Spontaneity and Delay Considerations in Distributed TV Productions

Abstract

The study evaluates different aspects of delay as it is encountered in the project "Uni-TV" where university lectures are produced in studio quality over the Gigabit Testbed South/Berlin. The main focus of the project is the transmission of the camera signals from the auditoriums of the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and the Technical University of Munich to the studio at the Institute of Broadcasting Technology (IRT) in Munich where a director of the Bavarian Broadcasting Channel (BR) is on hand to edit the material online. As the video signals travel over the testbed network from the campus to the studio delay is introduced at different levels of the production chain. The overall delay consists of components of fixed length as well as components that can be tuned to minimal levels. Fixed delay is mainly based on the equipment used such as encoders and decoders, the transmission time of the signal and the reaction time of remote controlled cameras. Delay times are responsible for introducing severe inertia into the process as far as interactions between camera crews and the editing team are concerned. The study evaluates how this lack of spontaneity can be eliminated e.g. with the use of a new type of codec and equipment that is remote controlled over the network. The project "Uni-TV" has been producing lectures for broadcasting once a week since February 2000 and is currently testing the limits of the real-time capabilities of the equipment involved.