Try our new AI powered Smart-Search!
Ask any television or film lighting designer and you’ll get the same answer. Lighting is currently going a period of rapid technological change and LED fixtures are gaining fast over more traditional lighting — especially tungsten.
The capture of depth information in scenes is an increasingly rich field of development but it has so far remained on the fringes of TV production because of the need to either use physical markers on objects or to render the output in post. Start-up company Zinemath aims to change that with a technology called zLense it claims to be the first real-time 3D depth mapping tool for broadcast.
The IP wave has broken on the shores of wireless connectivity as several pro-camcorder manufacturers announce cloud-integration capability removing the need for traditional video uplink. This workflow particularly benefits ENG and electronic field production for store and forward media transfer or streaming live to air from sports or news events and taps into the maturation of cellular networks which are enabling a more secure and lossless signal transmission with lower latency. That said, 4G network coverage even in western Europe lags some way behind that of the U.S. which makes hybrid systems combining cellular channels and satellite links of necessity for most news-gathering services.
In recent years, major events such as the Arab Spring and the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake have brought the role of citizen journalists into global prominence. As mainstream news outlets adapt to this emerging trend, professional journalists and average citizens alike can explore the use of satellite technology as a key enabler to delivering news from anywhere in the world.
In the same way that Red Bull has successfully shifted attention to its brand as a lifestyle and not about shifting cans of drink, so GoPro’s business model has achieved lift-off as a media phenomenon. Perhaps it had to, with basic hardware costing around $100 it would have had to sold a lot of units, but as The Guardian pointed out this week ‘to GoPro’ has become a verb for the use of wearable cams to capture and post online any kind of video from the high-octane to the mundane. In its latest development, GoPro users can now stream — broadcast — their videos straight to the internet.
Since the world economy crashed in 2008, many industries are starting to return to profitability. However, that doesn’t mean that all those lost jobs for workers will ever come back. In fact, because of the increase in the use of computerized robots, many employees are finding that their job duties have greatly changed and in some cases, their jobs have been forever eliminated.
Lenses are one of the most ancient technologies still in use today. The earliest known lenses were made from polished crystal, often quartz, and date from as early as 700 BC. Technology has advanced greatly since then and the types of accessories for lenses are now virtually unlimited.
There is a rapid and profound technology shift in ENG. Wireless broadband service providers have become viable low-cost alternatives to conventional microwave in a large number of cases. BT Sport has launched what is claimed to be Europe’s first cellular newsgathering fleet with LiveU LU500 units and Xtender remote antennas even giving the service a new acronym of CNG. Meanwhile U.S. Spanish language broadcaster Noticias MundoFOX has based its entire ENG operation on LIVE+ 20/20 cellular-bonded transmitters from Dejero. “Budget is always a large consideration for a start-up news network,” explained Armando Acevedo, the network’s director of operations. “The ability to cover live, breaking news from the source is a critical differentiator but can also be a major expense area, especially if the station has to maintain costly satellite vehicles.”
