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I don't work in the industry but let's go with it Lets talk about TV (and probably radio!) technology! Let's talk about how studios work and are wired up. Let's talk about the future and how TV will be. And about idents and clocks, and regional opt-outs and inject points. And antennas.  I love broadcasting, both the technical and the production aspects, and I do camerawork/editing/audio stuff as well (but not for TV/Radio). It's an incredibly nerdy thing to like, depending on how far you go with it. People who keep testcard videos? Nah, not my thing (but a quick trawl of YouTube reveals it to be very popular). Interesting diagrams to show how things are linked together? Sign me up! Here are some things from the broadcast industry that are either amazing, sort of cool or hilarious: Remote production Ever get annoyed by satellite delay in live interviews?* Well, broadcasters are rolling out something that it makes it worse. Not by making the delay longer, but by introducing an entirely new one! Usually you measure all your delays from where the show is being produced. By produced I mean where the video and audio is mixed together as a final output. So if the presenter is in a studio they'll hear the remote interviewee audio in their earpiece at the same time it arrives at the control room next door. The only delay is when the presenter asks a question and the remote interviewee has to wait for it to get to them to hear it. This is also the case for remote broadcasts: if the presenter is on site at a stadium for a sports event and is interviewing someone elsewhere, there will only be one delay IF the show is being cut together at the stadium. But moving staff and equipment costs money. A lot of money. Everything is so heavy. What if you could use your infrastructure already installed at your headquarters to produce the show there? You'd save a ton! Send all your video and audio feeds back and mix them on site! Great!  Only not great, because now your presenter on site (and they have to be on site because the viewers expect it) is a further hop away from where the show is being produced. So you have to wait for a delay BOTH ways. Probably double the time. And it's very irritating to watch. The BBC used this method for the Winter Olympics in Russia and it just made interviews between the Olympic park and a remote venue just interminable. But hey, money saved is good and now everyone is doing it. Changing the industry really. You don't really notice as a viewer. Maybe less camera angles at an event? Depends how much you can squeeze down the link. *In practice most broadcasters are moving away from satellite now in favour of fibre and IP, but those can have their own delays. Sometimes shorter, sometimes longer. The BBC and the fake Big Ben clock In the early days of broadcasting when links were unreliable live shots were always a risky challenge to undertake. Every New Year's Eve the BBC would show shots of the clock face at the Houses of Parliament as the clock struck midnight and Big Ben rang in the new year. But for an organisation as prestigious as the BBC a loss of link was unacceptable. How could they guarantee that it would be ok? By building a scale model of the clock face in Television Centre and pointing a camera at it. The cheats!  Every year that got set up and the time synchronised exactly with the real clock and the chimes would be ready to go (recorded on an earlier day). They even lit it with sodium lights so it looked like it was being bathed in street lights. Nothing more to add on this other than it's a rather amusing solution. The BBC always like to double things up. Just in case, you know? New Zealand TV and national news It's the 60s and you've just started doing television to the whole nation, but right now the main cities broadcast independent programming. How do you link them all up for network programmes? Well the traditional way is to have lines coming in and out of your station that go to other stations, so that content can be sent up and down the line, then switched in to circuit elsewhere etc. So you'd be in a studio and on the bank of monitors in the control room you'd see all of your cameras to choose from and also the outside source as well. Then you can switch seamlessly between them. Only problem was that New Zealand didn't really have a full microwave network between the stations. Early days, and all that. It wouldn't be completed until 1969, so there had to be another way to do it. So, rather than taking all the feeds into a central point and switching between them for the production, TVNZ took the rather bonkers step of using the television transmitters themselves as the switchers. A complex arrangement of transmitters relaying a signal from one to the next in a line until all the transmitters were broadcasting the same source. For an example of this clusterfuck I will now defer to Wikipedia: quote:The NZBC's microwave network between facilities was very much ad-hoc. Due to a shortage of microwave links, the network was completed by "off air" hops, where a 100 kW regional transmitter was received and re-transmitted by another. The network news was made possible by switching inputs to the regional transmitters, so that a signal could be relayed across the country. Fantastic. A complicated bodge job that looked loving awful for the viewer but that got the job done. Those are three things that are interesting about broadcasting. Ask/tell some more things. Share historical fun things about TV in your country. People remember TV history fondly to a ridiculous detail sometimes (over here in the UK especially). Wanna know how something is done on TV/Radio or how something works? Wanna tell us about your best bodge to keep something working? I don't work in the industry but I do audio/video things. The rest of the knowledge is just traditional British shed-style nerdery. I'll take anything. Oh god I love broadcast tech. Or just share fun poo poo like this:  (Not all the TV in the UK, just networks run by the company UKTV) thehustler fucked around with this message at 19:23 on Nov 20, 2016 |
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Nov 17, 2016 14:45
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*Reserved for interesting links/resources* Like this one, if you're sufficiently technical enough to be interested in it. These are the guidelines that all UK broadcasters follow (the BBC version of the document), and a large amount of international broadcasters are taking them and using them either as/is or with minor modifications. This makes sharing content between broadcasters and across international boundaries much easier. http://dpp-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/specs/bbc/TechnicalDeliveryStandardsBBC.pdf thehustler fucked around with this message at 14:48 on Nov 17, 2016 |
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Nov 17, 2016 14:46
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Fuuuuuuuuuck yes this is my jam  I have a side job with a local sports network largely covering area high school and college games, and worked about 6 years in radio beforehand. It's amazing how the most professional-looking broadcasts can in reality be running on a razor's edge between success and disaster.
