Test Cards and Other Internal Content

Last set of one’s i’ll be posting
vlcsnap-2018-09-13-17h28m01s770 vlcsnap-2018-09-13-17h28m29s750 vlcsnap-2018-09-13-17h31m22s806 vlcsnap-2018-09-12-16h45m08s392

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I was led to believe Ten works slightly differently to the other networks as the metro stations all play the content from their servers independently of each other, and there’s not a network feed as such. Therefore the five metro channels can go out of sync as long as they get back on schedule for any live events (such as national news or sport) fed directly from TEN Sydney. Someone explained this in the Broadcast Facilities thread a while back.

If this is correct, it would mean WIN and other affiliates would have to be kept in the loop constantly about break timings etc - I’m sure that’s the case with any affiliate, but in Ten’s case it would be more complex as those who play out the various WIN stations would need communication from the relevant Ten station providing the feed for individual markets (if that makes sense).

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all three commercial networks in Australia have centralised their presentation playout.

Seven at HSV, Docklands.
Nine at a facility in Frenchs Forest
Ten at TEN, Pyrmont.

They all have a seperate playout for each market they broadcast to. That is delivered to their affiliate (Prime for 7, Southern Cross for 9 and WIN for 10) so that they can also have a seperate playout for each market they broadcast to.

Any network LIVE programming is supplied to each market via a ‘network bus’ … so that there is only one feed to coordinate (which includes closed captions, watermark for sport etc) that network bus can be supplied with clean vision to the affiliates to insert their own watermark… but it’ll still carry closed captions.

WIN, ABC, Imparja, 7Flix and a few other boutique channels have centralised their presentation to a commercial company called MediaHub in Ingleburn south west of Sydney.

SCA and Prime, I believe, are still in Canberra… while 7 and 9 are joining forces at 9’s Frenchs Forest facility (NPC) to create a competitor to MediaHub.

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Prime is now at MediaHub too.

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Seperate playlists for each market including programs, but all played from Sydney, not their respective markets, if I’m to understand what you’re getting at. 10 also ran another playlist for the clean network feed, with black events instead of commercials, but I don’t know if this still exists. In practice the playlists are kept in sync, if a break duration is modified for Sydney the same break will be modified for Mel/Bris, and the corresponding break for the delay markets, but yes, one market could be run :say, 30 seconds late, as long as it was corrected for before the next live or fixed time event.

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Thanks @shadowmask for explaining.

Does each market/feed still have its own transmission controller/director responsible for overseeing/firing graphics and breaks? I appreciate a lot of it is automated now so perhaps less people are needed. Also, I assume they work in Melb/Syd time, so - apart from live events like news - everything viewers in say, Perth are seeing was really played out two/three hours ago and “delayed”. How is the broadcast delay actually achieved? I’ve asked that question before but no-one has been able to give a specific answer.

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no, there is generally one coordinator now for the 5 main markets. everything is automated now.

as for delay markets, they are ‘played out’ in the local timezone.

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While it’s true that markets are generally played out at the time of the broadcast, some delays are still used to achieve this depending on the type of broadcast. Eg. metro stations will run Today/Sunrise/Studio 10 etc in to some form of delay to feed to Adelaide and Perth at the appropriate time, with commercials played out at broadcast time. A common system for this is EVS, but there are many others. They may also choose to ingest the program in to the same server system which plays out the commercials and non-live programs (eg, just about every show on TV).

Likewise regional stations make use of delays for markets where using a live metro station feed isn’t appropriate (eg. Prime delaying Seven Sydney for Gold Coast in daylight saving, SCA delaying Melbourne feeds for Darwin, WIN delaying Ten Network Recovery feeds for WA). This can be done by delaying the network feed and playing it out at broadcast time, or by playing out in line with other “live” markets and delaying the whole product. There are pros and cons to both approaches and it really depends on the operational requirements of the broadcaster to determine which approach is most appropriate. Both methods have their own complexities when it comes to “going live” or getting back on delay.

Regardless of the approach, most broadcasters will have redundant delays in place often utilising different technologies for each delay, so that a failure in one bit of equipment doesn’t completely destroy 30/60/90/300/whatever minutes of broadcast.

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well, not really. live programming goes into the program server for replay into the delay markets, I know for sure Studio 10 is never played to air via an EVS for Adelaide or Perth.

As for Today and Sunrise for the west coast, there would be inserts recorded especially for that market… and they’d be rolled out of the studio control, from an EVS or EVS type machine.

Today in Perth, for example, “rejoins” the network feed on the weather (with a wipe)… that segment of the show then is played out by the Perth control room until the next break.

