If 24fps was enough required to create smooth motion, then you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between 24/25/30p and 50/60i. Which you obviously can.
And it's possible to tell 59.94i/p from 50i/p too...
For regional reports I think 'track and rushes' working still happens (where a reporter will file pictures and voice over back to base to be edited in the newsroom edits) - but obviously laptop editing is an option, and some reporters have basic editing skills. (One option is to file a rough cut back to base to be polished)
Though editing in the field happened a long time before laptops using basic two-machine tape edits. Either a machine taken along by the crew he crew or one in the back of a links truck.
Whether it got used and for which story depended on distance the the story was happening or how short notice it was - obviously its quicker to end back or ingest a 3 minute package than a load of rushes. When I worked in regional news sometimes a package was edited 'in the field' purely because there was no edit capacity back at base. Though often the 'field' was a meeting room or sometimes a local pub
Editing vans (Network) with multiple Beta SP decks, and Beta SP/SX VTR-laptop edits (Nations that used SX) were in use before PC-laptops - but I didn't see them in English regions.
A difference of around 40 milliseconds, cannot be percieved by the human eye, so it appears to be identical, happening at the same time.
Eh? Where did you get that figure from? Research suggests that >240fps is required to create seamless motion for some individuals (fighter pilots have incredibly well tuned eye/brain combos)
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Hence why 24 frames a second (the standard movie frame rate) looks fairly smooth.
Nope - 24 fps only looks fairly smooth (actually I don't believe it ever looks 'fairly smooth'), in most cases, because people shoot content that keeps it looking smooth. 24fps was chosen as the lowest frame rate (as film stock and processing was/is expensive - and the higher the fps the more you need per second...) required to work when sound was introduced. It's about as low as you can go. They had to get round the inherent flicker issues by showing every frame twice or three times during projection (double or triple shuttering)
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Even as low as 15 frames a second doesn't look jerky.
It can look horribly jerky... You rely on motion blur and slowing down camera moves, tracks etc. to stop the image breaking up into a sequence of stills.
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But with higher frame rates, such as 60 fps and 120 fps, the smoothness looks better.
Yep - it does. It also reduces motion blur significantly, meaning moving objects appear sharper. (BBC 25/50/100fps demos are amazingly clear at demonstrating this)
With larger screens you have to cope with eye tracking too.
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I'd suggest that once you're above about 120 fps, the extra frames add little to actual speed footage, but for slow motion footage, recorded at say 480 fps and slowed down to 30 fps, you'd see things that you would never see full speed.
That's a different argument - as you are then changing the timebase of the signal. However 300fps is deemed the point at which returns fail to be useful. NHK think that 120fps with a bit of shuttering is pretty good for 8k, though if you went to 16k or higher you may need a higher frame rate (motion blur again)
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Hell, the Mythbusters used high speed cameras to great effect in their whole series, using frame rates from 500 fps to 50,000 fps, though mostly around the 1,000 to 10,000 fps range.
Apples and oranges though - as you are then replaying the high frame rate stuff at lower frame rates, and its the lower frame rate the eye is perceiving.
Thanks. So I guess if there was something important in a region that needed to get out but not necessarily warranting live news coverage they could soft opt (as the signal passes through the center) and and overlay a ticker if need be? I'm talking about a weather crawl, school closings, AMBER Alerts (I believe they're called Child Rescue Alerts) that are commonly used here in the US. I believe I brought this up before and some one mentioned that it wasn't common in the U.K. as radio, phone alerts and text messages are the primary method of dissemination.
Yes - now analogue has been switched off this is now possible again. (The way analogue and digital opt-outs worked meant it was difficult before - as you couldn't soft-opt on digital if you were following the rules... Some regions didn't.)
However we simply don't do that kind of thing over here. Websites and local radio are the places people go for most of that type of information. Text messages to parents and email for school closures are routine now I believe.
Missing Children alerts are the one area where it could be an option - but they happen very rarely here. I believe there are procedures in place to make this happen - though only on SD outlets on BBC One in England.
