r/broadcastengineering

Hive brain, I've got an odd lip-flap issue with EMC 3025 master control switchers that I can't figure out and I've been speaking with Evertz too and so far don't have a good idea what's causing it and hoping maybe someone has some ideas of what might be going on.

Basically two 3025's for station A & station B each fed from an EQT1616 in front of them for pgm and preset routing of multiple sources. When operating in a normal fashion of i.e. network programming, local PCR, or playout of content from our MCR PDR's everything is fine, audio is synchronized with the video. All audio is embedded through the switchers.

However, for a couple hours out of the day station B simulcasts station A. Switcher A is cascaded into Switcher B. When the SDI is cascaded from A -> B significant lip flap develops. Also the same is true vice-versa, we've had times where a newscast was running on station B and we cascaded back to station A for breaking news and the same issue develops on station A.

The only place we have timing adjustment is further down the air chain, before the ASI encoders we have Linear Acoustic Aero 20's for ALC but the only delay compensation is for the processing delay within the Aero 20 to keep the video in sync.

I am working on a SD homelab cable tv setup. I have a server running a custom fork of DizqueTV which creates multiple network streams from a Plex server. Currently, I am using raspberry pis with composite out to RF modulators that get combined to serve multiple CRT tvs around the hosue.

That severely limits the number of channels I can serve as I have to have a Pi for each channel. Wondering if anyone has any suggestions for PCI-e cards that can output 2 or more CVBS signals and a good way to source some.

I've done some searching around and have come across SoftLab FD322 and StreamLabs 4R1T, but haven't found any for sale anywhere. Also looked at SoftLab Forward servers as they used the FD322 as a base but came up empty there as well.

Any suggestions would be super helpful!

Two people climbed the Empire State Building antenna this week... wondering if there are still active VHF or UHF TV antennas at the top or have they all moved to One World Trade Center? They went past the FM master antenna and continued climbing to the very top. Crazy

https://preview.redd.it/19w988v3jsah1.png?width=616&format=png&auto=webp&s=4f5a31fb7ece003503b7d2bccd5d823f3a53d3b0

https://x.com/MarionsEsther/status/2072562706775687252/video/1

I’ll be attending college for live broadcasting (specifically inside the truck), I’m ambitious and the college I’m in allows you to test out of classes into higher level courses that usually provide more opportunities.

Anyone know what I should learn first?

What should I practice? (ex. Tracing a baseball with a camera)

What should I look into?

Anything and everything helps!

Hello everyone,

I hope this post doesn't violate any community guidelines, but I’m looking for some industry-specific guidance.

I recently came into possession of some specialized, high-end video equipment. While I do photography and video as a hobby, this gear is studio-grade stuff that is way beyond my hobby needs.

Equipment along the lines of Canon J35ex15B4 IASD lens and other high end lenses and cameras.

Are there specific industries (like professional production studios ) or specialized forums where I should look to connect with the right technical directors or engineers? If so who and where?

Any advice or direction would be greatly appreciated!

I've been working on a side project that involves handling user-uploaded videos, and I underestimated how quickly video infrastructure becomes its own engineering problem.

Initially, I figured I'd just store the videos and embed a player. But as the project grew, I found myself dealing with transcoding, adaptive streaming, thumbnails, multiple resolutions, upload reliability, playback across different devices, analytics, webhooks, CDN configuration, and more.

I started experimenting with FFmpeg and a few cloud services, but every feature seems to introduce another component to build and maintain. At some point, it feels like you're spending more time building a video platform than your actual product.

For those of you running apps in production—especially at startups or on small teams—when did you decide to stop managing video infrastructure yourself? Did you continue building in-house, or switch to a managed solution?

I'd love to hear what you've used, what scaled well, and any lessons or mistakes you'd recommend avoiding.

I'm looking for a 'problem solver' SDI switch, it need to be at least 3 inputs but the big thing is it need a GPI for remote control. I'm finding quite a few things with RS232 or Ethernet remote control but I need something for a button box.

I currently have an A/B switch but now they're asking for a 3rd input

Hi everyone,

I'm a young journalist and communication & media research student. I started in campus radio, then worked as an associate producer at a regional news channel. While working there, I became fascinated by the panel control room (PCR), so I spent a lot of time outside my shifts learning from the panel operators. After about six months, I moved into the PCR.

Recently, our station expanded into a national news channel, and I've been getting exposure to more professional broadcast workflows. We use a Blackmagic ATEM 2 M/E Production Studio 4K with the hardware panel (no ATEM Software Control during production), and we use vizRT for our graphical software.

My question is about SuperSource.

I've watched tutorials and understand what SuperSource does technically—a dedicated multi-box compositor that can create picture-in-picture layouts. What I can't seem to understand is the philosophy behind when and why experienced technical directors choose to use SuperSource instead of DVEs, upstream keys, or other methods.

I've also asked one of our senior panel operators (14 years of experience), but his explanation focused on how to operate it rather than why you'd choose it in a live production.

In a live newsroom environment, I rarely see anyone use SuperSource at all. Is that because it's genuinely of limited use in news, or because many productions simply stick to older workflows?

I'd really appreciate hearing from experienced TDs or broadcast engineers:

In what real-world situations do you actually reach for SuperSource?

What problems does it solve better than other methods?

What's the mindset or philosophy behind using it during a live broadcast?

I'm less interested in button presses and more interested in understanding the production workflow and decision-making.

Thanks!

Hi, I have an old 1/2" Sony vtr (AV-3620CE) that need to be used to recover some very important tapes. It has a EIAJ-8 connector an thought it would be good to create a cable with this standard on one side and a RCA or maybe a SCART connector on the other. Could it work? How should I wire it? Thanks!