Practical articles on studio equipment, camera work, acoustics, lighting and the planning that keeps live programmes reliable, written by the people who install and support them.
A new article appears about once a day, each on a single practical subject from live studio work. Read them in any order; every one stands on its own and keeps to what we have seen on real installations.
Support
A practical guide to arranging engineering cover for live programmes: who to have in the building, what to agree beforehand and how to hand knowledge back to your own crew.
Acoustics
Hannah Whitcombe sets out the questions worth answering before anyone orders acoustic work for a studio room, from measuring the space to agreeing what clear speech on air should mean.
Lighting
Most lighting problems on a live set are planned in, not suffered by chance. Here are the errors we meet most often in studio lighting and rigging, and the habits that prevent them.
Costs
A plain account of how a gallery integration is priced, which choices add cost, and which early decisions keep the total predictable from first survey to handover.
Customer story
Oliver recalls Martin's newsroom, where three cameras fought a cramped set. A change of lenses, positions and operator habits made live shots steadier without rebuilding the room.
Workflow Planning
Mid autumn is the time to review run sheets, book rehearsals and agree fallback steps, before winter schedules, early darkness and extra broadcasts make mistakes harder to absorb.
Trade Terms
A plain explanation of hypercare, the trade term for close technical cover after a studio opens, and how on-site support and crew training fit into those first weeks of live broadcasting.
Acoustics
A comparison of absorption-led and diffusion-led treatment for news and interview studios, with a recommendation based on room size, camera layout and how much the presenters move.
Lighting
A walk through the real sequence behind a lighting install: surveying the ceiling, hanging the grid, setting up dimmer control and tuning the light to the cameras before anyone goes on air.
Studio Integration
The question we hear most is how we know a newly integrated gallery will hold up on air. Here is how we specify, wire and test vision mixing, routing, monitoring and intercom.
Company news
A note on how our camera work has settled this year: robotic and pedestal heads chosen against the set, operator guidance written down, and shots agreed before rehearsal begins.
Workflow
A look at the run sheets, rehearsal plans and fallback cards we rely on when planning live news, interview and entertainment broadcasts, and why plain tools beat clever ones.
Support Checklist
Questions to settle before booking on-site support or training for your in-house crew: scope, handover, rehearsal time and what your team should be able to do alone afterwards.
Studio Acoustics
Hannah Whitcombe goes through the acoustic errors we meet most often in news and interview studios, and the plain steps that stop them from reaching air.
Lighting costs
A plain account of how a studio lighting scheme is priced, from fixtures and grid work to dimmer control and commissioning, and which choices make the total rise or fall.
Customer case
A short account of one regional news customer, Dominic, whose gallery had grown piece by piece, and how we wired, labelled and tested it until it behaved as a single system.
Reliable live television, start to finish
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