noggin's posts, page 279

15,946 search results, most recent first

NG
noggin Founding member

BBC One HD still can't broadcast regional news in England.

Steve in Pudsey posted:
Leeds will often mix on the opt back, sometimes leading vision so the very end of their end sting is under the network announcer doing the menu.


That used not to be possible on digital, when there were both analogue and digital opt-outs, because as soon as network was cut-up on the studio mixer, the DTT opt-switch pinged back (after a matched delay to counteract the analogue vs digital network encode delays) The only way round it was to route network to a second input on the mixer, and cut to that instead of the nominated input (to avoid the network source get a tally) But that could cause issues with aspect ratio - and in some regions slap a nasty PAL footprint over the network feed...
NG
noggin Founding member

BBC One HD still can't broadcast regional news in England.

tmorgan96 posted:
I definitely know Fox US fires trigger pings to affiliates for things such as local watermarking.


Yes - Fox is the odd-one-out in the US markets as it provides affiliates with a pre-encoded 'network' feed rather than a high bitrate, high quality mezzanine 'contribution quality' feed. The Fox stations all have 'splicers' installed.

These splicers take the pre-encoded MPEG2 network feed, and do a very clever partial decode to insert a local bug, by decoding just the macroblocks in the stream that need to be decoded and re-encoded to do so. The rest of the picture just passes straight through and is not decoded and recoded (avoiding further compression artefacts) This also allows Fox to tightly handle 5.1 Dolby audio on their network shows I believe - which some other networks historically struggled with (or more accurately their local stations did)

The Fox splicer also has an MPEG2 encoder for local material played out from the station (commercials, local news etc.) which is synchronised to the splicer's incoming network feed, allowing clean junctions to and from network. This gives Fox tighter control, mandates a uniform bug insertion system that can be remotely triggered etc.

This system was introduced when Fox switched from running a 480i 16:9 SD network feed - which was encoded at the local stations in 480p - and introduced 720p HD. (Fox - unlike ABC, NBC and CBS didn't initially run HD on digital OTA. Their 480p was 'good enough' for them)

This was the situation a few years ago - I think Fox may have since upgraded their splicer tech further.

ABC, CBS and NBC work differently and distribute a higher quality network feed BUT this is then permanently decoded to baseband video and then re-encoded after playout master control in each station. This requires more equipement and personnel than Fox stations I believe.
NG
noggin Founding member

BBC One HD still can't broadcast regional news in England.

james-2001 posted:
I don't know if it's still the case, but at one time when Hull opted out, the picture on the network output would revert to 14:9 for some reason.


That was due to the way Hull and Leeds opts interacted, and Hull bypassing the tally-driven switching I think.
NG
noggin Founding member

BBC One HD still can't broadcast regional news in England.

Inspector Sands posted:

Although there has always been a system that can force all the regions to opt back despite opt control being in the regions. It's only ever been intended for big news like a royal obit so afaik has never been used for reigning in a rebellious region


Yes - though I'm not sure it has ever actually been used has it? In the analogue, and locally encoded digital days, when there wasn't a CCM-style operation for BBC One, there was a system called RATS - which was a regional alert system. I believe there were both Radio and TV versions that were designed to flash lights in the newsroom and gallery / radio studio to ensure people listened to network talkback (or the equivalent thing - GNS? - for radio) to return to network ASAP if they were opted out (or in the case of radio join up the stations for a common announcement)
NG
noggin Founding member

BBC One HD still can't broadcast regional news in England.

Markymark posted:

If our American members are in here, how do the local affiliates handle this sort of thing, I think there's a fair amount of similar centralisation over there there too ?


AIUI most local affiliates run their own presentation playout operations for commercials and local/syndicated programming - and also encode locally for their own transmitter. I suspect it is done manually - though I may be wrong.
NG
noggin Founding member

BBC One HD still can't broadcast regional news in England.

m_in_m posted:
What is the advantage that soft opting provides?


It allows you leave and join network on mixes, fades-to-black etc. rather than a cut - and also allows you to key graphics over the network feed.

Also - if the salvo is controlled centrally, and not remotely by the region, it stops regions being able to decide unilaterally to opt-out independently. (Which some have on occasions - or stolen extra air time by not optiing back for the first network junction...)
NG
noggin Founding member

BBC One HD still can't broadcast regional news in England.

Markymark posted:
noggin posted:

(*) Or the BBC will need to adopt ITV-style salvo-opting, with the opt-out chains in the coding and mux or playout areas, and then the English regions would just need HD feeds to these areas and not FROM them. (But it would mean the end of soft opting)


If soft opting is only required for the facility to stick captions and tickers on network, then that could still be achieved by having keyer/inserters at the CCMs, remotely populated and triggered from the regions ?


In engineering terms - yes. Though I'm not sure operationally or editorially that is such a brilliant idea.

