November wefcpug meet

an early warning to all: the by now traditional 1st Monday of November is the 5th, and it's reckoned we'll all be too busy waving sparklers around a bonfire to talk FCP. So we'll be meeting on the 6th November, at the usual BBC place, details to come next week.

Bêtes noires (or rouges)

With one broadcasting-crisis or another, I've found myself watching BBC News24 on the side monitor quite a lot over the last few days. There's a whizzy 30 second montage they run on the hour, just before the news bulletin starts up, presumably as a means for the producer/presenter teams to swap over or refill their coffees (or empty their bladders?).

So, what's wrong with these pictures, grabbed from their promo, illustrating the 24/7 electronic flow of news into the central hub? (Hint, why are satellite dishes shaped the way they are, as parabolic reflectors ).

O tempora, o mores, as we used to say.

It's not just the naming of cats

that can cause trouble in telly-land. In a development that, admittedly, you may well have missed, French breakfast TV presenter/producer William Leymergie has been suspended* for a fortnight by France2. As I read the AFP press release, it's all to do with a physical attack (allegedly attempted strangulation) on the theatre critic of the programme, Telematin, which left said critic in need of emergency first-aid. (I am treading carefully here). The french text is here .

I am rather gobsmacked by this news: Leymergie struck me as the most relaxed and good-humoured presenter I've seen on the TV. The nearest UK equivalent is for Terry Wogan to have thrown a punch at a sports reporter. Now there's an idea for BBC3.

*the French phrase is 'mis a pied' which Babelfish unhelpfully translates as putting at foot.

Out with the dots

and in with the coffee theme! Not so much art as an exercise in how much one can bend a blogger.com template. Better to come later on in the year.

Notes on the October meeting

If you missed it, episode 2 of Series 4 of wefcpug will not be available on repeat on a digital channel near you, but here are the headlines and links promised.

Thanks to our John and Stuart at Finalize media in Bristol, both for hosting the meeting and for giving us the Platinum tour of their facility

The new arrival cameras I skirted around in the 'Just what I really wanted, yet more cameras and codecs' are

• Sony PMW-EX1. Chunky hand-held format, 1/2" detectors, 'effectively' 1920x1080 pixel count, records onto SxSPRO- a memory card that plugs into the PCI/Express socket. Records in XDCAM 35Mbps and SD HDV modes. Sony site is here.
• Panasonic AGHPX500. Shoulder mounted 2/3" chips, DVCProHD record onto P2 cards. More variants formats than I could shake a stick at. Panny site here.

And the info on the AVC-Intra Codec is to be found here.

Also at wefcpug
Richard continued his exploration of features in Motion with the live demo he said he wouldn't do, using audio tracks to animate (and even colourise) elements within Motion. He's probably going to ask us questions about this next month.

We welcomed our new sponsor Noise Industries who provided this month's major lottery prize - and we'll be reporting on FxFactory next meeting.

And finally
Here's the YouTube clip that impressed so many. Strictly speaking, it's not editing, but it's prompted some of the best discussions about editing that I've had this month! My thanks to Quentin at DisplayLink for the link to Richard Wiseman