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I believe EVS was the backup delay for Sunrise a few years ago. Whether that’s still the case I don’t know. Ingesting those programs to program server is, as you say, more usual these days.

Interesting that Today’s Perth inserts and the remainder of the Today segment are both run out of Perth. Seven only run the inserts from Perth with BCM playing the Sunrise segment surrounding it.

My experience is more on the regional side of things. Oh the fun that used to be Friday night AFL on Prime when NSW had to be split in to five separate delays!

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Thanks. I’m trying to put this in very simple terms to get my head around it. Once we start taking of “servers” etc, it can get confusing if you’re not familiar with how these work.

So, disregarding live inserts, everything for Perth, Adelaide etc is “played” in NSW/VIC time - this would be immediately broadcast to the Eastern States but the entire “recording” of the output would then be shown 2 hours/30 minutes later to WA/SA. So ad-breaks etc are all fired at the same time, without waiting for SA and WA to “catch up”.

It’s easier to get my head around by thinking of the old way of broadcasting when programs were played off tape. Bloke in BCM presses play on the H&A tape at 7pm and plays it out to the Eastern States, but the Perth man is also watching this feed and inserts Perth’s PRGs, ads etc into it. But what he does isn’t broadcast in Perth until two hours later. (As opposed the same tape having to be played two hours later and Perth guy doing his thing then). It’s all done at once, just not everyone sees it straightaway. Is that pretty much correct?

Obviously, that’s not how it’s done in reality - with servers automatically playing out everything - but the principle is the same?

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No, the opposite. Everything is played out at broadcast time. Eg. That episode of Home & Away is played out from BCM to the east coast at 7pm, then again to Adelaide at 7pm Adelaide time, then again to Perth at 7pm Perth time. There is no need for a delay here as what the coords play for each market goes directly to the transmitters in that market.

To use your tape analogy, the same tape is played three times. Four if you count Brisbane being behind Sydney/Melbourne in daylight saving.

Sticking with the tape analogy, regional stations may choose to do it either way for delayed markets. They might take the feed of the tape being played on the east coast, play commercials in line with that and delay the whole output. Or they might record that east coast tape playout to a new tape, and play that new tape at the time they need it to air in a delayed markets, playing the commercials in line with it. Either option works.

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No. For general programming the delayed markets play the program itself again - because they can. Being located centrally with the other markets means (subject to the amount of outputs of the server system) they can access the program at any time they want, it doesn’t have to be exactly on the 1/2 or 2 hour difference, though for practical purposes they usually are. For the what was live program, the delay markets switch a server set up with the time delay-at least that’s how one network does it.

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Wow - thank you for clarifying. So the terms “broadcast delay” and “tape delay” are misleading (except in the cases of the “as live” content). In this day and age, like you say, it’s all so much easier to do because everything is on server and can be played at the click of a mouse (automated or otherwise).

I assume when tapes were used it was much more cumbersome and expensive to play everything out 3 or 4 times, and at least two copies of everything would be required as the Adelaide market was only 30 minutes behind (eg. not enough time to spool back the tape of a 30-minute show and start it again for Adelaide).

In the early days of the BCM, there were indications that Seven delayed the entire feed for other states. Firstly, a photo I’ve seen from c 2004 shows various monitors, including the Perth and Adelaide feeds, all showing the same programme being transmitted. Secondly, I had recordings of the same episode of H&A recorded from Melbourne and Perth. At the start of segment 3 there was about a two-minute delay in Melbourne before the PRG played and the watermark faded in (evidently an issue at BCM). On the Perth episode, recorded 2 hours later, the same problem occurred with the watermark (although the PRG played at the right time). The only explanation really is that Perth were seeing a delayed feed of Melbourne’s output (the watermark being on the feed, but the PRG being inserted “locally”).

EDIT: This is a fascinating discussion (for a nerd like me :nerd_face:) and probably better suited to another thread.

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Got this one

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While I found this 2 days ago…
vlcsnap-03412

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Not sure if this counts but I saw an empty newsdesk today
vlcsnap-2018-09-21-13h03m23s926

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Nine trying to play a movie within the graphics for a test run
vlcsnap-2018-09-21-14h00m15s190

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Empty studio 2-box.
vlcsnap-03419

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Things shifted over to stream B, with the “Nine News Canberra” test card at the tail end of a press conference.

But instead of reposting that, here’s some more countdowns from my neck of the woods.

KVUE2 WAFF2 WEIU WBKO WAFF4 KSFY Telemundo%2047 KXAS6 KVUE KXAS9 WAFF