3D = Definite Deployment Due

Having just talked to a load of OB companies for a forthcoming Broadcast feature looking at the sector, I'm starting to review my long-standing slight scepticism on the format. Everyone, it seems, is doing tests, they all say they can do it quite simply, and the only thing holding the production side of things back is the cameras.

I still think there is a way to go in two areas - home delivery and also the actual visual language of putting 3D broadcasts together - but am happy to concede that it's probably all now going to happen. When, of course, is another matter entirely...

A quick restorative

Just finished a piece for Broadcast on restoration of archive material, and how the square of SD archive can be circled with the HD present (so to speak). Some interesting stuff in there...out next Thursday.

The pic above shows two versions of Price & Prejudice, with the restored and rather lovely Blu-ray version on the left.

A couple of good quotes in particular from Paul Gardner, Head of Archive at Darlow Smithson says:

“A few years ago, the requirement tended to be only 30% of SD footage allowed in a documentary for the international market. Now that’s dropped to 10%, and making historical programmes with only 10% SD is very difficult.”

Gardner won the Researcher of the Year at the recent Focal International Awards 2009 for ‘The Thriller in Manila’, a sports doc about the infamous 1975 Ali vs Frazier fight in The Philippines. “That had 50 minutes of SD archive in a 100 minute programme, and you couldn’t make it under those rules today,” he says.

Next up: a feature on OB for Broadcast, various bits and pieces of a press release nature, and the start of serious preparations for this year's IBC Daily and it's various e-shots.

NAB = Need Another Brain

Well, that's NAB largely wrapped up. Just completed the last TVBe email full of news from the show and that, it seems, is that. Some good products have come out of it. AJA's Ki Pro deck was interesting, Panasonic's dedicated stereo 3D rig looked the part (and surely if 3D is going to go mainstream, it needs dedicated kit, not lashed up home-brew equipment), there were interesting onboard digital camera recorders from S.two and Convergent, and Blackmagic's UltraScope was a pretty nifty innovation as well.

All good. Nothing major or world-shattering, but good solid kit that should keep the industry ticking over while we wait for 3D to take off, super-high-massive-vision to debut, telepathic transmission to be invented (Big Brother straight to your frontal lobes! Aiee! The horror!) or whatever comes next...

In the meantime, the newsroom design piece for Broadcast comes out on Thursday. Shame the ITV newsroom pic wasn't big enough to be the lead, but it's a good piece anyway and there are some interesting points to be made in it. And it's now straight into another one for the magazine on archive restoration.

Oh, and I also had my first IBC meeting last week. Incoming!