When I started working in broadcasting there were many many things I hadn’t even known existed. For example, feeds can be split into digital and analog (composite) feeds. AND under digital feeds, there are embedded audio and de-embedded audio feeds. So what’s the difference between embedded feeds/signals and de-embedded signals?

Embedded feeds have audio embedded in them which is (hopefully) synced with the video signal. This can be very useful when sending feeds long distances as audio can tend to fall out of sync if not embedded with the video. However, not all broadcasters like embedded video. Some are very much set up to work with de-embedded signals, so sending embedded ones would not help them in the slightest. To embed audio with video you can send the feeds through a mux, and similarly you can send embedded feeds through a de-mux. This de-embeds them.

I was completely oblivious to this fact and found it hard to grasp without it being explained to me properly.

This is given that I had no official training before I started working in broadcasting.

Not that clear on the differences between digital and composite feeds, just that to be aware of them and what signal you are taking out of the back of a camera. SDI is usually digital and composite cameras give out a (you guessed it) a composite feed. Digital and analog are interchangeable with a DA (Digital-analog) converter.

The Matrix does exist.

Shit you not, I work with a machine called a matrix. Effectively it’s a very large switcher. We use a Snell one at work with something like over 300 inputs and 300 outputs. The inputs can be assigned to multiple outputs which is incredibly useful. These ins and outs can be assigned through a router we have, giving us control of the 300 sources and destinations with the click of a button. That being said, we still do have and use a patch bay, but this can lead to complications as when something is overpatched, it does not take it’s source from the matrix and can cause confusion.

HDMI cables can be weird. From experience, I have found that some cables will do some jobs and not others, where some will do all of them and others hardly work at all… What’s with that? The ones I bought from the euro shop (something like a 99 cent store for the Americans) seem to work far better than the ones for 30 or 40 notes. They may not be as durable though or long. But working with HDMI is a pain in the buttocks. It’s nearly impossible to adequately extend, to get working, easily change the PC resolution with or just get working.

Sony PetaSite’s are damn cool. They work on these digital tapes that are around 1.6 TB a piece depending on how they are formatted. The PetaSite holds around 900 tapes and is used as a tape archive. Even listening to it make “whoosh” noises when requested to move tapes from slot to slot puts me in a state of Awe. Our latest PetaSite works on LTO-4 tapes and is much much smaller then our older archive which works on DF2 tapes. Amazing how it works and the archive is set up. More detail will be touched on this sometime soon.

I wish I had more pictures but I’m writing this out of the office, preempted and offline… on a bus of all places.

All our archive recordings are done in MXF and archived in this format. We are still in standard definition because if we moved in to HD then our high speed playback served would probably fill and meltdown in about 4 hours… so let’s not do that!

For our broadcast, everything is made fiber and then changed back as we work slightly remotely from where the cameras are located. Robotic cameras are very cool. As are the caption generators and vision mixers, but more on that soon. Warning: I am a serious Ross fanboy!

Reckon that’s enough for now!

Seeyeeee