I think it's been said that on screen clocks were often a second fast anyway, otherwise when the news starts at 18:00:00 you wouldn't see the clock hit the top of the hour.
I noticed that the stations tended to leave the clock up until just before 18:00:01 anyway, and occasionally it would click over just as the transition to the news was being done if the controller got the timing slightly out, or decided to be 'clever' and not simply cut at the right time but do some kind of fade or wipe.
Border created a rod for their own back with that sweeping second hand...
I think it's been said that on screen clocks were often a second fast anyway, otherwise when the news starts at 18:00:00 you wouldn't see the clock hit the top of the hour.
An absolutely accurate TV-am clock wasn't really necessary, as they weren't part of a network... essentially it could work in its own time zone... It wouldn't really have mattered if was a little slow or fast.
The BBC Nations clocks were deliberately set a second or so late, to allow for clean cutting in to the dirty network feed... often manually cutting on the mixer.
That said... in the digital Pres suites you had to also join the feed late, to account for the delay in the feed from London making its way around the UK. The delay not only caused by the physical distance, but also the various encoding / decoding of the feeds from London to the Nations.
They click were set 1/2 sec early so that the viewer saw the clock hit " 12" just before the " on the HH:00:00:00 cut into the news ...
One of the reasons that Presfax was in Teletext was that that was carried via the video coding system and thus was synchronous with the pictures ( as subtitles and audio and talkback were) but it actually worked 1 or 2 frames early to allow for the display decode/ display.
So a BBC region just opted out as it tended to do in digital as it did In analogue ... listen to Pres TB and watch the picture !
Incidentally from Lerwick to goonhilly over commodity MPLS is just 42ms so just over a frame ..
Thus London to anywhere is under a frame over IP, .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjaJMW4RvZA Here's an example of a regional clock not quite in sync (I assume) with London. The news theme starts with the clock at 14 seconds past.
When opting back from the network feed on the Pres mixer, to the sustaining network feed (i.e. going out of circuit), if the sustaining feed has flipped from the main path to the reserve path, in my experience, you'll often hear a noticeable audio click/splat, those few milliseconds going via a different path up the country making a difference.
My experience is from a Nations perspective, not network Pres or English regions. Lots of aspects of how we operate have changed, and changed again, and again over the last 20 years... through analogue, digital SD, and HD.
At various times we've been in mixed economy situations, running analogue and digital versions of BBC One and Two from different Pres areas, but at times having to bring both together as a joint service only to split again later... occasionally running an analogue only version of a channel but using a digital Pres area... all while working to a network that was also sometimes running separate analogue and digital Pres suites, and sometimes a joint service.
We didn't always have clean feeds of programmes or local copies of network trails... so would often cut in and out of the dirty network feed several times per junction. You needed to be aware of the delay (in order to cut in and out cleanly) as it often changed by a few frames (when bits of kit in the chain were added in or replaced). The talkback circuits, over the years, have had various different delays added to them to keep them in sync with the sound and vision as the network feeds have changed over time.
The various Pres automation systems over the years have also had inherent delays in responding to manual commands. In the analogue Pres suite 20 years ago, when you hit Take the mixer cut immediately. Now, when you hit Take, there is a three second delay before the next event takes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjaJMW4RvZA Here's an example of a regional clock not quite in sync (I assume) with London. The news theme starts with the clock at 14 seconds past.
Wouldn't the more likely explanation be that it started 15 seconds late?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjaJMW4RvZA Here's an example of a regional clock not quite in sync (I assume) with London. The news theme starts with the clock at 14 seconds past.
Wouldn't the more likely explanation be that it started 15 seconds late?
Sorry - wasn't clear enough in my original post - yes, its started at 21:00:15 but the clock shows :14 when the theme tune starts!
Yep. You get used to hitting Take 3 seconds before the end of certain theme tunes, if you want to come out of the programme without hanging on the endboard too long.
Yep. You get used to hitting Take 3 seconds before the end of certain theme tunes, if you want to come out of the programme without hanging on the endboard too long.
Thank heavens for the clean feed! I imagine it would be a nightmare to hit the button at just the right time if you were working with a dirty NET1 feed. Are there any occasions when the nations have to work off a dirty feed - fallback or similar? What about the opts in and out of the national news or Breakfast?
I wonder if this delay is part of the reason some cuts or mixes into programmes aren’t always as neat and tidy as they could be in some of the nations?
Yep. You get used to hitting Take 3 seconds before the end of certain theme tunes, if you want to come out of the programme without hanging on the endboard too long.
Crikey. Someone was recently telling me that the market for playout systems ain't what it used to be, and Grass Valley ICE is about as good as it gets - but I'm sure that other broadcasters who use it don't have a three second delay when pressing a 'take next' button. Did the BBC procure a particularly low-budget version?
Yep. You get used to hitting Take 3 seconds before the end of certain theme tunes, if you want to come out of the programme without hanging on the endboard too long.
Thank heavens for the clean feed! I imagine it would be a nightmare to hit the button at just the right time if you were working with a dirty NET1 feed. Are there any occasions when the nations have to work off a dirty feed - fallback or similar? What about the opts in and out of the national news or Breakfast?
I wonder if this delay is part of the reason some cuts or mixes into programmes aren’t always as neat and tidy as they could be in some of the nations?
The clean feeds makes it fairly seamless. As you say, if we were still working off dirty feeds it would be nearly impossible to make it look good. Using the dirty feed is very rare (except for sustaining of course), but is there as a backup if the clean feed has an issue.
Network news (with headline opts) is joined on the clean feed (we're actually joining our local news gallery with the clean feed on its mixer). The local news gallery does the opt out / in, as that mixer is faster to cut on.
In terms of cuts and mixes into network programmes not always being perfect, that's usually only the case if you're coming off a live programme, followed by a very short junction where you don't have enough time to fix the new on air time for the next programme. In that case some may decide to join on a follow-on or manual take.