Playout systems

Yes, my understanding was Wales and West pres/playout became consolidated at CC around 1990 ish. They had a spare standby suite, so the run up of WCTV was relatively easy. I'm seeing someone who should know next week, so I'll ask.....

Interesting. I don't recall any of that being there after LNN left which is very curious indeed. The whole installation ended up as a poorly documented situation (I'm sure your bit was ok!). In the end it was all pretty much ripped out and re-installed. That's when EVS got a foot in that particular door.

Well that's what it is essentially. Though each item will have a lot more information in it than just a clip/file name. Each will have settings for things like graphics, transitions voiceovers, switching on channel bugs, aspect ratio switching, subtitles and audio description etc.

Most playout systems don't do much by themselves, they control lots of other devices that do the job: video servers, vision mixers, audio servers etc.

It's similar to news production systems, they are just a playlist that operates autocue, graphics machines, camera automation etc

So that was quite an operation, ads for four channels and programmes for two. The WCTV gig would have been handy to replace the lost work come 1993

I seem to remember that at one point HTV had several services to manage - HTV West VHF (aka the 'General service'); HTV Wales VHF, HTV West UHF Colour and HTV Wales UHF Colour, each of which had a different schedule. Does anyone know if they were all played out from Culverhouse Cross?

I'm sure I read on here that Tyne Tees used their C4 kit to insert commercials into Granada's Night Time - however the Granada service started and ended (on Tyne Tees) before 1993, so I may be mistaken. Perhaps an older piece of kit was used for Night Time and the C4 kit upgraded.

Regarding the BBC Oxford clips, were they opting out of network rather than Southampton? Did the opt bypass So'ton altogether?

Also, did Oxford first get an opt in 2000, when they changed to the South region from South East, or was it around previously?

Apologies for all the questions!

Yes, the Oxford opt started in 2000. It was originally part of the old (huge) South East region, the production centre for which being in Elstree. The South East region was broken up into full regions for London (MHS) South East (TWS) (though TWS didn't make their own Politics Show for a while).

Oxford was given to the South region as a sub opt. Southampton produced the programme from Studio-B until 2004, then the presenter worked from reception in Oxford for a while, still going through the pres gallery in Southampton, until the Oxford tv studio opened in 2005.

As for sub-opting, Oxford opts from network clean, then reconfigures the network while opted so it opts back to Southampton.

What benefit is there in working with the network feed rather than the Southampton one? Is it because you'd have to wait for them to mix back to the network before you do and might be a bit too long? Think I might have answered my own question but would appreciate confirmation.

LNN News was largely rebuilt between 1999-2001 by Sony Basingstoke (Newsbase) and ABE SI around the SX 30Mbps standard - The Betacart was sold to Meridian New Hythe in 2000. The NRCS migrated through Basys, AvSTAR to iNEWS. When LNN ended in May 2004 playout and live capture was based around MAV-2000 Servers controlled under Sony Newsbase with about 20 Desktop edit stations and 5 craft edits hanging off the MAV but also having tape decks.. It was all fully documented...

Oxford opt from the network clean for the symbol and 1800 heads, the 1815 halfway heads and the start of the opt. If they did this from the Southampton feed there's a good chance they'd see Southampton opt almost every time. It's pretty tight. Better to opt clean from the network. Network is available anyway as an option, as the late bulletin is always independent of Southampton.

Yes, I thought as much. Thanks for confirming. For some reason, I always assumed the subregions worked off their parent region. I suppose there's not reason why that'd have to be the case.

Great videos, by the way. I have a nerdy interest in stuff like that and am quite surprised your videos passed me by until now.

Some information about that on this page:
http://www.hhg.org.uk/tech.html

The VHF variants wouldn't have been from Culverhouse Cross of course!