I was on set with an Alexa 35 recently and we encountered a very strange error where every time we pushed the record button (by triggering remotely AND by pushing the on-camera button) the ISO would suddenly jump to 1250 from 800 or jump from 800 to 1250. What is happening??
I’ve seen a lot of hype around ARRI cameras being used in a major live broadcast environment at the Eurovision Song Contest in Vienna, and honestly most of the show looked great. But during song number 11, Czechia, one of the camera feeds suddenly completely fell apart visually. It almost looked like the image switched from a highend cinema camera to a cheap temu surveillance camera feed with heavy flickering, strange motion rendering, and really harsh digital artifacts. I’m really curious where in the pipeline something like this could realistically happen in a production of that scale.
Could it have been sensor timing or shutter interaction with the stage LEDs, a genlock issue, RF transmission instability, frame sync errors, HDR processing, or something downstream in the broadcast chain? The image almost looked like it dropped into another processing mode entirely for a moment.
I also wonder whether the issue was visible on the onboard monitor of the camera itself or if it only appeared in the final broadcast feed. If someone has mobile phone footage from inside the arena during the Czechia performance in the final, especially footage showing the venue screens or even the camera rig itself, that could actually help narrow it down. If the flicker was visible in-camera or on the arena screens then the issue probably originated close to the camera system itself. If the arena image looked clean while only the broadcast feed looked broken, then the fault was probably introduced later in transmission, synchronization, conversion, or broadcast processing.
Would love to hear thoughts from people who work with highend live broadcast systems. Grabbed some frames.
https://youtu.be/wYEIv2qhYAI?t=4198
During 1:09:58
Edit: I found a clip for the audience
