The bewildering number of video and audio compression formats available is difficult for those new to the industry to come to terms with. For broadcast engineers and IT engineers to work effectively together, IT engineers must understand the formats used, the legacy systems still in place, and the reasoning behind…
Point to point connections dedicated to delivering video and audio signals have dominated the broadcast industry since the 1930’s. But migrating to IP is compelling engineers to think differently about packetized signal distribution. In this article we investigate the potential sources of congestion and the effects of buffering.
Phantom power is normally described as electrical current running over the same cable that carries the mic’s audio signal. All non-battery powered professional microphones with active circuitry need this power to operate. But as with most pro audio topics, it’s a bit more complicated. Here is a description of …
High fidelity speakers for the home environment differ from professional audio monitors due to their sonic accuracy. In the studio, we want to hear mistakes in the audio and not have the speakers cover them up. At home, we want to enjoy music. So what are the differences?
When most of us hear the term “binaural” lavalier mics, we think of amateur location music recording. However, the term also can mean a pair of interview lavs where the audio for the subject and the questioner are sent to different tracks of a stereo recorder for easier editing.
Millions of dollars of savings are being achieved as broadcasters continue to switch from expensive satellite ad-hoc contribution to the public internet. Reliability, low latency, and high-quality connectivity has been difficult to achieve and wrapped in secrecy as vendors locked broadcasters into proprietary software and centralized server systems.
To deliver efficient media solutions IT engineers must be able to communicate effectively with broadcast engineers. In this series of articles, we present the most important topics in broadcasting that IT engineers must understand. Here, we look at compression, why, and how we use it.
The term, “metadata” may be one of the most misunderstood terms in the video business. It is often defined as, “data about data.” Even that phrase does not encompass the real value of metadata when it is combined with the latest production technology.
OTT video consumption is growing rapidly. Recent research from Ericsson found that the average weekly amount of time spent watching OTT content increased from 3.6 hours per week in 2014 to 12.1 hours per week in 2017. Broadcasters have an opportunity with OTT to boost their revenue, as the global OTT market is expected…
There’s been a lot of talk about the resource efficiencies related to remote operations for live production, but the cost of bandwidth to connect all of the disparate locations continues to make this way of working prohibitive for most second-tier producers.