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Nov 17, 2016 22:44
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Noice! I do web streams and a lot of those have gone well and some have made me want to stick my face in a blender. I'm multi-camera directing a webstream of a conference tomorrow. I like ordering camera operators around  Also it looks like this thread didn't work
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Nov 18, 2016 00:07
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thehustler posted:
This is a familiar sight and setup in a lot of data-centers and telecom racks to this very day. Redundancy as the customers define it is my buzzing in their ear about these setups.
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Nov 18, 2016 01:49
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Well, I guess this isn't working. Mods, if you see this, would you move it to the Science subforum please?
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Nov 19, 2016 15:41
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thehustler posted:Well, I guess this isn't working. Mods, if you see this, would you move it to the Science subforum please? This might do better in Ask/Tell.
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Nov 19, 2016 18:03
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Mr.Radar posted:This might do better in Ask/Tell. Probably right
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Nov 19, 2016 18:27
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Bumping now this is in Ask/Tell. Arise, nerds!
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Nov 20, 2016 18:39
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Got experience and going to college to get the degree to back it.
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Nov 21, 2016 10:03
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US broadcast geek here, can answer questions. Mostly from the field production side, but also some light engineering stuff.
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Nov 21, 2016 17:38
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Awesome! Tell me, is everyone moving to fibre and IP for feeds now? Or is there still a place for Satellite feeds? Over here in the UK broadcasters have direct lines at a few key areas such as Parliament or Downing Street so they can plug in for maximum quality and latency. Studio productions are usually fibred onward for distribution. But the vast majority of outside broadcasts seem to still use SNG vans. Except for some bonded 4G use for special cases or where large numbers of links are involved like elections. Sorry that's a lot of questions.
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Nov 21, 2016 20:31
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Seems to be changing quickly. Terrestrial microwave is still super popular for latency and quality reasons, but they have these mobile packs that use several 4G connections banded together - the quality is really good for what it is (and you can be 10 floors up in a building and not have to cable to the roof or the ground to get a signal out). The investment in SNG had a 30 year payback, and I think those invested in it (the networks, etc) will still be using it for a long, long time.
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Nov 22, 2016 01:08
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DJExile posted:It's amazing how the most professional-looking broadcasts can in reality be running on a razor's edge between success and disaster. That's what I loved about working in TV. Like the TVNZ story - sometimes you need a ridiculous kludge because you don't have the equipment yet. Or, it's 20 minutes before air, and you need something to work and will figure out the real solution tomorrow. Cleverness is rewarded by the audience not seeing anything wrong.
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Nov 22, 2016 06:26
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chmods please posted:That's what I loved about working in TV. Like the TVNZ story - sometimes you need a ridiculous kludge because you don't have the equipment yet. Or, it's 20 minutes before air, and you need something to work and will figure out the real solution tomorrow. Cleverness is rewarded by the audience not seeing anything wrong.
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Nov 22, 2016 08:00
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photomikey posted:I once was behind the camera, 15 seconds to air, on a main thoroughfare in Albuquerque known for drunks and hookers. The walk light turns green and I see a drunk and a hooker start across the street for us, and see the live truck, the lights, the camera, and the reporter, put it all together in their drug induced haze, and head straight for us just as I hear "take remote" in my ear. I step aside the camera, pull a notepad from my pocket, and proceed to "interview" this hooker and this drunk until the reporter finishes his bit, I let them wave at the camera (while the story was rolling - they never made air), and they walked out of frame just as they came back to us and the reporter and he finished the story. Seamless! This is why I made this thread. That's fantastic.
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Nov 22, 2016 12:29
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thehustler posted:This is why I made this thread. That's fantastic. Well, once a year they take the camera off the helicopter for maintenance. And during that week, you either don't fly, or you hook up a harness and hold a camera out the door of the chopper. Big forest fire that week. They send us up and after about a million revolutions of a forest fire with my eye pressed to the viewfinder sucking smoke out the door of the helicopter... I don't feel so good. I can't hear a loving thing through the headset, I'm just trying to hold a steady shot. I'm feeling worse and worse. Finally.... YAAAAAAK. The technicolor yawn. If you didn't know what was happening while watching TV, you'd see it, but not know what it was. But I pulled the aircheck the next day and you could totally see the vomit falling onto the fire.
