Does ITV still use a test card?

Well I've seen the British ones, very familiar colour bars with a black strip and the number on it, although the HD ones use a specialised font and is very common for all HD feeds.

Since I happen to have a VALID box handy, here is a quick grab of the receiver in action:

[media:112e4e87e2]http://up.metropol247.co.uk/Bvsh_Hovse/VALIDreceiver.flv[/media:112e4e87e2]

The two grey boxes each side of the circle are added by the receiver and are not present on the generated test signal, also there is usually text above and/or below the circle to help identify the source. If the audio was arriving out of sync the error would be shown in the left hand box, and the right hand box shows how far away from the reference level on the receiver the incoming audio is. I don't think I've ever seen a VALID set to anything other than -18dBFS on the sending side, but the level is displayed on the test card so you know what you are lined up against. Although if I had a pound for every time an agency sent the test signal at one level and the package at another then...

As Noggin said, without the reciever it is difficult to get the timing back into sync just by looking at the circle. The bars are 250ms long, so you end up end up going "It's just under half a bar, try 100ms".

The HD test card already has BLITS (without the final 2Khz tone) as a test signal, which is a useful to prove all your speakers are working and wired up to the correct channels. A new type of VALID would have to be created to incorporate BLITS instead of GLITS in order to merge it with the HD test card.

The BBC HD lipsync test (does anyone know the proper name?) looks like this:



This is fairly easy to use for the non technical person to use. For those that have not seen it in action, the white bar at the bottom moves from left to right with a clack sound as it passes 0. You can then adjust your AV system to compensate if it misses.

After steps 1-5, I got the following:

Who Am I? lgeM01T10 MHGlge610 DSMlge610
LGE.DTV.MW_MHEG 106.DM.DStation-1

Where Am I? Region: S Nation: EN

Get Eng Sup (empty box)

RNd 7840,5760,1115,8517,4053,

BCast Time 2009-12-29 08:23:41

Last Update 2009-12-29 08:23:33 (dtserv2)i970-01-01
1:00:00 - nav.des

ram://bbcautol (empty box)

Help Press GREEN for test card; BLUE for credits

What does all this information mean? Does anyone know?

By pressing GREEN, I then got test card W - with BBC Widescreen at the bottom. The circle appears squashed on my 13 year old 4:3 Mitsubishi TV.

They're all produced by standard commercially available test equipment.

VALID is a Vistek product, (now part of the Probel/Snell group)

http://www.snellgroup.com/products/modular-infrastructure/vistek-range/vistek-range/signal-generation

HD bar generators are probably Trilogy or Tektronix:-

http://www.trilogy-broadcast.co.uk/products/mentorxl.php

http://www.tek.com/products/video_test/

Yep - and a common source of test signals is a spare output of a Sync Pulse Generator or SPG. These are used to provide station sync feeds (the reference signals that ensure all connected bits of kit are in-sync, rather than requiring digital delays to re-sync them)

Tektronix are a major supplier of these, and it is usual to provide station/studio/truck routers with a couple of standard test signals for line-up and fault-finding (some test signals are much more important for analogue than digital set-ups) - such as colour bars (usually with a text ID strap), PLUGE (Picture Line Up Generation Equipment) for monitor alignment etc. (Often it is a case of having bars on one output and a choice on the other!)

There isn't a "British" standard per se these days - the SPGs are international boxes. However in the UK and Europe we often chose to use full-height colour bars with just a black strap across them, whilst in the US they often use SMPTE colour bars (which have some extra stuff on the bottom of screen)

WS use SPGs made by Courtyard. Tek make very good kit though, and their waveform monitors are pretty much the industry standard. I'm a big fan of their handheld video signal generator too which has helped me out many times.

They merged? When did that happen? I only just got used to them being part of Probel...
Vistek used to have a Flash-based demo at www.valid.tv, where you could simulate switching on and off various features.

Apparently it stands for 'Video Audio Lip-sync & Identification', though like GLITS, it might be one of those acronyms whose meaning drifts a bit.


And often an external phone number, so you have to be careful that it doesn't get on air in case people try phoning your control room!


I'm not sure if it has a short and snappy name, but there's a blog post about how it was created.

GLITS = Graham's Line Identification Tone Sequence (or is it Leg Identification)?

Named after its creator, a sound supervisor in BBC OBs ISTR. (Very useful for spotting phase errors if you listen to the M and S components ISTR)

About a year ago. AIUI S&W were part owned by Royal Bank of Scotland, and they were keen to dispose of some assets Unfortunately Snell's incomprehensible model codes for their glue remain unchanged , for instance a IQDVH64365446GT

And for those interested, this are Sky's festive colour bars for 2009

related recent news item ...

TV buff's thrill over test card

A TV enthusiast from Derby who specialises in collecting screen test cards has welcomed the return of the girl and clown card which graced screens in the 1970s.

Keith Hamer, a Derby historian who specialises in TV memorabilia is welcoming its re-use to tune in newly-emerging high definition channels.

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