BBC North West Tonight

Well yes, it's not surprising, they DSO'd almost two years ago, so they can indeed easily mix network sound and vision with their local sources

In fear of looking stupid but why does have completed digital switch over make this any different? Are network programmes delivered direct to the transmitter rather than via each region?

In pre-DSO regions there are two separate network distributions in play, the analogue and the digital circuits. The digital one is delayed with respect to the analogue one, so the regional galleries are set up to work with the timings for the analogue circuit, and they soft-opt in the same way they always have done.

For digital the system is/way that after the analogue soft opt, as soon as the network source is no longer selected on the mixer, the opt happens, with a delay added to compensate for the timing difference between the two distributions. This is triggered using the tally light signalling that works red lights on cameras.

After DSO, they have been able to re-engineer it so that they soft-opt on digital which means that they can put the mixer into circuit with network selected and mix away from it rather than having to cut.

Does this mean we could see smooth transitions or effects into the local news?

yes, it means if they were clever enough they could use the viz BBC News Transitions from network to region!

They now often fade into the national titles after the headlines opt rather than a straight cut.




How does this work? Do you mean aston transitions?

On another note, wasn't NWT fitted with viz in 2007? The astons used to animate in the short-lived look between September 2007 and April 2008.


EDIT: And in other NWT news, sounds like Stuart Flinders is presenting with Ranvir tonight. When was he last seen presenting?

I think he's referring to the concentric circle wipe they use between headlines.

Yes, which I believe use Viz to carry out the animation (although they are available in Quantel etc for use in pre-recorded headline sequences.

North West Tonight are one of the few VizRT regions yet don't sieze the opportunity to use the more complex graphics, save for Christmas!

That's probably because Viz is a swine of a system to program as I understand it. Unless you've had a lot of training, a lot of practice and have the right mindset, by all accounts it's darn difficult to get it to do the things it's capable of. AFAIK the rollout of Viz to all regions was shelved a long time ago leaving some regions with it, most without and hardly any using anything other than templated effects designed by a specialist in London.

It's just a shame NWT couldn't just get a copy of the animation used for the BBC News graphics - they look much slicker than just fading (although it's probably much more complicated than copy and paste...)

They can, it just takes a lot to get it to work with different VMs etc, one thing that they need is a simple system.

And that was Kaye's last shift at 6:30. It's a shame she's gone; much more level-headed and professional than Diane, who returns on Monday to a great, relentless fanfare from Gordon and Ranvir who probably won't shut up about it!