The Orange Coconut blog

BBC’s Thatcher coverage highlights problems with non-digital archives
Don’t forget Orange Coconut can help with your film and video transfers as well as providing reconditioned tape stock.

Thanks to every-one who said “hello” and watched my presentation at BVE on Wednesday. Hopefully you’re all clued up on video codecs now? If not why not drop us an email and I’ll send you a copy of my presentation and a short paper all about current video codec theory, all for free! What excellent value. This is a link to the EBU R132 document I mentioned ‘Signal Quality in HDTV Production and Broadcast Services’. Enjoy!

Please come along and meet me! I’ll be at BVE this year catching up with the latest technology, products and working practices. I’ll also be giving a presentation in the Post Production Theatre on Wednesday 27th entitled – Understanding codec compatibility: Making the right choice for editing and delivery. Very snappy title eh?

Orange Coconut will be attending the BBC North Sustainable Production Trade Fair at Quay House, Media City, Salford. The fair starts at 12:00 on Wednesday 20th February. We will be bringing a selection of our evaluated tape stock and if you leave a contact address or business card with us we will enter you into our draw to win a box of 40 minute HDCam SR tapes worth £240. Please pop along to see us and have a chat about our process, we’d love to see you!

Well 2012 ended as a very busy year and 2013 is looking to be the same! We worked on Strictly Come Dancing and the 3D version of the Queen’s Christmas broadcast. The new year has started with a winter Barker for BBC HD, and a cookery pilot for Goggle Box Entertainment. Nick has started work on BBC’s Eggheads, but as the lead editor for Editworks Scotland. He has stood down as a director of Orange Coconut to enable him to take on this exciting role in Glasgow. We all wish him the best of success and look forward to hearing his tales of adventure over a pint.

We haven’t updated our blog recently due to a very busy work schedule.

We have been providing editing staff to The Jubilee, The 2012 Olympics, Goggle Box Entertainment and The Space.

As well as updating and expanding our ‘copy shop’ and editing facilities, which meant a trip to IBC was in order! We’ll post more on our findings there soon.

If you want to help with your programme or project drop us a note.

If you’re interested in a runners job try this link –
Runners Jobs

Aficionados of Top of the Pops 2 will be delighted to hear of its return with back-to-back shows for a fortnight starting on 21st May at 1830.

Whilst I’ve been putting these together, Nick is preparing for a busy summer with the Jubilee Concert and the Olympics…

Sounds of the 70s series 2 begins tonight at 10pm. A complimentary programme to The 70s, Get It On, on before it at 9pm. I’m going to be glued to both.

Sounds of the 70s was edited by me, Gary Hewson and I must add that we will be inflicting our musical tastes on you!

Do you have a moment? Why not read the item produced by Atomos on our use of their Samurai hard disk recorders.

Tonight (Friday 2nd March) is Disco night on BBC4. If you watch ‘Disco at the BBC’ you’ll see yet another Orange Coconut programme cut by Nick. If you want to see what Gary has been up to why not watch this Landing Party Video – Behind the Scenes made by our technology provider Atomos.

You may have noticed that the OC clock was broadcast on BBC1 last night. It wasn’t our fault, honest! Nick was working very hard and I think he may have mentioned Red Bee…..

For those students who were asking for a start in the film industry, try this…

Working Title Internship

Orange Coconut have had many more years in TV than we care to divulge and have a very soft spot for BBC Television Centre.

So we were over the moon to be able to share this with you – Cameraman the Movie.

Keep an eye out for a guest appearance from V.T. Tea….

Orange Coconut has been busy putting the finishing touches to a few BBC programmes.

We have been finishing Top of the Pops: The Story of 1977. A real nostalgia fest for us Punk loving children of the 70s. It transmits this Friday 6th Jan at 9pm on BBC Four.

Also we have completed the HD onlines for The Ones.

Starting this Friday with Lenny Henry at 8.30pm on BBC 1, so time to watch that and then turn over to BBC Four.