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Nov 22, 2016 18:58
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You know what I'm going to ask next.
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Nov 22, 2016 19:31
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Here's a good story from BBC days of yore. http://wiki.tx.mb21.co.uk/index.php?title=Down_the_Tubes
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Nov 22, 2016 19:33
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thehustler posted:You know what I'm going to ask next.
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Nov 22, 2016 22:29
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I do networking for a large television station operator in the US. As with everything else, Everything that's not big enough to stand on their own ( think KABC or WNBC in giant markets) is getting bough up by station operators and having many of their systems and processes centralized. It also pushes the envelope on retransmission negotiations with cable/satellite carriers as the more viewers you have, the more you can hold them over the collective heads of the carriers. When I get few, I'm going to post about some of the technologies were using. More and more of the broadcast systems and the actual streams are IP based now and there's some cool stuff we get to play with 
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Nov 23, 2016 20:10
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thehustler posted:Awesome! Tell me, is everyone moving to fibre and IP for feeds now? Or is there still a place for Satellite feeds? Were moving to Fiber on most of the remote transmitters with microwave backups, generally Heartland Video. We get them set up as a layer 2 connection, because we have learned that the best way to route video traffic is to not route it at all. Bonded 4g is used extensively with TVU packs in the field for live shots instead of rolling the truck like everyone had to before.
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Nov 23, 2016 20:11
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Farking Bastage posted:When I get few, I'm going to post about some of the technologies were using. More and more of the broadcast systems and the actual streams are IP based now and there's some cool stuff we get to play with This thread is finally going places... So much difference between Europe and the US of course, mostly with how your networks work due to distances between areas etc. I'm always interested in the presentation side, about how feeds come in and how local stations work them. I can post about the UK's TV distribution post-war if you want? Such a clusterfuck...
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Nov 23, 2016 22:20
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Being on the IT side of it, my knowledge of the broadcast automation systems aren't as up to snuff, but I'll do my best. Fun Toys: TVU packs In the past, to do live shots before you either had to do it via satellite or roll the big rear end news van with the point to point RF dishes, requiring half the engineering staff to come along for the ride along with the reporters, camera guys, etc. As mobile networks have gotten better and better, they come out with these babies.  ..and their corresponding receivers back at the station. These encode and send the video back to the station via aggregated 4G modems. You can hook almost any video source to them, including mobile devices and dump the video directly into the newscast or into the edit bays for production work. They are unbelievable timesavers and bandwidth hogs. Many stations have 3 of these, so if they're all on, you're looking at 30 megabits each coming in. We have something in place that allows every station we own to feed their TVU shots to a central location, but that's all I can really say about it. Streaming/Syndication devices Imagine for a sec, you have a newsroom and a website where people can watch the newscast live. You're in a metro area where you could have as many as 10000 to god knows how many viewers watching the news on mobile or web. At ~5-10 mbps each your webservers would catch fire, you would peg out gigabits of bandwidth, and the engineer would drink himself to death. To prevent that, you use one of many streaming services. We mainly use Anvato and SyncBak. They send you an appliance that takes either ASI or SDI video streams (sometimes both) encodes them and puts the video on various content delivery networks that can actually handle getting hit by half a city. These can easily take another 30mbps of your upstream, but it beats the hell out of the alternative. Were moving to Syncbak more now that google bought Anvato and their support is poo poo. I'll post more stuff later. Outta time
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Nov 23, 2016 22:51
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I use a streaming box thing for my webcasts! A DVEO Mamba. RTMP capable so can send to YouTube or Facebook live too. All from an ATEM system.
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Nov 23, 2016 23:46
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Has the proliferation of cheap tech driven down rates and salaries in the broadcast side as much as it has on the indie film side? I mean I love the democratization of tech as much as anyone but in practice this has cause so many jobs to fall by the wayside.
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Nov 24, 2016 05:42
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Armagnac posted:Has the proliferation of cheap tech driven down rates and salaries in the broadcast side as much as it has on the indie film side? The two things I see from this perspective are... IT and Broadcast engineering are quickly becoming one in the same. The higher level networking, systems administration, and development work is either outsourced or centralized. At least in our sphere of influence, the "IT" and broadcast engineers are getting helpdesk levels of pay and work while the "Chief Engineers" and the outsourced/centralized network and systems admins are doing the higher level stuff.
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Nov 24, 2016 06:33
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Armagnac posted:Has the proliferation of cheap tech driven down rates and salaries in the broadcast side as much as it has on the indie film side?
