noggin's posts, page 24

New look STV News at Six

Looking at the video there is nothing featured that would suggest that is a production centre. If it were used for an opt-out the gallery and infrastructure would have to be elsewhere and remote production used. The facilities seen in that video were purely contribution related and possibly a little bit of post. It looked like many of the ITV local news regional offices (couple of PCs, down-the-line camera etc.) abeit a little bit bigger and with a kitchen...

The One Show

Rylan Clark-Neal has also featured - though not quite as frequently.

"BBC Must Learn From Mistakes"

Arguably this has already happened. The BBC decided not to continue with The Voice in 2015, with their last series running in 2016 I believe.

AIUI the BBC no longer is going to be in the market for buying an expensive format in competition with ITV/C4/C5.

"BBC Must Learn From Mistakes"

NI doesn't have an additional channel but it is in a different situation, as there is a mux carrying programmes from the Republic in Northern Ireland (and you can receive RTE and TG4 etc. direct in many areas). This changes the dynamic somewhat.

You also have to separate English language programming from non-English language content. The BBC has evolved into a situation where BBC One and Two in England and the Nations broadcast domestic shows pretty much entirely in English. S4C carries the BBC's Welsh language programmes, and BBC Alba carries Gaelic content made by the BBC. Keeping the non-English language content away from BBC One and Two avoids a massive number of problems for the BBC...

"BBC Must Learn From Mistakes"

I guess it depends if you define 'making' as shooting, rather than the whole production process. It's tricky - but I think most people in the industry would define Top Gear as a London production, in the same way as a drama made in-house by BBC Wales on-location in Birmingham would still be a BBC Studios Wales production, or a BBC Bristol team shooting a features programme in Scotland would still be a BBC Studios Bristol production.

Where you shoot something and where it's produced are not always the same thing. (In many cases the definition is more based on where the production team are employed for weeks during the production, rather than where they shoot for a couple of days)

BBC Cymru Wales New HQ

That's not 100% correct. Whilst the Wales Today format may be largely the same, the production is moving from standard definition SDI infrastructure to HD SMPTE 2100 IP infrastructure. That change alone will need a lot of tyre-kicking from the technical team before it's ready for daily use with everyone familiar with the major technology differences. There are major training requirements coupled with moving to IP infrastructure (Concepts we've had since the 1930s are being replaced...)

I think Wales Today are already using Mosart in Cardiff, but their is every likelihood that the screen technology (and production techniques required for it) will be different too.

This is not quite as complex as launching a brand new show in a brand new studio, but it's a lot more complex than putting a new set into an existing studio and production workflow.

"BBC Must Learn From Mistakes"

Top Gear may be shot on location at Dunsfold, but it's made by a London BBC Studios production team, based in London. It won't count fully as an outside-London production.

"BBC Must Learn From Mistakes"

Though in the case of three of those, BBC Wales were responsible for commissioning them (i.e. funding the initial broadcast production to a degree, and controlling the direction in broad brush terms) but the BBC didn't make them or produce them.

Sherlock, Only Connect and Merlin were or are made by Indies, not the BBC.

Cue dot on BBC One start-up

Cue Dots were standard for all live programmes ISTR - you'd see them before every news bulletin. They weren't just used for OBs or off-site studios. Cue Dots weren't just used as a backup for when talkback failed - they were routine. (So worked even if someone had turned down working talkback...)

NC1 and NC2 also had remote control of the red lights in studios at TV Centre - so Pres could flash them at 2'00" to TX and make them illuminate when the studio was on-air (kind of like a tally light from Pres). These signals also inhibited things like 'Bars and Tone to line' switching...

C&W/NTL/Telewest Box Revival

https://www.digitalbitrate.com/dtv.php?mux=C029&liste=2&live=209&lang=en might be worth a look - it has Virgin Media mux information - and C70 looks like it might have some STB related stuff (Whether that is firmware update or data for day-to-day operational use - I've no idea)

I don't know if VM use standard EIT for their EPG (as Freeview SD uses), or a more proprietary EPG like Freesat, Freeview HD and Sky.

Annoyingly - connecting any non-Virgin receiver (or similar) to a VM cable point is in breach of their Ts & Cs - though I guess if you aren't a subscriber that may not be an issue (and you could mux dump a mux carrying FTA services to check?)

Top of the Pops

Yep - Cypher allowed you to design animation effects that worked on a letter-by-letter level, as well as a word-by-word or line-by-line level (so you could make letters spin, whilst the centres of the letters animated together as a group etc.). Effectively you can think of it as if each bit-map letter was assigned its own internal DVE to fly it around. The system had a finite amount of DVE processing power - so if you started trying to fly too many letters around at once you'd run out of steam. Each transition effect had a little bar graph on the operator's display that would indicate how close you were to using 100% of the processing capability.

ISTR that the user interface used a similar fried-egg controller to the Encore DVE (which was mainly sold as part of the Harry suite, as it was too expensive as a standalone DVE when cheaper devices like Abekas and Charisma were available), and I have a recollection it may have used the same 'stripey-string' paradigm to show motion paths (Displaying the motion path as yellow and black striped string where each stripe indicated a frame - though I may be misremembering. Stripey string was used on Harry, Henry, Editbox, HAL etc., and I think Encore)

I don't think Cypher had a blur function, but like most flat DVEs it did have the ability to do multi-freeze/decay effects (so you could leave motion trails that faded away). (YouTube's compression is doing a good job of blurring mind)

Top of the Pops

Yep - from memory Going Live used to use a static still store 'full frame' graphic that was then Charisma-ed to make it animate. The animate in to 6LA would probably have just been a Charisma move. If you enlarge a portion of a picture in a DVE to make it much bigger - it will go pixelly as that's how DVEs work. If you did the same thing on a modern CG with vector-defined fonts the font would be rendered in full resolution however large or small the text is. In behind-the-scenes stuff (like the final edition opening) you can see the full-screen graphics in the stack on the still store outputs.

(From memory Cypher used bit map fonts - like Paintboxes of that era - but you had a choice of source sizes that could then be scaled ISTR)

By 1992 Aston Motif/Ethos had launched - and by the mid-90s were pretty ubiquitous. They used vector fonts (like TrueType and/or Postscript) and had various options for animation - Ethos with Megamoves and a VIP clip playback channel could do very clever stuff if you knew what you were doing. They were also a lot cheaper than Cypher - and similar in operation to previous generations of Aston so were easier to retrain existing operators on.

In Aston terms Aston 2->Aston 3->Aston4/Caption->Motif/Ethos was a relatively easy evolution in operational terms (Aston 4/Caption introduced the ability to make your own logos relatively easily, along with anti-aliased fonts and basic slide/push/wipe/line reveal animation that wasn't just roll, crawl and zip... Motif/Ethos added multiple planes and the ability to import graphics from platforms like Photoshop and animating backgrounds etc.)