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Channel 4 don’t seem to have much luck when it comes to F1 do they?
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I'm almost certain that caption was generated at TimeLine, with audio from C4 themselves. On SD the announcer didn't necessarily go to air the same way as HD, so I guess there was some other issue at play there.
The interviews usually would come through in that form down the line for assembly into the Channel 4 News or similar, so I would presume that package was quickly loaded in to play as a makeweight to get them back to the top of the hour.
Not being able to switch away from an outside source is a bit of a serious problem, isn't it? I thought Red Bee were running this now, and presumably that comes with some better spec kit than this, unless there's some value brand option that Channel 4 took to try to keep costs down.
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(05-03-2023, 05:56 PM)Bennyboy84 Wrote: Channel 4 don’t seem to have much luck when it comes to F1 do they?
They need to spice up the coverage somehow!
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(05-03-2023, 06:14 PM)agemame Wrote: I'm almost certain that caption was generated at TimeLine, with audio from C4 themselves. On SD the announcer didn't necessarily go to air the same way as HD, so I guess there was some other issue at play there.
The interviews usually would come through in that form down the line for assembly into the Channel 4 News or similar, so I would presume that package was quickly loaded in to play as a makeweight to get them back to the top of the hour.
Not being able to switch away from an outside source is a bit of a serious problem, isn't it? I thought Red Bee were running this now, and presumably that comes with some better spec kit than this, unless there's some value brand option that Channel 4 took to try to keep costs down.
They were in the process of building a new dual-site playout setup with new systems when the big incident happened. I don't know when that came online but this sort of thing is the sort of issue that arises when a new system is being used.
It's not great obviously but it's something that is learnt from and either resolved or working practises changed to accommodate it. Its all experience for the team
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If they are dual site (fully staffed in a similar vein to the BBC in W12 and Salford) it seems remarkable that they lost two ad breaks (arguably more important than the programmes for a commercially funded broadcaster).
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(05-03-2023, 08:10 PM)Steve in Pudsey Wrote: If they are dual site (fully staffed in a similar vein to the BBC in W12 and Salford) it seems remarkable that they lost two ad breaks (arguably more important than the programmes for a commercially funded broadcaster).
3 ad breaks (2 blank, 1 skipped) - especially as I would think the F1 ad breaks reach a key demographic for them (especially first programme of a new season, with a new title sponsor)
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Staying with the motorsport theme, and on last night's coverage of round one of Indycar, from St. Petersberg, Florida, Sky Sports arena had several instances of the feed going down. They either put up a holding slide apology, or a strap line apology on the frozen pictures.
What was interesting last night was, when sky stays with the coverage, and nbc go to an ad break, with the nbc crew stop commentating, sky has Tom Gaynor in London filling in, but during the pictures loss, he didn't.
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I think I read something about solar activity taking out satellite feeds temporarily
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And he can't commentate if he can't see those pictures...
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(06-03-2023, 09:23 AM)Steve in Pudsey Wrote: I think I read something about solar activity taking out satellite feeds temporarily
Yep it's Sun outage time, happens around the end of February/beginning of March and the end of Septembe/beginning of October. See here for a description
www.eurovision.net
They're very predictable* but can't always be worked around, especially when they affect home reception. They're interesting to see happen.
There's a good calculator here and the site also plots them on a map in real time
www.satellite-calculations.com