How were cue dots generated?

BBC Leeds still do something similar, keying dots over the network output when they soft opt as a check that the gallery is in circuit. I think they introduced that after a number of opt failures. This may be because they have a more complex opt arrangement than many regions (to allow pan-regional material shared with Hull) and thus more to go wrong.

I remember seeing that on a visit to Hull's gallery. Cant remember if Hull add dots also?

Yes Cue Dots are quite handy for checking the soft opt is working - it is (or at least should be) pretty invisible these days. Some regions do it routinely (like Leeds) others do it occasionally, after technical work has put things in bypass for example. I've made them in the past, using a white rectangle and a smaller black one on top. A blob on an Aston does the job too.

Back in BBC World presentation days at TVC, we used to use Cue Dots the ITV way, to signal a break was imminent. Dots on at about a minute to the break, off at 5". It was completely manual, with an on/off button next to the vision mixer. One day the piece of kit that generated them broke and we hastily faxed all the commercial partners around the world to notify there'd be no Cue Dots for a while. The one fax we got back said "What are Cue Dots?"

Everytime a cue dot thread comes up I always post to make sure that people realise that they aren't a UK-only thing.

And the clip I use usually is this one, from CBC in Canada, during their world-famous Hockey Night in Canada programme. Going to a break after the 1st period is over, and the little cut dot comes on to alert local stations/playout facilities to the break.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T624qfJKGYs

CBC seemed to put them on screen as a flashing dot 1 or 2 minutes before a break for 30 seconds or so, and then a static dot 5 seconds before the break.

Here's a more modern clip from 2007, see the flashing dot 30 seconds or so before the break:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrkx-IQsihk#t=7m30s

I would have said it was added by the transmission suite at the time of transmission. But having said that, I have subsequently seen some broadcast masters of some LWT programmes that had cue dots on them. That implies the edit suites had cue dot inserters as part of their installation - but I know they didn't have them, so how they came to be on the masters is a mystery to me, I wonder if they were 'down the line' recordings of an original TX posing as a master recording.

As others have said the cue dot was supposed to be as visible as possible to the receiving end, so that's why the majority of them have a random rolling movement to make it's presence even more obvious. - the change of direction means nothing, it's just totally random, and do remember that when they were originally introduced the corners of the television raster would/should not have been visible on a viewers screen. Some companies, Anglia for example, had a cue dot generator with static stripes. It doesn't mean anything though, it really doesn't. There was a loose spec of some sort, I have it in the loft and one day I will look it out.

I worked on quite of few of those Microvideo cue dot generators shown in the picture in a posting above, an ok bit of kit. but The Sony 601/602 'A' chips inside it were very unreliable making the whole unit unreliable, we used to change them out for the 'B' versions when they went duff and fitted them in sockets if they weren't already present.

Edit. We used Microvideo procamps too. Same chips, same problems.

Red Bee's current cue dot is just a DOG inserter loaded with what's often described here as "a giant pause symbol". Last spotted in July: http://www.tvforum.co.uk/tvhome/pause-symbol-bbc-channels-39317/

FYI: We do love talking about Cue dots every so often

* http://www.tvforum.co.uk/tvhome/double-cue-dots-break-30222/

* http://www.tvforum.co.uk/tvhome/cue-dots-22805/

* http://www.tvforum.co.uk/tvhome/cue-dots-18341/