BBC News (UK) presentation - Reith launch onwards

I'd be amazed if they didn't have the ability to take calls from Skype, zoom, teams, msn messenger, facetime, duo or any of the other major video calling apps. A particular one being visibly used for one interview would not suggest to me that they've changed all their use over to that software.

I suppose the advantage with using Zoom is that all the contributors can be on one single piece of software and they're not using multiple Skype etc client. For multi person things it will also handle all the audio between them, no need to have seperate clean feeds going to each one

One advantage of Zoom is that you can keep adding multiple people to the same call, and you can do several live shots in a row somewhat easily. You can keep the later guests/reporters waiting in the waiting room feature so that they don’t inadvertently show up on air before they’re ready. It’s a little quicker than Skype in that scenario, where you have to generally call up and hang up on each guest individually.

Only downside to Zoom though is we haven’t been able to figure out how to get the sound from the computer, so reporters and guests have to dial into IFB like any other live shot in order to hear programming and to use as their microphone. But maybe the BBC has that figured out.

The BBC can handle all the major platforms - Skype, FaceTime, Zoom etc. For Skype you can use Skype TX hardware, but for Zoom and Facetime you usually use PCs with scan converters (AJA Region of Interest cards are popular)

For some of the BBC Sport stuff they are using decent quality MVP WMT cameras (or the apps running on phones) to get decent quality pictures back to the gallery, but using Zoom to handle comms between presenters, guests and producers, as it has reduced latency. It avoids the gallery having to use multiple TBUs or run a phone conference call, and the audio quality is better than a phone call.

Yes - the BBC has a decent number of Skype TX boxes, but that doesn't mean it's the only platform they use.

Zoom has some quite aggressive gating though, so when it's used on-air it can be quite compromised if more than one person tries to speak at once. (All the consumer products have this to a degree to stop echo/howl round when people are listening on speakers and using mics near the speakers...)

Eh? Can't the contributors just plug headphones and/or a microphone into the computer?


Yeah we discovered that the other night when friends wanted to do a music round in a Zoom quiz. There's all sorts of enhancements that can be turned off

Don't really understand the problem. If you have a 'studio' user joining the conference from a 'studio' PC with audio I/O, you feed mix-minus (i.e. everything but the Zoom audio) to the Zoom studio PC to act as the 'mic' source, and take the 'studio' Zoom PC's audio output as the on-air audio?

You'd either use a USB Audio I/O device (with analogue or AES I/O), possibly an AoIP driver if you're running IP audio in your facility, or just use an analogue audio balanced to unbalanced converter to an analogue line-in input, and take the output from the PC from HDMI via an HDMI->SDI converter and a de-embedder? Worst case you do analogue I/O from a pair of 3.5mm Line In and Line Out jacks on a PC's motherboard analogue audio I/O?

It's probably because of some quirk as a result of the way we're doing them. We have to bring Zoom up using the scan converter computer in our booth/gallery, which isn't set up for sound. Our transmission/outside source desk handles the Skype calls. There's really no reason why they probably couldn't also do the Zoom calls, but we also never did Zoom calls on air until the pandemic.

With that said, there is still some universal advantage to Zoom with the waiting room feature and the ability to cue up multiple live shots in succession. One downside to Zoom is you can set up an infinite number of meeting rooms, all of which expire after inactivity, and you need to be sure you have the right link sent to the guest, whereas a Skype username is a Skype username that you can always call up.

But don't look at me -- I'm just a producer, not a broadcast engineer.

In regards to Newsnight coming from Glasgow - here is the set located in BBC Scotland’s top floor canteen.

Didn't they do the Commonwealth Games highlights from there?

I'm guessing the canteen is out of use at the moment.

If you mean the Clare Balding show - no that came from the café area on the ground floor, not the canteen on the top floor.



There are social distancing circles on the ground as there are in other BBC canteens - and I expect people are still working in PQ and need to eat. They may not be sitting down in the canteen though.

I thought you had to take your own food though.

The rule for workplace canteens in England is that food can be purchased, just not consumed in the canteen area. There are chairs at the tables though so might be different in Scotland? I assume it's very quiet there in any case and the spots on the floor are for social distancing?