Airport Live

Quite enjoying this programme on BBC Two, reminds me a bit of a school trip but on the TV.

Very surprised there's been no picture breakups on any of the links with all the buildings, walking around and planes taking off and landing. Are they using satellite uplink from there or another method?

There was an OB truck parked up beside the gates where the Singapore and Qantas A380s were, which could easily have been working into an uplink which was then downlinked at the tower OB site, or even with the height of the tower, a simple point to point fixed radio link. I did also notice a couple of Gigawave receive fanbeam antennas mounted on the balcony railing too, which would get a pretty decent range from that sort of height, easily reaching the fire station camera.

Digi links are pretty reliable these days, provided you know where you can go, which is easy enough to do in rehearsals.

I did get the impression the show was a lot less live than they made out. No interaction between Kate and the other presenters, all their inserts could have been filmed the day before (I don't think it was, apart for as noggin says below, except to delay slightly when two things happened at once, but for all the interaction it could have been).

Pretty certain that most of the interlaced stuff is live, and the progressive stuff is pre-recorded. They may be using EVS servers to delay stuff when two things happen at once - but nothing more than that.

Mix of satellite and microwave circuits.

There was very slight freezing now and again, but hardly noticeable.

A question I've always wondered: Can you do live progressive stuff? The only thing I can remember being done in Progressive was the Honda live advert a few years back with skydivers.

Yes. Many, but not all HD system cameras, can do 24p/25p/30p - either as standard or as an option (and the 24p/30p can be delivered in a 60i wrapper and the 25p in a 50i wrapper) If the progressive pictures are in a 50/60i wrapper then you can just cut them through normal studio equipment (though increasingly native 24/25/30p capture is also possible)

Not that unusual for pop concerts to be covered that way - though these are usually as-live for Blu-ray/DVD release.

I just managed to catch up with this, it's rather good I have to say. I don't quite know what it is with airports at the moment, there are at least 3 separate programmes at the moment about airports or aviation for mainstream channels.

Either way I enjoyed this, well directed, well thought out, could we see baggage areas at some point?

Which reminds me of this:

Thanks, that's great information. That progressive-in-a-interlaced-wrapper is the PsF thing, right? Basically how progressive stuff gets broadcast in interlaced format on TV.

Effectively - yes.

Yeah two satellite feeds one the reserve Airport feed the other a links feed in 4:2:2 on 24.5w

There's a third feed which says Airport Live Outgoing Main as the channel ID.