BBC National News: Presentation

Personally I'd take that Twitter account with a pinch of salt. I can't imagine they were in London. While it certainly lookd like CSO if they were in London but purporting to be in Manchester that would cause outrage - particularly I'm sure with Daily Mail readers.

I'm not suggesting that they were in London, indeed for the NC's Five and the Six they were on the floor. For the Ten they seemed not to be.

There was some odd fringing going on, but I think it was probably more a case of an MPEG encoder not coping very well with all that blue. There were occasional black blocks towards the left of the picture which were moving in a way that suggested a coder fault than a badly set up CSO.

Also, look at the camera moves during the chat between Huw and Nick: http://www.bbc.co.uk/i/b015jfkq/?t=14m02s

You could do that in a virtual studio, but it wouldn't be worth the effort. They were definitely in Manchester. It just looked a bit pants.

It looked to me to be a common problem that modern cameras have coping with deep saturated blues, you see the effect on some LE shows with blue spot lamps, a sort of 'puddleling effect'. I'm told by camera specialists that it's caused by a fringing effect between optical filtering, and the blue sensors in the camera head. Often gets noted as an issue during acceptance tests, affects HD cameras particularly, and is not restricted to a single manufacturer.

Is it the same with green? If not, maybe that's why the BBC changed the weather's CSO from blue to green.

No, it's only blue that is affected by this particular problem, tied up with the wavelength of blue light (being the shortest of the visible spectrum).

I think it's still the case that the TVC weather studios have a backdrop that can be lit blue or green, so the presenter can choose depending on what they're wearing.

Slightly different intro to the BBC News at One/Five today - with a panning shot from the left fading to the usual static side shot.





Looks better than the usual IMO - well, better than the usual attempt of zooming the camera inwards and ending in a dreadful looking shot!

http://yfrog.com/z/kjimtvlj

A new shot used at 6:15pm from yesterday on the Six. According to the director will be used again today!

Does this happen often - after the 6.15 opt, the right set of BARCO screens displayed the animated endboard of the 6 o'clock titles, transitioning into an image related to the next story.

Looked good.

Edit: Seems it's a new thing, then.

Yup, only in the last couple of months but the graphics bit is new this week. When they've stood up at 6.15 in the last couple of months it has usually been when they've done something like a space story and the barcos have had pictures of that.

That shot after the 6.15 headlines has been used for a few weeks now. I think it will become a regular feature