noggin's posts, page 284

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NG
noggin Founding member

25, 30, 60 Frames Per Second

james-2001 posted:

And then you have the case where "live" stuff goes out 25p- like numerous awards ceremonies these days (which IMO are the sorts of things that should never use it), or the "live" sound of music that ITV put out last christmas, that takes away the main visual cue that it is live- so may as well have been pre-recorded in the eyes of many viewers.


Totally agree. 25p used well on location can look cracking. 25p used for live events can look amazing - particularly if the camera team shoot for the limitations of the format rather than ignoring it. However it doesn't 'look live'...

50Hz motion - whether via 50i (aka i25) or 50p (aka p50) - gives lots of 'live' (and in some cases 'real') cues subconsciously. 25Hz gives you 'recorded', 'filmed' (and in some cases 'fantasy') cues - thanks to Hollywood, and years of film drama.
NG
noggin Founding member

BBC Sports Personality of the Year 2016

Markymark posted:
DVB Cornwall posted:
It was a good event, was it me, but did it seem to anyone else, that Sky and BT were far more generous with clips this year than previously?


Or they had reduced their fees for supplying clips for the show......


Or the team decided to pay anyway.
NG
noggin Founding member

The One Show

deejay posted:
Interesting you say that, as I think one of the reasons behind originally going to Birmingham and coming from an anonymous (ish) backdrop at White City previously was so that viewers didn't actually associate it with being at a BBC centre. That's no criticism at all, just an observation. I think they use the space very very well indeed.


I think it was less to do with association with a BBC centre, more not being associated with London. The current backdrop is still pretty generic (the side of Broadcasting House and a defocused cafe obscured by large internally lit letter elements) and doesn't scream 'London' in the way a studio with a backdrop of St Pauls, Parliament, the Shard, Canary Wharf etc. would.

The show does refer to London, the West End etc. when appropriate during items - but still keeps day-to-day London-centricity pretty low-key.
NG
noggin Founding member

25, 30, 60 Frames Per Second

james-2001 posted:

One thing I've really grown to despise is how it's become almost standard to put it on inserts in shows (when the live/studio portions are 50i), it's like going back to the 70s and 80s when they had to be done on film. I'm sure it was Top Gear that really started that, then everyone else copied.


I think live programmes using 50i for their live elements and 25p for their pre-recorded elements is actually quite a valid use for it. The 25p look screams 'recorded' and 50i has a 'live' look. I'm not arguing that you can't use 50i for pre-recorded elements, but I think there is a valid visual grammar for the 25p/50i split.

There is a LOT of emperors new clothes around 25p though, and the recent Antiques Roadshow example was a case-in-point of how not to do it well.

I'd argue that Top Gear used the 25p/50i looks very effectively, and were one of the teams that 'got' how to use 25p.
NG
noggin Founding member

Broadcasting House, Salford Quays & TVC

Markymark posted:
Rkolsen posted:
Are patch bays really used any more? When I've seen them in recent installations they never seem to be used. I imagine modern routers have pretty much removed the need for them.


Although it's still good to be able to over patch a dead router to stay on the air with a key camera chain or source, but that's usually done with a secondary device, such as a relay box, or small router. It's very rare these days to totally lose all of a router, they all (should) have back up control boards.

Patch bays can still be useful for 'edge' cases, adding flexibility, and allowing for ad hoc installs that weren't necessarily foreseen. They are far smaller in my experience, than they used to be, but you do still have them, particularly downstream of interface glue, particularly if you are using fibre downstream of your router.

Quote:

Sometimes cameras and primary sources are interleaved
across several input cards. US broadcasters like to do that I'm told ?

UK broadcasters do too.

AIUI both Sky and the BBC have used 'salt-and-peppering' extensively in their recent builds. Does make configuration a bit less intuitive - Cam 1 on input 1, Cam 3 on input 2, Cam 2 on Input 21, Cam 4 on input 22 etc. on a VM for example... but lose an input card, you only lose half your cameras...

SImilarly splitting facilities across router crates is also common, with the two crates NOT co-sited.

