noggin's posts, page 152

NG

noggin Founding member 23 August 2018 10:50am

BBC News at Ten

However if (and I think it's still an IF - though I think an RFI has gone out) they move to an IP system for regional production (possibly using remote production techniques) then that may offer some potential solutions.

A tender went out this week for a trial system, (it's going to be a long road before we see anything being deployed)

Yep - the opt-out solution for BBC One HD will have to arrive separately, and before, I guess. Fingers crossed the SD gear lasts... (Though cameras could be upgraded earlier in extremis I guess - as any solution will presumably have Cameras and CCUs+RCPs+MSUs on site and their outputs IP encapsulated for transit to the remote data centre. Whether you go for CCUs with internal IP support or off-board would be the main question?)

NG

noggin Founding member 22 August 2018 10:39pm

BBC News at Ten

p_c_u_k posted:

The regional optouts and thunderclaps ... having seen video footage some time ago on YouTube (which I can't find now, annoyingly) of a regional gallery opting in and out of the headline sequence I can only admire the people responsible. It isn't a countdown as such, London just yells "opt out opt out" down the line after the last national headline and the timing is up to the region. It really does seem unnecessarily complicated and it's amazing we don't get more crashes and untidy mixes.

London doesn't usually yell...

Most directors I've heard are perfectly calm and just call the opt in the same way as presentation do, with a clear 'opt-out, opt-out'. They trigger a timer that counts to the opt-back with a digitised voice which is sent to the regions along with the director's talkback (the digital voice used to be Fiona Bruce, not sure if it is now Sophie Raworth). When that timer hits zero they call 'opt-in, opt-in' (some may say 'opt-back, opt-back')

NG

noggin Founding member 22 August 2018 10:36pm

Eurovision 2019

digipal posted:

Hatton Cross posted:

Presumably the dress rehearsal tx, is running on a server in the broadcast compound alongside the live Saturday Tx?

Which begs the question - why didn't the didn't the director of this year's contest crash to the back-up when the protestor got on stage during the UK performance, stayed with the vt until song end?

Does the show run on a TX delay at all?

No - the only delay is caused by distribution coders and decoders. There is no delay on-site for editorial purposes.

NG

noggin Founding member 22 August 2018 10:34pm

Eurovision 2019

Hatton Cross posted:

Presumably the dress rehearsal tx, is running on a server in the broadcast compound alongside the live Saturday Tx?

Which begs the question - why didn't the didn't the director of this year's contest crash to the back-up when the protestor got on stage during the UK performance, stayed with the vt until song end?

I think the on-site backup replay is more for use in case of a major failure in the truck (so is running downstream of the truck), so there may not be and additional copy running in sync in the truck too (and you really don't want it to be easy to cut to if it is)

NG

noggin Founding member 22 August 2018 10:30pm

Cutting the Cord

Pete posted:

noggin posted:

Virgin Media uses a third way. They have a network of coax cables to carry TV signals - and allocate some of the frequency band of these cables to carry broadband (the connection TO you is actually carried using the same modulation system as TV signals are carried). They call it fibre, but it doesn't involve fibre coming into your home...

How far does the fibre reach with Virgin? How fast can the coax reach? Obv they're currently providing 300mbit service over the same cables that used to provide 10 thanks to advances in the backhaul, changes in modulation, and newer modems but how fast can the coax theoretically reach?

I guess there is a trade-off between how many residences you run from the same feeder (i.e. how many separate RF slots you need to allocate to each consumer vs how many channels you us vs how granular your network is)

If you want to know the full capacity of a Virgin Media Coax - assuming you got rid of all the TV - then you have around 50 x 8MHz muxes (I think we use 8MHz for cable here) slots used just for TV - which will give you 50Mbs each mux - so that is around 2.5Gbs of bitrate for the digital TV services ignoring what they currently allocate for IP.