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Nov 24, 2016 06:55
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I'm a picture researcher at a UK news channel and my dad was a sound/camera man and then broadcast engineer at one of the big US broadcasters so I think this thread will be fun.
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Nov 24, 2016 15:03
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dandybrush posted:I'm a picture researcher at a UK news channel and my dad was a sound/camera man and then broadcast engineer at one of the big US broadcasters so I think this thread will be fun. So one of two news channel then. I won't try and guess
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Nov 24, 2016 15:27
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Trying to kickstart this thread again with some history. Consider the Channel Islands: How do you get colour television to a distant group of islands just off the coast of France with 1950s technology? And do it without causing any interference to France? UHF was the colour system used in the UK and has quite a shorter range than the old B&W system. So what to do? You make a loving huge antenna on the coast of one of the islands to receive an incoming feed over a distance way larger than desirable. Sadly no photos of anything other than a prototype: http://tx.mb21.co.uk/gallery/fremontpoint/fremont-sabre.php This antenna received a direct off-air feed of the ITV service for the south west of England, complete with that company's branding and indents, so it required some quick switching to make sure that viewers in the Channel Islands didn't see that content and instead saw the locally generated stuff. Later on this dirty feed was supplied by fibre or satellite but it still took a ridiculously long time until ITV distributed a clean feed to what was a tiny area of the country with a fiercely independent culture. American networks just started feeding a network feed right to affiliates from the start, right?
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Dec 3, 2016 15:44
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thehustler posted:American networks just started feeding a network feed right to affiliates from the start, right? Basically. Either via microwave radio relay, or coaxial lines run across the country. They were really the natural extension of the older radio networks operated by the same companies.
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Dec 4, 2016 02:43
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How deep can broadcast subchannels go? Every channel around here has a X.1 and X.2 but a channel just added a XX.4. In 5 years am I going to be watching PBS Basket Weaving on channel 47.9? As a sort of add-on question, my NBC bought ABC. NBC is on 25.1 and they moved ABC from 19.1 to 25.2. They kept 19.1 around, but it's Comet TV. What the hell was the point of that? I figured they were moving ABC to a subchannel to save transmitter costs or some such, but they keep 19.1 around and make it an "off brand" network?
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Dec 7, 2016 07:19
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How much does satellite time cost?
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Dec 7, 2016 08:02
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I wish I could contribute on the technical side of things, but that's not my area of expertise. I mainly have to deal with producers treating me and my coworkers like human search engines, and logging hours and hours of raw/produced footage.
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Dec 7, 2016 12:54
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Athanatos posted:How deep can broadcast subchannels go? Every channel around here has a X.1 and X.2 but a channel just added a XX.4. In 5 years am I going to be watching PBS Basket Weaving on channel 47.9? It entirely depends on how much bandwidth is available on a single ATSC digital TV channel minus overheads. You have to squeeze in your channels into that space. So if you reduced the quality of every subchannel you may be able to squeeze in another subchannel. This is what did for digital TV in the UK, as when it all started it was great quality and only a few channels per multiplex. They they started adding more and more and eventually everything was a low bitrate mush. Greed, basically.
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Dec 7, 2016 13:18
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dandybrush posted:I wish I could contribute on the technical side of things, but that's not my area of expertise. I mainly have to deal with producers treating me and my coworkers like human search engines, and logging hours and hours of raw/produced footage. That's ok I dig that too, I'm a freelance cameraman/editor so I like that side of things as well.
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Dec 7, 2016 13:19
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thehustler posted:That's ok I dig that too, I'm a freelance cameraman/editor so I like that side of things as well. That's cool. I do really enjoy logging well-shot rushes rather than some of the dodgy, wobbly stuff we sometimes get in. Seems unbelievable that ITN still send SD pool footage sometimes, although it's rarer now. The most 'editorial' stuff I get to do is to compile the best bits down for clip sales. Although it drives me crazy when I have to listen to long interviews or speeches as I have no training in transcription and it takes an insane amount of concentration in a busy office.
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Dec 7, 2016 13:27
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Does ITN send journalists out with cameras to self-shoot like the BBC? They give them Fisher Price cameras and they're frequently over or under-exposed and requires a ton of post-work. Especially from English Regions. Allegedly.
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Dec 7, 2016 19:09
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I believe so. Frustratingly it is often for events that are not big, interesting stories but ones that do well for our clip sales (the only bit of news that makes money, apart from the demon of.advertising). So royals that aren't Wills and Kate or the Queen, or non-blockbuster showbiz events often come in as really poor quality, also hampered by the fact the poor bugger with the camera is in a scrum and having to do live points as well. It's still better than no pool camera being assigned at all though, I guess.
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Dec 7, 2016 19:30
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