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I imagine if ITV wanted to do it would be trickier unless there are capable facilities in Chiwick and Leeds inserting a crawl. Some hubbed or central casting models in the US sound similar to ITV and can rudimentary overlay a simple crawl with no background. To get over this they have to take the feed from the HUB, running it through their news gallery and sending back (if the transmitter is fed directly from the hub).
Sorry for getting off topic.
Technically it might be possible, but operationally it isn't straightforward. In reality I doubt it would happen. I suspect ITV playout would be able to route a backup playout area to that region or regions to do a super should they need to.
Couldn't they use the DIRAC or something similar. I don't think a 1.45 Gbps line is necessary. After all they used the DIRAC to send HD feeds from the Beijing back to London and is used for outside broadcasts.
Dirac is in widespread use already. But you wouldn't put a permanent Dirac code/decode in the main network distribution chain. You'd have to switch to an ITV-style system (moving away from network opt-outs and to playout-switching you to line), and just Dirac encode the studio output - and if you are doing that you could use JPEG2000 or any codec. AIUI the BBC are about to switch from Raman provisioned SDI and HD-SDI circuits to BT provisioned circuits - so this may be a moot point anyway.
Usually a newsroom is split into two main parts: intake and production/output. Intake is newsgathering - getting the stories and footage. Production is taking those stories and making packages and bulletins out of it
Must be one of the difference between the U.K. and the USA. Usually reporters in the field edit using NLE systems either on the laptop or a desktop in the truck while they're there when they will go live on location. They can produce (may not be the right word but I used it initially as they take different parts of video, voice overs and graphics) or edit a package out in the field. With cellular hotspots they can connect to the news system and with some graphics engines (or they have a templates available) from the field.
Are you talking about regional or national reporters. If national - that's not the case in the UK. If you are editing a network package in the field chances are you are working with a shoot/edit (which is a camera operator who can also picture edit)
For regional reports I think 'track and rushes' working still happens (where a reporter will file pictures and voice over back to base to be edited in the newsroom edits) - but obviously laptop editing is an option, and some reporters have basic editing skills. (One option is to file a rough cut back to base to be polished)
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I saw a demo by a station group when their graphics were updating showing how to insert graphics from the field using the Viz engines back at the station. The editing software (I think it was Adobe Premiere Pro CC and Final Cut Pro) has a Viz plugin where they can access all the templates and insert data. They preview the templates, click render and a ZIP file is delivered to them. They then open dozens of images and insert them into the timeline. The finished product could be sent/fed to the station via microwave, satellite or what ever means that their going live and is played out from there after the reporter introduces and tags out the package. In short circumstances it's played out from the camera or from the truck.
[b]Edit[/]: Here's a similar setup demo from the VizRT website.
Yep - Viz will sell you lots of nice and shiny tech. Your eyes will water when you see the cost...
The BBC currently have just a few encoders for the HD multiplex, but to switch fully regional it would require one for every regional variant combination of BBC1 and ITV, of which there are many and which don't necessarily overlap, along with all the fibre backhaul to and from each studio centre, transmitter, encoder etc... Plus the backup routes for the feed etc.. Not a simple, or cheap task.
Yep - though AIUI because PSB3 is fully statmuxed, doesn't there already have to be an encoder for BBC One HD, BBC Two HD, CBBC HD, ITV HD, C4 HD and C5 HD for every ITV / C4 regional variation combo - to allow for full statmuxing? (ITV and C4 regional advertising also has an impact)
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Theres also the matter of whether it is worth all the effort to do it before the regional news studios, and ENG kit, are all fully-HD.
This is the bigger argument. It's currently very difficult to argue for the additional cost to provide SD content via an HD platform. Annoying as the 'Switch to SD for your BBC One reigon' is, the costs of providing full HD opt-chains for all the SD-only regions is still difficult to justify. Yes - there is a quality improvement by upconverting SD to HD (though the state of some English regions studio cameras may mean you wouldn't want to experience them in all their glorious SD upconverted to HD glory...) but with the current BBC finances - it's difficult to justify.