AIUI they allocate data using the same modulation scheme as the TV muxes - so 50Mbs=1 mux, 100Mbs=2 muxes etc. so the more muxes each consumer is allocated, the more granular the coax distribution has to be (as fewer people can share the same feed)

(That's unless Virgin are now using DOCSIS 3.1 which doesn't use DVB-C muxes for IP)

NG

noggin Founding member 22 August 2018 12:54pm

Cutting the Cord

safetywatto posted:

What are FTTC and FTTP. Not heard those terms before

FTTC = Fibre to the Cabinet. Basically your existing phone line is still used to carry the broadband signal, but rather than it travelling all the way from the exchange over your phone line, your phone line is routed through a street cabinet with a fibre connection and a bunch of broadband kit in it (similar to the kit that would have been at the exchange). Your voice phone line goes back to the exchange just as it always did, but your broadband connection only has to travel a much shorter journey (to the cabinet) - and as broadband speeds drop with distance on copper/aluminium wires - speeds are higher this way.

FTTP = Fibre to the Premises. You have a new fibre optic cable connection all the way to your home, with a fibre optic modem installed in your house. This can offer 1Gbs connection speeds - or higher. But requires new cables to be laid to every home - which isn't anywhere near as cheap as re-using existing phone lines.

Virgin Media uses a third way. They have a network of coax cables to carry TV signals - and allocate some of the frequency band of these cables to carry broadband (the connection TO you is actually carried using the same modulation system as TV signals are carried). They call it fibre, but it doesn't involve fibre coming into your home...

NG

noggin Founding member 22 August 2018 12:48pm

Eurovision 2019

JamesM0984 posted:

Apart from being the performance the juries vote on, the dress rehearsal is also used as part of contingency plans; notable uses of this footage include the director having it on standby running in-sync at Riga 2003 incase TaTu did something outrageous, this year of course it was used on the official DVD and YouTube video of the Grand Final in order to cover SuRie's stage invader.

All national broadcasters are expected to record the dress rehearsal of the final and run it 'in sync' in their transmission control room as a backup in case the live feeds from the contest disappear.

This also used to be the case for the semi-finals, but now the live dress rehearsals of the semifinals aren't 'clean' because of the Big5+Host performances, an edited version is fed to all broadcasters the following morning.

NG

noggin Founding member 22 August 2018 12:38pm

Best practice video capturing from VHS

Orry Verducci posted:

noggin posted:

Yep - I prefer not using anything adaptive so stick with w3fdif for most stuff.

The admittedly small problem I've found with w3fdif is that you get a slight but noticeable bobbing on the edges of static objects. On tests I've run it's been quite noticeable on sport scoreboards and the Sky News DOG for example.

With bwdif I've not seen this at all, although it's still obviously w3fdif's excellent deinterlacing.

Having said that w3fdif on its own is still excellent, and most people probably wouldn't notice, so each to their own.

Yes - W3FDIF works better on 'real' content than it does on electronic graphics (which have electronic 'perfect' edges that you don't usually find on camera outputs, and that would probably twitter on a CRT too)

W3FDIF is in daily use in both software and hardware in the broadcast chain AIUI. It's certainly used in BBC News workflows where scaling of interlaced sources is required, and was a standard deinterlacer on DVEs and standards converters for a long time.

What I like about W3FDIF is that it's entirely predictable and totally non-adaptive, as it's just a cleverly designed Vertical/Temporal filter. I've seen YADIF cope poorly in some situations and switched to W3FDIF as soon as I could. (It's also available as an option in the LAVFilters/Codec ecosystem)

Now how long until the BBC/Snell PhC patents lapse...

NG

noggin Founding member 20 August 2018 7:11pm

Peston on Sunday to move to Wednesdays

London Lite posted:

noggin posted:

bkman1990 posted:

With the likes of Marr & Sophy Ridge hoovering up that vital share of the audience it was seen as a somewhat decent bit of competition.

What ratings does Ridge get? I'd have thought the bulk of the hoovering was by Marr not Ridge?

Not enough to get into the Barb Top 10 for the channel. The most rated non-news bulletin shows are the evening Press Preview editions.

So fair to say that Ridge wasn't hoovering up that many ratings against Peston.

NG

noggin Founding member 20 August 2018 6:59pm

Best practice video capturing from VHS

Orry Verducci posted:

I agree that FFmpeg is well worth mastering, it's my tool of choice. Newer versions have a deinterlacer called bwdif, which combines the comb detection from yadif with w3fdif's algorithm, and the results I've got from tests I've run have been very good.

Yep - I prefer not using anything adaptive so stick with w3fdif for most stuff.

NG

noggin Founding member 20 August 2018 5:42pm