A quality glitch on BBC Proms
mainThis just in from a top-end sound engineer:
Did you watch the Paul Lewis Beethoven 4th piano concerto this evening? The BBC abandoned the usual broadcast cameras and used ‘Q-Ball’ cameras instead. The pictures were very poor resolution and foggy in comparison, and the obsession with close-ups through a wide-angle lens makes everyone look close as well as bulbous. What is in the BBC’s heads? The cameras have a single 1/3″ 2MP sensor which is comparable with the Canon camcorder we take on family holidays, and has resolution at best a sixth of that of a studio camera. I knows times are hard, but the BBC is so snotty about contractors using full broadcast grade cameras and yet they use something I would hesitate about using for cctv on sessions.
Any comment from BBC vision control?
There’s further discussion starting here.
If there’s a way to watch these things live in the US, I’ve yet to find it. The BBC is most protective of its broadcast rights outside their own territory.
However, I did want to comment that those eyeball cameras are just plain awful. I first saw one at a Jon Parker recital in London years ago and just the “keystoning” of the projected image was enough to give me vertigo.
Can’t stand it.
LOVE the Met’s new broadcasts from NYC and a lot of what Medici.tv is doing, from Verbier especially this month, is outstanding.
I’d willingly subscribe to some of these if they could just stop screwing around showing off how much technology they can fit into one web page and get back to basics.
I’m a bleeding edge techno guy, normally able to navigate the most dense web thicket, but I cannot figure out the structured subscription raison d’etre for Medici.tv yet.
MPS