monitors on live shots

D

Drew Yaussy

Member
What is your general rule for monitors during liveshots? Our off-air signal is no longer useful as a reference for when you're in video or on camera due to the 4 second delay we run. Do you encourage running the camera into a monitor just for lighting checks or to make the talent happy with the shot? We are debating upgrading to HD monitors and are considering the original costs, maintenance, adding more gear for the crews to break or lose, and overall usefulness of the monitors.

Drew
 
Last edited:
thru-the-lens

thru-the-lens

Well-known member
The engineers at my station are telling me that a monitor is a thing of the past. Once we go digital next Feb. the delay will make them useless. They are not planing to replace them.

Also, they are telling us that the ProChannel is going bye-bye too. Because it is on the analog signal. They say that there is no ProChannel for a digital signal yet. I don't know how we will be doing IFB because we don't have cell phones for IFB in the trucks. (I know, I know...I can't believe it too)

We have a rigged system using the headset jack on a cell phone and an earpiece. Last night my reporter complained it was too low and that was with the phone volume turned all the way up.

thru-the-lens.
 
Last edited:
D

Drew Yaussy

Member
Pro channel

Pro Channel is universally worthless after February, as far as I know. Make sure you have a quality earpiece for the cell phones. There shouldn't be any problems with that.
 
Canonman

Canonman

Well-known member
dinosaur said:
(ATSC) DTV Receivers are available. However, they are subject to broadcast time delays,
Click to expand...
The MPEG2 encode/decode time is a problem. Also, ever notice when you select a channel on ATSC it takes a moment for the picture to show up? That's because it has to buffer some data just like downloading streaming content on your computer in order to guard against drop outs. That keeps the receiver a little bit behind the curve also.

cm
 
amp

amp

Well-known member
We have 6 channels that the station got years ago on the CB/Scanner band. We use the same radios that most police used.
 
M

MiniIndy

Member
If you have a two way band you could have them send your show signal out on one of your channels if your have more than one. They can do mix minus over that as well. The down side is when the producer is talking to other reporters you will be able to hear it.
 
Last edited:
J

JimmyS.

Well-known member
I suspended a guy a couple of years ago for not using a monitor. The monitor was the backup to our ailing IFB system. His live shot flopped because IFB went bad, and he didn't think it was important to set up the monitor. It was a very strict policy, use a monitor on every shot, no exceptions.
Now, with the crappy IFB they have and the 7 second delay. Yikes. Live shots are going to go to junk left and right. And, I bet the photog is always to blame.
 
zac love

zac love

Well-known member
Since everyone has a cell phone these days, having an extra cell & good ear piece should work well. If the station isn't scared of spending money, give all the photogs, reporters & live trucks their own cell phones. As long as they are all the same brand, ear pieces can be interchangable if one phone has a bad jack / low battery.

I think it is pretty obvious that over the air monitors are about to be useless.
 
M

mtry

Member
I understand what everyone is saying about not being able to use the tv for cueing, because of the delay (3 to 5 sec in my experience). But I would not get rid of having a tv with digitial tuner, because We all do live shots at one time or another with our WX anchors in the field and they need to see their maps and can live with the delay if they know about it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top