independence Referendum from?

I think that might also be where one of the BBC Four (or was it BBC Two) Culture show replacements made by BBC Two Scotland came from at one point?

International News Presentation: Past and Present

I wouldn't describe that as timecode - it sounds like the speaking clock!

I guess INA recorded stuff off-air with programme sound on one track and a human-decodable time reference (the speaking clock) on the other?

Timecode itself is a machine readable format that sounds like this

BBC World News | 30th October 2017 Onwards

Yes - for a source like an IP video decoder the output will almost certainly be an HD-SDI with embedded audio, which would be fed into the station or studio router (depending on whether the decoder is shared across the building or local to the studio)

If you were to install an IP decoder locally to overplug it and replace an output from the station router, whilst it's possible to do clever things with MADI for multiple outputs from some routers, I expect that a standard studio would take an embedded HD-SDI source in and de-embed it to AES audio for the sound desk (whilst routing embedded for other destinations). This would then be likely hardwired to an I/O device like a Calrec Hydra, that would then fibre into the sound desk processor. (Most broadcast sound desks no longer have I/O integrated into them, and delegate that to fibre stage-box type devices like Hydras - which can have analogue and AES baseband inputs)



The station router will have allocated destinations designated for each studio (if a studio has 10 outside sources from the station router, these are likely to be 10 destinations on the station router). These 10 outside sources are likely to then be fed into the studio router BUT in a system designed to cope with a local router failure, they (or at least some of them) are also likely to be hardwired to the vision mixer and sound desk for resilience.

Whether the interconnects between the station router and the studio are easy to re-patch is a different matter. It's also questionable whether you are not creating more problems for yourselves re-wiring a studio to bypass a fault, when you could be diverting effort from diagnosing and fixing the underlying fault.

Brexit Dramarama

https://westminster-live.com/ is often used by non-UK (and some UK broadcasters) and has a pretty good view. It's the wrong side of the river though...

The BBC have used it in the past - but it's not close enough to be a realistic option for a UK broadcaster covering this kind of story. Being just outside means MPs can 'nip out' rather than needing to get a cab or walk for 20 minutes or more.

Brexit Dramarama

Are we talking about a US location or a UK one? We don't have senators or representatives in the UK as such - we have Members of Parliament (aka MPs) and Lords and Ladies (and other titled people like Bishops) in the two houses of Parliament (House of Commons and House of Lords).

For any form of reactive presentation with 'big hitters' you really need to be as close to the HoC and HoL as possible, and the Westminster 'bubble' studios are a normal thing for big Parliamentary stories.

Tomorrow's World

Yes - 2160p25 HDR at 22Mbs over a phone line would have blown my mind in 2000...

But then moving to 5x1080i TV services in the space of 1xPAL composite SD service is also pretty amazing (and in less than 15 years).

Tomorrow's World

Ah - I'm careful to say 50Hz not 50i these days as there is so much 50p knocking around



Unless you are watching on Sky HD - then it's almost certainly a 1080i25 to 720p50 deinterlace. The highest quality (non-'UHD') iPlayer format (other than on Sky HD) is 720p50. There is also a 540p50 profile at a lower bitrate. The lower-than-540p profiles are p25 not p50. For legacy platforms there are also 720p25 streams still I believe. (These are SDR Rec 709 H.264/AVC 8-bit.)

For UHD iPlayer (which is also HLG) there are 2160p50, 1440p50 and 1080p50 (and possibly a 720p50 now?) streams in H.265/HEVC 10-bit HLG Rec 2020 for live, and there are p25 variants for pre-recorded stuff. (Dynasties is 2160p25)

Sky HD uses Sky's in-house distribution system and uses progressive download (You can start watching before the download has completed but it won't let you start until it thinks it's got enough for you not to run out). I think it's around 8Mbs 1080i25 H.264 (and can carry 5.1 Dolby Digital - all other iPlayer outlets are 2.0 AAC ISTR)



It's around 5Mbs so survives OK - but demanding content exposes the less-than-ideal deinterlacing and compression used - particularly on live stuff. Strictly hammers iPlayer...



Yes - I guess so.

Tomorrow's World

Do you mean was your iPlayer stuck in 25p or iPlayer in general?

There are 25p fall-back streams ISTR for the web streaming/Smart TV streamed iPlayer. However there aren't any streamed 50i streams - iPlayer is 720/50p on most platforms (Sky iPlayer is 1080/50i aka 1080i25, and there were some legacy DVB MHEG5 iPlayer streams that were 576i ISTR - but I think they have been deprecated)

BBC World News | 30th October 2017 Onwards

I'm not sure how I see that helping in this situation? You are just swapping one IP receiver/server with HD-SDI output for another? You still need to bypass the router to get it onto the mixer/switcher (and audio onto the sound desk)?


Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation - a formerly state-owned Japanese telecoms company. They are one of the market leaders in IP connectivity codecs. Their codecs are used by broadcasters for IP-based contribution circuits. NTT or Ateme encoders are used for many fixed IP paths AIUI.

NTT, Ateme, Harmonic are the three main broadcast IP encoder/decoder manufacturers I see in daily use. Dejero, LiveU and WMT are more newsgathering systems for bonded cellular or low bitrate WiFi-style working. They aren't high up the list for point-to-point fixed connectivity over guaranteed connectivity.

https://www.ntt-electronics.com/en/products/video/codec_system_solutions/index.html

https://www.ateme.com/solutions/dsng-contribution/

https://www.harmonicinc.com/products/encoding-transcoding-multiplexing/ (Harmonic are more geared to emission coding but do contribution coding products too AIUI)

BBC World News | 30th October 2017 Onwards

AIUI a lot of the BBC's bureaux now use IP connectivity (though not all of this may be over the public internet). I'd be surprised if Dejero or WMT kit was used for fixed installs. Far more likely for NTT, Ateme rack mounted H264 encoders to be used. However the decoders for these devices are likely to be on the NBH station router - and putting in agile IP decoders and the requisite control system (which is likely to be BNCS-based...) would be a non-trivial solution and distract the finite engineering resource from solving the actual problem.

Sky News use a lot of Open Broadcast Encoders for their fixed IP links, and now run their MCR in the IP domain significantly I believe (I assume transcoding from H264 compressed to 2022/2110 though I may be wrong - so the routing is done at IP not HD-SDI level. I know BBC News have OBEs they use for temporary installs at Glastonbury etc. (they use OBE and Raven on a common hardware platform I think) and BBC Scotland are big users of OBE too.