BBC Scotland thread

The days of that very noticeable glitch when the local desk was put in/out of circuit are long gone for BBC NI. Although even in recent years there has occasionally been the odd problem, it's nowhere close to the issues with the old analogue opting gear (I have examples in my archive as late as 2000 which were absolutely atrocious - where vision/audio were actually lost for 1 or 2 seconds each time - though results this bad were not the norm). These days it's often nigh on impossible to see when the desk is being put in/out of circuit. The notable exceptions to this are the 1pm/6pm/10pm weekday news intros, straight after the local headlines: they go out of circuit during the programme title sequence, with c. 2 audio/vision glitches each time. Going out of circuit at this point is very similar to the EastEnders issue - very noticeable due to the combination of music and visual movement (in the case of the news, the camera zoom/movement during the newsroom and studio wide shots. Many other regions suffer from the same issue during the news titles - if they could all just wait a few seconds longer, the glitch would be a lot less obvious.

As I mentioned on TVF a few times before, until the early 90s (c. 1992 if I recall correctly), BBC NI used to suffer picture/audio sync issues even after going in circuit - so we usually got two types of glitches in each junction: one for going in/out of circuit; the other cuts between Network and local sources whilst in circuit. We had fewer announcers/directors back in those days but one of them - David Olver (still on the team today) used to be good enough to wait until the end of programme title sequences before taking the local desk out of circuit. VHS recordings didn't cope well with these video/audio glitches - resulting in title sequences being ruined more often than not - so David's actions were greatly appreciated by some of us.

Indeed, the frame-rolls used to be horrendous. The situation on analogue opts improved a lot in the early 2000s, with the introduction of a new piece of kit. These days, in ideal circumstances, it should be almost imperceptible to the vast majority of viewers... unless of course the Clean Feed and Dirty Feed drift apart, for any of the reasons outlined earlier. News is slightly different, in that the headline opt out/in is now handled in the news gallery... which uses the Clean Feed on its mixer. Going through the news gallery adds a bit of a delay.

One variation in working practices which I'd like to see reviewed concerns the point of transition to a programme. A number of years back, BBC NI standardised their approach, which happens to be in line with London - the ident audio is faded down in the second or so prior to cutting/mixing to the programme. Scotland and Wales do the reverse - the ident audio is faded up - the result of which is a pretty awful transition into the programme. NI and London also tend to have lead sound on the programme, which produces a very clean transition. For Scotland and Wales, programme audio seems to appear at the point of cut/mix - again, less than desirable results here. For example, if the director mixes to EastEnders in Scotland/Wales, the lack of lead sound results in the first beats of the theme tune being missed.

I appreciate this is the BBC Scotland thread, but as it's being discussed, how does opting work for sub-opts. I often notice on the Cambridge edition of Look East when they hand back to the main Norwich programme there's a slight frame jump midway through the sting they always use. Is this the point that they switch fully to Norwich rather than outputting their own feed?

Incidentally, the Cambridge opt is one of the regions that does a nice smooth transition into the news titles during their headline opt - they fade the sound and the vision in very nicely, where as a lot of regions still seem to do an abrupt cut which is much more noticeable!

That was what my original query in this thread was about - that the EastEnders titles were often joined late. Tony explained it was due to the previous junction being a manual event. However, I’ve also noticed it this week going into Impossible in the afternoons. It has a “cold open” where the host says “I’m so-and-so. Welcome to Impossible”. We have missed part of his opening words every day this week on BBC Scotland.

So, you stay in-circuit all the time - even when the Scotland schedule matches Network? That would be fairly untypical of general practice in the Scotland, Wales and NI from what I've seen over many years. And it causes me to recollect a discussion I had with a BBC engineer many years ago, where I discussed the mess of picture sync issues we had on BBC NI at the time (which I've already described). I recall asking why BBC NI couldn't just stay in-circuit and thus reduce the number of picture/sync issues - particularly in peak time. I was told that if BBC NI was in-circuit and London suffered a serious technical issue (such as power failure), it would take NI down too. I never quite got my head around how this was possible.

This conversation took place back in the early 90s I think,

As Denton points out, there are different ways of achieving the same end used in the Nations, and it would be inappropriate for me to go into detail or discuss different methods on a public forum. Many of the things that various contributors have observed will have had an operational or technical cause of which they are unaware, sometimes human error but more often not. Television has yet to become a perfect art!

Those opening words are missed for the reason that I've described - I see examples like that quite a bit on BBC Scotland - and not just in the EastEnders junction. It also happens on BBC Wales. It's a particular problem if there are vocals right at the start of the programme and the director mixes to the programme rather than using a cut - whatever way those desks are configured, a mix seems to cause the audio of the programme to fade up as the vision mix progresses. The audio fade up *seems" slightly slower on BBC Scotland, resulting in the type of issue you've described for Impossible.

Presumably a frame synchroniser and genlocking the whole lot together properly !?

Well, if that did happen in London then you're bu%**red either way

This included the scenario where BBC NI was putting out its own schedule at the time.

Then that makes even less sense!