The Newsroom

Stabbings in Jersey

Channel Television providing extra local news bulletins (August 2011)

This site closed in March 2021 and is now a read-only archive
MA
Markymark
Inspector Sands posted:
davidhorman posted:

That live-via-camera-pointed-at-TV is something else though. At a bare minimum of acceptability they could have had a wide shot of the monitor on the set if the set allows for it, but even then I just wouldn't have bothered.

Yes, that is the way the did it before the package and it didn't look great, the presenter looked uncomfortable trying to decide what to do to when she was not talking.

The feed is obviously coming into the building and onto the monitor, surely it's not too difficult to route it into a channel on the vision mixer too? I know BBC TV are many decades behind in serving the Channel Islands but it can't be that hard to do better than that


There's either no way to render the remote signal synchronous with the studio mixer, or no one technical enough there to realise that's what's required (or both !). This is what the world's finest (sic) broadcaster is now reduced to, is it ?
SP
Steve in Pudsey
Either that or the mixer/router doesn't have enough sources to cope with such an unusually news filled programme?
MA
Markymark
Steve in Pudsey posted:
Either that or the mixer/router doesn't have enough sources to cope with such an unusually news filled programme?


Even if the mixer has run out of spare inputs (which is unlikely) surely the station router has capacity, and could be used to pre select ? Does anybody know what kit they do have there, their set up makes Channel TV look like CNN in comparison !
GE
thegeek Founding member
Steve in Pudsey posted:
Would it not have been possible to do a bit of overplugging in Plymouth to put PY output onto the circuit which usually carries the backhaul from Jersey to wherever the DSat coders are so that the circuit from Jersey to Plymouth could be used for contributions when it wasn't required for opts?

No need to - they already can. As I mentioned earlier, they used it for some down-the-line interviews and feeds on Sunday and Monday.

Steve in Pudsey posted:
I would imagine that would require Siemens and several BBC departments to co-operate nowadays.
Going wildly off-topic, the bit of Siemens which provide IT and broadcast services for the BBC has been bought out and rebranded as Atos.
PT
Paul T
Markymark posted:
Steve in Pudsey posted:
Either that or the mixer/router doesn't have enough sources to cope with such an unusually news filled programme?


Even if the mixer has run out of spare inputs (which is unlikely) surely the station router has capacity, and could be used to pre select ? Does anybody know what kit they do have there, their set up makes Channel TV look like CNN in comparison !


The way it looked to me was that it was some technical fault, which threw the presenter which is perhaps why she appeared uncomfortable (she didn't seem to expect to still be in shot). They then ran the package, and when they came back to the studio did the zoomed in thing, possibly as a workaround?
NG
noggin Founding member
thegeek posted:
There is a radio link (possibly PAL?) from the Jersey studios - this was used to send reports. No reason the studio couldn't be used for down-the-line interviews either.

(Last week, Breakfast had a better quality down-the-line from the studio in Stornoway than one in Brussels, which seems a bit counterintuitive given how much better the latter is connected!)


Stornoway has pretty good connectivity doesn't it? ISTR that An La - the Gaelic News programme that the BBC produces for BBC Alba uses a studio in Stornoway, but has its gallery in Glasgow doesn't it? (ISTR that the cameras are fed back individually to Glasgow - so I suspect there are decent vision circuits available?)

Or does An La have its studio on the mainland?
NG
noggin Founding member
WMD posted:
BBC Channel Islands News seemed to be experiencing some problems this evening. They had a live insert from Edward Sault, but didn't seem able to switch to it properly. He appeared on the screen in the BBC Jersey studio before they cut to a shot of the main presenter nodding. When they switched back to Edward, it was a very poor quality image - the studio camera had zoomed in on the plasma screen with multiple time-delayed reflections. Anyone know why they couldn't switch properly to the OB?


Sounds like they had a non-sync source and no immediate means of synchronising it to get it onto the mixer. The in-vision monitor was presumably free-running - so didn't have problems locking to it.

Not a great solution - but AIUI BBC Jersey is a VERY tiny BBC operation - with mostly multi-skilled VJs running the entire set-up. (They burn in astons rather than having a live caption generator, and have to pre-record anything like a wipe sequence I think as they have very basic facilities. Though less basic than when they just had a single camera in the IBA garage)
NG
noggin Founding member
Markymark posted:
Steve in Pudsey posted:
Either that or the mixer/router doesn't have enough sources to cope with such an unusually news filled programme?


Even if the mixer has run out of spare inputs (which is unlikely) surely the station router has capacity, and could be used to pre select ? Does anybody know what kit they do have there, their set up makes Channel TV look like CNN in comparison !


I think you're making a pretty wild assumption that there is a 'station router', and that destinations from it land on a mixer. I wouldn't be surprised if it were just a couple of FCPs or News Cutters, 3 brick cameras and a simple GVG100-style vision mixer (hopefully digital) with hardwired inputs (which is similar to what BBC Cambridge had in the early days - though they were Ikegami industrial cameras, not bricks) If they don't have a Magic Dave or similar I doubt they have any way of synchronising remote sources and need to genlock (presumably there is a synchroniser in Plymouth before the opt-switch or in the link from JY to PY)?

BBC Jersey is a TINY operation - it's not like the other sub-regions in Oxford or Cambridge (Cambridge now has pretty much the same facilities as a full region in lots of ways). It has a tiny studio, tiny gallery, and very limited TV facilities. It was an upgrade to the single camera in the IBA garage after all...
SD
SDLF
noggin posted:
thegeek posted:
There is a radio link (possibly PAL?) from the Jersey studios - this was used to send reports. No reason the studio couldn't be used for down-the-line interviews either.

(Last week, Breakfast had a better quality down-the-line from the studio in Stornoway than one in Brussels, which seems a bit counterintuitive given how much better the latter is connected!)


Stornoway has pretty good connectivity doesn't it? ISTR that An La - the Gaelic News programme that the BBC produces for BBC Alba uses a studio in Stornoway, but has its gallery in Glasgow doesn't it? (ISTR that the cameras are fed back individually to Glasgow - so I suspect there are decent vision circuits available?)

Or does An La have its studio on the mainland?


An La used to be presented from a studio in Inverness, with weather from Glasgow, but perhaps it's changed
GE
thegeek Founding member
SDLF posted:
noggin posted:
thegeek posted:
There is a radio link (possibly PAL?) from the Jersey studios - this was used to send reports. No reason the studio couldn't be used for down-the-line interviews either.

(Last week, Breakfast had a better quality down-the-line from the studio in Stornoway than one in Brussels, which seems a bit counterintuitive given how much better the latter is connected!)


Stornoway has pretty good connectivity doesn't it? ISTR that An La - the Gaelic News programme that the BBC produces for BBC Alba uses a studio in Stornoway, but has its gallery in Glasgow doesn't it? (ISTR that the cameras are fed back individually to Glasgow - so I suspect there are decent vision circuits available?)

Or does An La have its studio on the mainland?


An La used to be presented from a studio in Inverness, with weather from Glasgow, but perhaps it's changed
Yup, that's still the case - there's a small studio in Inverness, and three lines back to Glasgow - where Studio C run the show.

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