When Lawo’s Virtual Studio Manager (VSM) control system was first developed in the late 90’s, it was in reaction to the need to control and monitor the video and audio signals that travelled around a facility or an OB truck. Nowadays, far more than 1000 installs and millions of lines of code later, the genetic roots of the product make it the perfect choice for IP environments. It’s one thing to want flexibility to use thousands of signals in a myriad of ways, but it’s quite another to quickly and accurately distribute signals to the right person at the right time. That’s when the benefits of IP and a powerful control system become fully realized.
The traditional level standards were based on electrical signals of specified power. When these signals are recorded on media, or transmitted in other ways, these definitions no longer apply.
In the last article in our three-part series, we explored the advantages of SDI and how 12G-SDI is applied in broadcast facilities. In this article, we investigate applications where SDI excels.
Reporters for WAFF-TV, the NBC affiliate in Huntsville, Alabama, have seen their share of weather disasters and learned to adapt to working from home for short periods of time. It goes with covering the territory. The current pandemic situation, however, is another story all together. It’s a story that, with each week, brings mental fatigue but also a can-do spirit to help the local community get through the crisis.
High dynamic range and wide color gamut combined with 4K resolution and progressive frame rates have catapulted broadcast television to new levels of immersive experience for the viewer. As HDR and WCG are relatively new to television, we need to both understand their application and how we monitor them to enable us to surpass the levels of quality and immersive experience cinematographers demand.
As IP technology continues to mature and the industry gains a better understanding of how IT-centric infrastructures work, many broadcasters are now eager to migrate away from the limitations of SDI to grow their businesses and make them better able to support increased production demands and multiplatform distribution.
Recent international events have overtaken normality causing us to take an even closer look at how we make television. Physical isolation is greatly accelerating our interest in Remote Production, REMI and At-Home working, and this is more important now than it ever has been.
The dominant reason for the adoption of color difference working is that it allows the color difference signals to be reduced in bandwidth without obvious loss of picture quality. Only the luma signal needs to be retained at full bandwidth. There are various ways in which that can be done.