In reality the only real reason to stick stuff over network is the emergency missing child alert system I think, and I suspect that could be handled in the manner you suggest.
NG
noggin Founding member

BBC One HD still can't broadcast regional news in England.

Rkolsen posted:
Mike W posted:
deejay posted:
Plymouth, Salford and London are HD ready (and bits of Cambridge might be too). In the rest of the regions, studio cameras are HD capable in some centres but matrices, vision mixers, caption generators etc are not, so some significant investment is required, let alone distribution and switching. There'd also need to be a change in the way the network is delivered to the transmitters. At the moment only an SD feed of Net1 is available to be opted in and out of.

Most cameras used in the field are HD though (have been for a while) and while the pictures are currently downgraded to SD on ingest to the system, that part of the process is at least ready to go HD.

I know that Birmingham are still rocking their Thomson studio cameras *yuck* and gallery from 2004, with a few technical changes as new kit comes online.

They also use an Aston CG with BigTed, despite being (or at least were) the English Regions VizRT training facility...


Okay, what is Big Ted ? Is it just a way of controlling the Aston or VIz engines for lower thirds?


BIgTed is a BBC in-house developed system that controls CGs (historically Astons, but there are versions to control VizRT, Dekos, RTX Inscribers and other CG platforms) with a producer/director-friendly user interface. It integrates with newsroom systems to extract CG requests (timings, template styles, content etc.) from scripts, and also will allow for insert timing, automatic CG changes triggered by DSK tallies etc. It has a voice output for vocal timing generation (historically a BBC newsreader has provided this)

I think it stood for Basys Initiated Graphic Text EDitor - it dates back to at least the 90s when the BBC used ENPS"]BASYS as their newsroom system. The acronym may me wrong - but I think it was slightly tongue-in-cheek. There is a BigViz, a LittleTed, and there used to be a BigBox to control Quantel Picture Box still-stores.

Bigted historically had (or could have) a useful look-up table of all the UK MPs and their constituencies and party affiliations, and could also generate full-screen graphics (Inflation rate, $/£ exchange rate graphics, simple phono comps etc). very quickly
NG
noggin Founding member

BBC One HD still can't broadcast regional news in England.

Mike W posted:
deejay posted:
Plymouth, Salford and London are HD ready (and bits of Cambridge might be too). In the rest of the regions, studio cameras are HD capable in some centres but matrices, vision mixers, caption generators etc are not, so some significant investment is required, let alone distribution and switching. There'd also need to be a change in the way the network is delivered to the transmitters. At the moment only an SD feed of Net1 is available to be opted in and out of.

Most cameras used in the field are HD though (have been for a while) and while the pictures are currently downgraded to SD on ingest to the system, that part of the process is at least ready to go HD.

I know that Birmingham are still rocking their Thomson studio cameras *yuck* and gallery from 2004, with a few technical changes as new kit comes online.

They also use an Aston CG with BigTed, despite being (or at least were) the English Regions VizRT training facility...


Camrbridge have Thomsons too - so that bit isn't HD-ready...

AIUI there are plans to use an alternative CG platform to Viz to replace the well-past-their-sell-by-date Astons.

As for HD opt-outs - it will either require a main-and-reserve BBC One HD opt-out chain (*) to be installed in every region (plus network distribution and backhaul) plus additional BBC One HD H264 encoders (though as PSB3 is stat muxed, there is likely to be a BBC One HD encoder chain for each separate ITV and/or C4 region on Freeview HD already - as they need that for statmuxing to work.

For DSat of course there will need to be a whole new set of transponders and encoders if every region is on Freesat/Sky.

(*) Or the BBC will need to adopt ITV-style salvo-opting, with the opt-out chains in the coding and mux or playout areas, and then the English regions would just need HD feeds to these areas and not FROM them. (But it would mean the end of soft opting)
NG
noggin Founding member

International News Presentation: Past and Present

It's interesting that Denmark has a 'best of the regions' show on TV2. SVT in Sweden have a show called "Landet Runt" made in Gothenburg, broadcast on Sundays, which does a similar thing.

http://www.svtplay.se/video/11936446/landet-runt/landet-runt-avsnitt-1-4?start=auto
NG
noggin Founding member

International News Presentation: Past and Present

WW Update posted:
Danmark Rundt, 2017; according to TelevisionIdent's description, this is a "news magazine with the best stories from the 8 danish regional public service stations. Broadcast daily on all the regional channels:"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8j0nWN_2WlI


Yes - think all these regions are TV2 operations (DR - the Danish BBC-equivalent - doesn't have regional TV News opt-outs/localised broadcasts)
NG
noggin Founding member

BBC One HD still can't broadcast regional news in England.

deejay posted:
Possibly ... or South East ex Elstree was shown on the sustaining feed ... or was Uk Today still on? I can't remember ...


UK Today stopped when the Red Button regions started, including BBC London by then I think.

From memory BBC London opts went out on the non-Red Button BBC One, with the 5 other English regions available via Red Button.