General Presentation/Logistics Questions

When interviewees are interviewed down the line from a BBC regional centre is the background keyed on by that regional centre or is it done by London who are producing that show?

The region do it.

I would imagine they background is added at the originating source. CSO is very reliant on the lighting so being able to control both at the same place is pretty important. Also if you send the pre-key image down the line compression artefacts may get in the way of keying cleanly.

If you're watching the Politics Show at the moment you'll see that the guest in Norwich was in front of an animating background, the guy in Leeds is in front of a static image. If the background was being added in London they'd be consistent. Although I suspect Norwich were using the projector in their main studio rather than a CSO broomcupboard.

Thanks to you both and yes I am watching the Politics Show. I hadn't thought about the projector - I was thinking there was be gaps if it was the studio but forgot that most regions don't have barcos.

Looking at those clips on itsrobert's channel, it shows how much stronger the music and titles graphics were then, much punchier than the stuff which followed. I think it's the fact that the headline sequence didn't drag on like it does now - on the News Channel they should abandon the thunderclaps between each headline and get rid of the 'coming up' bit at the latter part of the sequence.

Quite a few of them are real backgrounds of course, but if it is keyed it's done at the source.

If the programme wants a particular background I suppose they could send it to the source, if there's someone there who knows what to do with it. When I was at the BBC Millbank had a good system whereby a programme could send an image down a line to them (a normal video feed line) and they could grab it and then key it behind the guest. It was only possible there because they had graphics staff who were willing to do it

On BBC World, we all know that they use different colored lighting in the background, depending on which program is airing. World Business Report uses a kinda pale purple blue colour. However, the presenters always appear to have a halo readybrek effect around them when that particular background is used and when the presenter is seated at the desk. Why does only the WBR background give that effect, and all the other colours don't?

It almost gives the impression of a CSO background.

If you look at these photos from BBC Persian, it seems they do a set-up whereby the Barcos are green and then they key in an animated background. Looks like quite a clever idea actually!

http://a7.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/38718_427125797712_64040652712_4762175_6197281_n.jpg

http://a5.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/39331_427125812712_64040652712_4762176_3804575_n.jpg

http://a4.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc4/38642_427125772712_64040652712_4762173_4006589_n.jpg

Historically you always Chroma Keyed (or CSOed) at source. The main reason was that composite vision mixers and CSO systems required a direct RGB or Component (or separate key) feed from the camera control unit (CCU) to feed the CSO/Chromakeyer, as the chroma element of a native composite signal is far too ragged to get a decent clip from. This meant that in most studios the composite vision mixers only had a limited number of sources that could be chromakeyed from (and only a limited number of RGB/Component inputs for the high bandwith feeds that were used to key from)

You couldn't CSO at the other end of the line (say in a main studio in London) because you didn't have access to a full bandwith RGB or Component feed, and keying from a composite feed (even if you could - and on most broadcast mixers you couldn't as they didn't have PAL decoders in them)

Now that we used digital component interconnects, the quality of the chroma signal is higher (though still not as good as it used to be as the R-Y and B-Y signals are half-bandwith - hence the steppy edges on some poor quality keys), and you can chroma key from any source on most mixers.

However, many BBC remote studios are still interconnected with PAL composite links, so you still couldn't key remotely...

I've seen it done occasionally in the past - and it usually looks terrible when it's tried.

The same technique has been used in BBC studios at TV Centre - though one studio also has a dedicated CSO position in some set-ups. I believe the trick is to get enough separation and to run with a shallow enough depth of field that the black lines between the cubes blur out and don't break through the key.

When BBC Three News had a set with three large projectors in it, the same technique was sometimes used to pre-record down-the-line interviews for Breakfast with Frost (when the main Frost set wasn't available during weekdays).

I know this has probably been asked before, but I'm just curious. Anyone who's ever seen and watched the BBC News Channel or BBC World News, will know that leading in to the top of the hour there's a countdown sequence. In the last year or so, they (appear) to have taken the easier option of inserting images from down the line interviews or various journalists from reports into the countdowns, as shown in this example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7EVKuTO_8w

However previously they used shots of reporters and scenery from different angles (if you get what I mean), as shown in the examples below. Does anybody know what technology they used to help capture these images?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YV4T5mx45bI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enGRN4xRZaE

Time lapse. Simple really, you take lots of footage and speed it up.