Quote:

Audio departments, particularly in the UK, still like to have acres of patching, despite modern desks having a great deal of routing functionality built in. Folk on the European mainland are a little less conservative, and often raise their eyebrows when they get inside UK sound control rooms.


Ghilmetti has made the patch bays a lot smaller though Smile
NG
noggin Founding member

25, 30, 60 Frames Per Second

james-2001 posted:
I wonder why they waste their time and money with all the extra bandwidth of broadcasting at 50p when they could broadcast at 25p instead as it looks no different Wink


Quite - why are ALL broadcast TV standards, SD, HD and UHD all based around 50 or 59.94 refresh rates and image rates, and none based around 23.976, 25 or 29.97 refresh rates and image rates? (*)

576/50i, 720/50p, 1080/50i, 1080/50p, 2160/50p are ALL 50Hz and based around 50 images per second. None are limited to 25 images per second.

Why aren't we all using 576/25p, 720/25p, 1080/25p and 2160/25p? Err - because football, entertainment, and lots of genres look horrible at 25p, and a lot nicer at 50i or 50p...


(*) Ignoring edge cases like 100/120Hz UHD and niche things like Freeview HD encoders fed 1080/50i dynamically switching to 1080/25p when detecting 25psf source material.
NG
noggin Founding member

25, 30, 60 Frames Per Second

james-2001 posted:
You're wrong, nobody broadcasts at 50p. Cityprod has spoken, he's never wrong.


You going to tell Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Germany - and others - and the 4K broadcasters, or am I? Surprised
NG
noggin Founding member

Olympics 2016

Brekkie posted:
Well Eurosport for years had been airing Olympic events outside of the Olympics anyway. The main reason I suspect they struck a deal to run the IOC channel was to avoid the competition.


Wasn't the IOC channel part of the deal that Discovery struck with the IOC that also included the European rights. (Discovery own Eurosport)
NG
noggin Founding member

Broadcasting House, Salford Quays & TVC

Before the BBC English regions (and some nations) moved toward "Hubs" (which are effectively news rouing and intake/playout operations) most had "CTA"s (Central Technical Areas) which were the engineering areas of the building (containing racks of equipment) where the engineers were based who did both maintenance and routing of incoming and outgoing lines.
NG
noggin Founding member

Broadcasting House, Salford Quays & TVC

Inspector Sands posted:
deejay posted:
CAR was used interchangeably right up to the end of TC as was SCAR. The SCAR name lives on at BH even though it shouldn't - old habits and all that.

The name CAR still lives on officially even though the actual room it refers to has gone.


But CAR and SCAR are now used in terms of the people you talk to operationally, not the equipment, which is effectively virtualised.
NG
noggin Founding member

Broadcasting House, Salford Quays & TVC

Rkolsen posted:
Does anyone have pictures of the server/equipment rooms (think they're called CAR in BBC parlance) at NBH? Always liked seeing that kind of stuff. Remember seeing the old one at TVC on Google Earth and was amazed that the entire thing didn't catch on fire.


CAR was the name of the Central Apparatus Room at TV Centre, which originally housed equipment which wasn't dedicated specifically to studios (which had their own apparatus areas) and was more used for central switching and routing and handling of incoming and outgoing sources.

SCAR was the name of the Spur (some said Sub) Central Apparatus Room in the News Spur - which handled the same requirements for News when they moved in from Alexandra Palace in the late 60s.

CAR isn't a generic name for apparatus areas - it was the name of a specific one. In recent years CAR had come to really describe the operational area (not the racks of equipment) that handled routing between studios and into and out of them. It was renamed CCA (Central Communications Area I think) but the old CAR moniker stuck.

I'd look at System Integrator sites - Dega, TSL, DB Broadcast etc. to see if they show their work on systems integrating new studio builds. It's not the stuff you usually see on tours, for reasons Inspector Sands has explained.
scottishtv and Rkolsen gave kudos
NG
noggin Founding member

The Grand Tour

And as predicted - Amazon Prime Video is now available standalone in territories which don't have Amazon e-tail sites and thus don't have general Amazon Prime delivery : https://www.engadget.com/2016/12/14/amazon-prime-video-global/
Last edited by noggin on 14 December 2016 12:09pm