News 24 at midnight

As previously mentioned, N24's computers don't seem to like midnight and didn't tonight either.

19 second countdown and then 6 seconds of 00 and clean gun-shot with headline bed. Heather then popped up, turning to the right camera, when the headlines video appeared. That's about it really!

Cheers, Asa

Perhaps its time for Big Ted & the other computers to go into retirement???

Some automation computers don't like going through midnight because the time jumps backwards, ie it goes from 23:59:59 to 00:00:00. (I don't know if this is the case at N24)

When I worked in editing, programme timecode always started (and still does) 10:00:00:00 for the same reason. The edit controller, and transmission automation would be very confused if a programme started 00:00:00:00. When trying to cue-up, the computers get confused and try and rewind the whole 23 hours to get back to the begining - which is totally daft.

N24's automation system does indeed have a midnight problem. It also goes crazy at noon occassionally

The boffins are working on the bug though, and hopefully all will be well again soon

i have the same problem sometimes when at college we use an automation device using time counters they really dont understand why we jump back in time. it takes an awful lot of programming to sort out and i have never been successful yet. i just keep looping the time so that it never reaches 00.00.00.00:D

Have you thought of making your clock a 25hr clock?
I.e. instead of going to 00:00:00:00 it goes to 24:00:00:00?

Then at a suitable junction when time is not critical, it changes back to a regular 24hr clock. Its a very simple 'IF THEN' loop

That's how I cracked my own midnight problem

They had problems last night too - we got the hedz bed over half of the sting, then it was faded by, we got 'THis is BBC News 24, I'm Peter Dobbie' and then they forgot to switch the camera. Peter turned, camera didn't... he turned back, they switched to a camera with him almost out of shot - he then started!

Actually, think you must be mistaken... the midnight bulletin was clean last night

I don't think it was.
I can remember tuning in just at the end of the ident to see a very shaky looking Peter Dobbie looking at the wrong camera.

I'm not letting the cat out of the bag as to who I am, but I can assure you that the midnight bulleting last night/this morning was clean, ie the midnight problem did not occur.

Yes, the presenters camera was a bit dodgy at the start, but think they had a few other problems & probably didn't reframe the camera in time

(Edited by techy peep at 8:12 pm on June 28, 2001)


(Edited by techy peep at 10:18 am on June 29, 2001)

I wasn't sure if this was a computer problem or not but thought I'd better report it anyway

Well as I said I only saw the end so I wasn't really sure.
And please don't do that. Telling us you are important then not letting anyone know what you do, it ust annoys people even more when people come in here and declare how important they are and then refuse to let anyone know who they are.
Either tell us what you do and who you are or don't bother telling people you are 'important' in the first place.