As broadcast facilities and other organizations that use media to educate and inform continue to carefully make the move to video over IP, they currently face two main options, with a range of others in the wings. They may opt for a full SMPTE ST 2110 design that leverages uncompressed pristine quality video for higher profile productions or lightly compressed NDI networking, which brings with it less costs and easy access to an expanding ecosystem of compliant products and systems.
Due to the flexibility and virtually unlimited access of the Internet Protocol, manufacturers of broadcast and production equipment have for years provided customers with the remote ability, via an HTML 5 browser interface, to monitor and control hardware devices via a smart phone, tablet or laptop. Vendors have now begun to take that access one step further and have developed dedicated applications for mobile phones—which have been optimized for the reduced scale of a phone screen—that put this control in the palm of your hand.
“You need to be very predictable with the broadcast at all times. When I started doing this you had to be really careful with 5.1; there was no standardization,” he says. Indeed, for a long time, as broadcasters began to switch to HDTV across the U.S., it was not unusual for audio channels to be mixed up during transmission, or for audio processors to be incorrectly set or configured.
Progress inevitably comes with compromise. We can’t complain about the technology that’s brought us from hundred-kilo tube cameras to the 4K cellphones of today, but anyone who remembers the fuzzy old days of the 1990s might also remember a few things that we miss in 2021. Let’s examine a few.
At one time, it was traditional to complain about the things that science had promised us but failed to deliver. Now we actually have a jet pack that’s practical, or at least that lasts more than thirty seconds, we’re free to turn our attention to some other things that seem perpetually just around the corner.
John Harris became a music mixer for broadcast television at a time when there was no such job. In the decades since he’s won 12 Emmys, three Grammys and a Peabody Award and has been at the forefront as the industry has made the transition from stereo to 5.1 surround and now immersive audio.
Cinematography is not generally a field given to the idea that less is more. Probably the most direct and current expression of that is large format, a term that isn’t even particularly well-defined, let alone a technology that usually produces a particularly identifiable look.
Orchestral performances may be a relative rarity on U.S. broadcast television these days, but the past 18 months has seen quite a growth in classical music streaming online. Orchestral music has long been wrapped up in certain expectations, from the seating of the musicians to the quality of the audio, but the coronavirus pandemic has chipped away at some of those expectations, and that’s a good thing, according to New York-based Jody Elff, a Grammy Award-winning audio engineer, sound artist and designer.