However - as BBC regional centres inevitably upgrade from their (often first gen) 16:9 SD gear as it reaches the end of its life, HD gear will inevitably replace it, and the arguments to provide HD regions IN HD will have a lot more validity. However the big question is when the BBC will do 'Vilor for TV'. Plymouth's HD upgrade was a lesson in the real cost of in-situ HD upgrades, and it was not a low cost exercise. I think there will be a pause on any other HD upgrades until IP can be properly evaluates.
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It's worth the effort to at least have nice clean native 270 meg SD upscaled to HD for the regional news, and of course remove the requirement to have to change channel from HD to SD.
You may think that. Others disagree. Spending millions of pounds to provide a short-term upgrade to existing SD regional centres to provide SD upconverted pictures is a difficult thing to justify, particularly if you are then going to have to replace the gear any way as you upgrade the regional operations to HD.
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By the way, no upgrades to the CCM centres to transmitter circuits are required. If the Beeb were to follow ITV's regional opting architecture, fewer HD distribution and contribution circuits would be required, I can't believe they're not thinking along those lines ( no pun intended)
No - that's true - because PSB 3 is PSB 3 - it leaves CCM to go to the transmitters as a 40.25Mbs transport stream anyway. However other infrastructure in the BBC is changing (the move from Raman to BT for instance...)
Financially, it's not worth it for an hour a day of local news that gets limited viewers, when they can get it on channel 1. In the fullness of time, with equipment obselescence it makes sense though.
Individually the numbers may be relatively modest - but if you add the viewers of all the BBC One regional shows together (i.e. look at the number of people watching BBC One 1830-1900) the BBC 1830 regional opt is one of the most watched news shows of the day, sometimes the most watched. (It doesn't appear in the BARB ratings as every show is rated separately)
I don't know the proper term/phrase for this for this but does regular non News BBC programming from the English regions flow from the BBC One playout through the regions presentation gallery, back to the CCR (is that where the MUXes are coded) and then to the transmitter?
Not through the gallery, but through the building (apart from Jersey - which I think has some kit in Plymouth to handle the sub-opt). These days the BBC English regions are permanently fed a feed of BBC One Network sustaining (previously they were fed the BBC One London / London and South East version) which is routed through an SDI opt-switch, and then the output of this switch is fed back to Central Coding and Mux to be compressed and encoded, and then passed on to the terrestrial transmitters, satellite uplinks and cable headends (I think). There are dual paths for the entirety of this process.
The opt-switch in each English region switches between the incoming network feed and the output of the local studio. If this switch is used to switch from network to a local studio source, then this is described as a hard (or in some cases - crash) opt. However it is often the case that the studio will itself have the incoming network feed as a source, and the opt-switch switching from network incoming to network via the local gallery is called as soft opt. (As the opt-switch happens before the junction the audience sees - which is then done purely in the gallery)
This is how things currently work. At one point the encoding for both terrestrial and satellite broadcasts took place in each regional centre, rather than centrally, which meant BBC One couldn't be statmuxed in England, and also that the full PSB1/BBC A mux passed through the regional centres. There were also all kinds of delays and tally-driven opt-switches to allow opts on both digital and analogue networks (where digital was late compared to analogue)... Luckily long gone.
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Or do they just feed the opts to CCR (doesn't ITV follow this method) ?
ITV work by sending studio outputs to their network playout areas. Arguably this allows for greater resilience, but it does remove some independence...
Though I was in the US last week and caught some of The Young and The Restless and The Bold And The Beautiful, and it is fair to say our soaps are big budget productions in comparison to them!
it will probably just be dismissed out of hand as not "looking like a film should look like" (plenty of which came before they had even seen a frame of it).
It also doesn't help that you get eejits on YouTube uploading "60fps" versions of trailers and movie clips (including
The Hobbit
) which are just the 24p trailer/clip interpolated up, and which resultingly look awful.
To be honest, I don't think the attitudes of drama producers are massively influenced by YouTube interpolated promos. It's more a case that they see low-budget episodic drama like EastEnders, Corrie etc., where 4 shows are made a week, using 3 chip 2/3" cameras at 50i, and assume 50Hz=those production values.
Reality is that if you shoot a drama using an Alexa at 50p with the same care you would at 25p you end up with a different kind of 50Hz result. That said, it is very difficult for people to get round some prejudices. The Hobbit demonstrated that.