Keeping up with the rapid advancements of new technology in media production and distribution can be a daunting task for broadcasters, service providers and media companies as they try to navigate highly competitive waters and keep their businesses successful. Staffing and resources are often limited and media delivery is becoming more dynamic, complex and unwieldy than ever before.
Computer systems are driving forward broadcast innovation and the introduction of microservices is having a major impact on the way we think about software. This not only delivers improved productivity through more efficient workflow solutions for broadcasters, but also helps vendors to work more effectively to further improve the broadcaster experience.
Every decade has had a buzzword. Watch a 1950s educational movie and realize how dated the term “atomic” sounds now, and not only because the downsides of nuclear power have since become so painfully apparent. Since then, we’ve been sold technology marked “transistor,” “digital,” and now “AI,” although sometimes it’s not quite clear how key those things are to the success of a technology.
The peculiarities of the motion of planet Earth are responsible for much more than seasons and the midnight sun and it took a while before it was all figured out.
Without intercom, a live broadcast production would soon degenerate into chaos. A whole industry has been built on the protocols intercom users have adopted and everybody involved in the production must be able to hear the director’s instructions, clearly and concisely.
The concept of working from home was trending long before public health issues caused most of us to contribute remotely, but the past year has seen an acceleration no one could have predicted. What those in the media industry quickly learned is that it’s not that easy to take your work home with you.
There is a school of thought that suggests increasing the brightness through the contrast control on a television will give a higher dynamic range. However, this doesn’t necessarily increase the contrast ratio. Quantization noise is the enemy of dynamic range and increasing brightness in a system with a low bit depth makes quantizing banding obvious. When banding occurs, the brightness must be turned down to remove it or, the bit depth should be increased.
Never trust the adhesive holding tape to the hub of a 40 year-old ¾-inch videocassette.
