[linux-audio-user] Re: 192kHz

[Gene Heskett]

On Saturday 28 January 2006 13:47, Ismael Valladolid Torres wrote:
>Gene Heskett escribe:
>> But, because I have been a broadcast engineer, now almost retired,
>> for much of my working life, I still need to hear when things aren't
>> right, so I can fix them before those emails start coming in. :-)
>
>Emails came in 50 years ago? ;)

No, of course not, then it was phone calls & letters, but they sure do 
the email thing today.  I think I got my first email from a viewer in 
the middle-later 90's after we had setup a web page at wdtv.com.  About 
9 years ago now.  One of the first things we did was to write an arexx 
script that grabbed the teleprompter's script contents from the NT 
based ap-news server, striped the control stuffs, wrap it in html, and 
put it up on our web page 5 minutes after that newscast started.  That 
caused a minor revolt in the news dept cause we got to give them heck 
over the typo's & shorthanded words only they knew the meaning of.

We may even have been first in the country to do something like that.  
It wasn't much, but some deaf folks could get it by closed caption 
generation too.  Then the commission finally made us write down every 
word said on the air just because of the deaf, and things went to from 
mearly bad, to even worse cause most of the script writers had to make 
so much output in a limited time that spelling & typo's got really bad, 
& still is.

With the time constraints, its not likely to get markedly better either.  
Even so, I think the CC watching people are getting a better product 
than they were before.

Some stations use voice recognition software to do that, but it makes 
more mistakes than the reporters do.  Closed captioning labor time is 
now a measurable cost of running a news gathering operation today.

Just offhand, I'd say we have 1.5 more people involved in an average 30 
minute newscast now than we did 10 years ago before closed captioning 
made it to the masses, just to do the closed captioning, but video 
editing gear has gotten better & faster so its a wash in the actual 
body count.  We do about 2.5 hours of news daily M-F, with a reduced 
schedule on S & S.  Our field cameras now record on hard drives, and 
the news story doesn't see tape until its dumped to archival storage on 
dvc-pro tapes long after the newscast has been put to bed.  During the 
actual newscast its served from apple video servers all hooked to the 
news dept editors by 100-base-T ethernet, with editing of stories 
actively going on during the cast.  It used to take an editor 30+ 
minutes to do a 1:30 package by editing tape, now it can be, with good 
notes from the camera reporter (usually the same person), maybe 5 
minutes to locate the right stuff in an 18 minute rambling interview 
and have it ready for air.

Morning 5 minute cut-ins run 20-30 minutes total from 6 to 9ish, 30 
minutes at noon, 1.5 hours 5-6:30, and 30 to 45 minutes at 11pm. This 
is all local stuff, national gets its breaks and the 6:30-7 slot.

So yes, the broadcasting business today is very much a 2 way comm 
channel, thanks to email.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
People having trouble with vz bouncing email to me should add the word
'online' between the 'verizon', and the dot which bypasses vz's
stupid bounce rules.  I do use spamassassin too. :-)
Yahoo.com and AOL/TW attorneys please note, additions to the above
message by Gene Heskett are:
Copyright 2006 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.