Posts by Tom Glover
LECTURE: TV Systems & Signals
0Today, has been an eventful day mainly due to the snow that has been falling constantly for the last 24 hours. This morning there was only a light dusting of snow on the ground, so I risked it and went to uni as usual, no problems getting in. It was whilst I was at uni, things started to go bad. The snow just kept falling and falling, which i knew was bad right from the start, even though it wasn’t settling at North Greenwich.
This morning we had a practical tv systems and signals lecture with John Palmer. We looked into termination of video signals, and why it was important. which was an interesting lecture. and it surprised alot of us, how much the signal changed based on if it was terminate or unterminated.
At the end of this lecture, the snow was still falling and I was now dreading trying to get home.
Another Electronics Practical in the afternoon, and the snow was still falling, by this time, my dad had phoned me to say we now had nearly a foot at Petts Wood, and that it will be hard trying to get home.
I finally left uni at 5pm, and got to Lewisham via the Jubilee Line and DLR with no Problems. Lewisham had still only 2-3 inches of snow and trains were running ok, into London. MY train arrived about 10-minuets late and was said to be fast to Orpington, which was fine for me, just meant a slightly longer walk back.
We Pulled out of Lewisham and moved slowly down to Hither Green, where we stopped and the opened the doors. This wouldn’t have happened if we had been the true fast service that they had said in Lewisham. We had stopped because there were 5 other trains in front of us trying to reach the South East, all being blocked by one train that had broken down at Petts Wood.
After 3 hours of very slow moving and long waits at stations we finally made it to Petts Wood, the snow is in deed over a foot deep, and there are only two lines out of the usual 4 the could just about be used. Walking back from Petts wood station was just as dangerous, with next to no grip on the compacted snow.
I don’t think, I’ll be going to uni anytime soon.
CIRCUS: AVID and Patching
0AVID
Avid, Avid, Avid, where do I begin, It’s hard to say I liked it, because I didn’t, and the truth be told I don’t think I will be finding much time to edit using it. It’s handy to know the basics and it’s little quirks with the Rave MAM System. This little bits of knowledge will help me troubleshoot problems with the software if required, at a later date.
Patching
Patching was an interesting, yet small session, aim at teaching me on how to route signals around the ravensbourne building. There’s not much more than that i can say about it.
LECTURE: Electronics and TV Systems and Signals
0Electronics
Continuing on from the basics we learnt in the first few lectures, we moved on to some basic analogue circuits, including creating a Hi-pass and Low-Pass filter. These filters are both very simple, yet they provide crucial functionality in many everyday appliances. A good example of this is the Phone it has a 3KHz Hi-Pass Filter in it, creating the distinctive sound you hear. A Mid-Pass Filter is another extremely common one, particularly in broadcasting. Used mainly in TV tuners, to decipher one signal from the next. They are used for this purpose as they can be set to allow a very small frequency range through at a time, useful for splitting the hundreds of signals sent over FreeView.
TV Systems & Signals
TV Systems and Signals, was unfortunately canceled today due to unforeseen circumstances.
CIRCUS: Studio Sound
0My final main Circus session today was on Studio Sound, and how it can make or break a live or as live television production. Bellow is what i had to say about today, in my circus report:
Studio sound is quite similar to Location sound, with the main difference being the amount of microphones / audio sources you can mix and output. In a studio mixer you can also use techniques such as Compression, Effects (Reverb, Delay and such), and Limiting.
In the studio at Ravensbourne there are 3 wall boxes each with a set of input / output tie-line which link back to the sound gallery. Each socket from this wall box can then be patched to any channel on the Solid State Logic C10, digital sound mixing desk. Each socket could be patched as an aux on the desk, allowing you to feed particular channels into the studio, for example as monitors for a band.
Each channel in the SSL C10 can have its own effects and compression applied to it which can be very useful in a band / interview situation, were you would like some reverb on the performance mic’s and nothing on the interviewees. Also each channel can be supplied with phantom power individually; this means that if you have microphones or other equipment that require phantom to operate, they can be supplied with it, without the rest of the inputs being affected. Some older sound desks only supply phantom to all or nothing, this can cause some problems with sensitive equipment.
The SSL C10 can handle “64 full input channels, each with dedicated 4-band EQ, Comp/Lim, Insert, Direct Output”5 as well as “16 dedicated mono Mix Minus buses with insert points, can be stereo-linked”5, all of which allows the sound supervisor to provide the studio floor / in ear monitoring all different mixes. For example a presenter will want to hear the Director, PA, and VT’s but they don’t want to hear themselves.
CIRCUS: Studio Camera’s
0Our second to last Circus session today, and it was defiantly one of the most interesting, Studio Camera’s. Heres what I wrote about it in my Circus Report:
Studio Cameras are in some respects simplified versions of PSC cameras, as they don’t have the ability to record directly or capture sound. Studio Cameras are operated by a single operator in the studio and a secondary racking operator in the gallery. The racking operator is responsible for the exposure, white / black balance and the colours. If each camera operator had these controls, the picture wouldn’t be as consistent as if it was operated remotely by one.
We were trained on the Sony HXC100 HD Camera’s, with four being mounted on Vinten Pedestals and the fifth on a non-pressurised Pedestal. The operation of the zoom and focus has moved from the camera body (PSC) to two wired remotes on the pan and tilt handles of the Pedestal, with the exception of number 5, which is designed to be used as a hand held and its pedestal, is only a place to keep it when not in use.
Camera 5 also has a Wide Angle, which again changes the perspective of the studio for the viewer, with this lens the studio looks larger than, when it is viewed with one of the other 4 camera’s which all have the same narrower lens. Graham Reed2 also went through a great deal on perspective and depth of field and how it can greatly effect an images composition. The great example he used was a line of tree’s and showed how using different focal lengths you could make the trees look closer together (narrow angle) or further apart (wide angle), than they truly were.