We have used these tiny HD cameras to great effect when filming concert footage. They are great for a bird’s eye view of the drummer.

Have a look at GoPro’s own videos if you don’t believe us! James May even sent some into space.

We have been so impressed with them that we have become an agent. We are offering a celebratory promotional price on all the HD2 camera kits (HD HERO2 Outdoor, Motorsports, & Surf Editions) which are rrp £299.99 for only £269.99.

Drop us a message if you’re interested.

A busy night for Orange Coconut.

If you saw Eastenders perform Queen on Children in Need last night you’d have seen some of our work, which was directed by Richard Valentine and edited by Nick.

Please donate to Children in Need.

Whilst all that was happening we were recording Landing Party live in concert. We’ll post a report on our workflow for that one as we used some new technology that we’re rather impressed with.

We understand that the Sony manufacturing plant is starting production of HDCAM SR stock, however all of the first batch is destined for North America and it is highly unlikely that supplies to Europe will be back to normal until February 2012.

We have a limited number of SR tapes including a small batch of new 33 minute tapes. We like most suppliers have no 64 minute tapes at the moment. You could however present your 60 minute programme in two parts. Or why not have your used SR tapes serviced by us for reuse? We can even archive (to file) material on the tapes freeing them up for reuse.

Contact Ben, Gary or Tony for more information.

Orange Coconut will be emptying the OC Executive Premises and recording Landing Party live in concert on Friday 18th November at the Elgiva, Chesham.

Tickets are on sale now. We will be the ones in black behind the cameras and first in the queue for the bar….

Chris Graver our good friend and a very talented dubbing mixer has launched his own company and a new website
Audio Works.

Chris does all our 5.1 audio mixing and the associated Dolby E encoding work.

What Chris doesn’t know about Dial Norm isn’t worth knowing!

Our blog has been a little quiet of late.

It’s because we have all been very busy, we have even survived a trip to Amsterdam for IBC, although we did come back with the ‘IBC Cold’.

Nick was helping John Barrowman with his Saturday nights and is currently editing an Eastenders Musical Extravaganza.

Tony has been unwell, but is back at the OC luxury premises in full health.

Ben has been very busy sorting supplies of tape stock and Gary has had an Epic Win, has scared himself with 3D Dinosaur Planet and is busy with some short films for the BBC HD channel.

Talking of the BBC’s HD Channel we would like to wish Danielle Nagler (ex-head of BBC HD and 3D) all the best with her new career.

The one last project we have on the go is installing our new copyshop, archiving and digitising station.

Why not ask us to quote for your work?

Orange Coconut have just finished the post production work on a short promotional film made for BBC HD.

It can be seen here:

Please note that all material is copyright of BBC.

You can only view this film by using this link, it cannot be found using a YouTube search.

Orange Coconut have been lucky enough to see some of the Wimbledon test footage and can only say it looks fantastic.

We are excited about the new 3D transmissions and have been won over by ’3D in a small box’.

Read more about this on the BBC website.

Orange Coconut were over the moon to be asked to provide editors and technical support for the BBC’s coverage of the Royal Wedding.

Have a quick peek at the best bits…

It’s important broadcast videotape is properly evaluated before reuse, and for high definition stock it should be legally enforceable!

Bulk erasing tapes, or laying black and burst on used tape, will not detect physical problems with tapes.

The only way to detect such problems is to use evaluators – Orange Coconut use RTI TapeCheck Pro Line 4100 and 5100 evaluators.

These machines remove loose oxide and dirt by cleaning and polishing the tape surface and use a laser to test the tape for physical defects and damage.

This enables Orange Coconut to remove tapes from the system that fail the tests. This ensures customers only receive tapes that have passed these stringent tests.

Without such evaluation, editors could be in a position where problems with a reused tape do not become apparent until near the end of a tape.

This would mean the edit would have to be repeated for the entire tape – something much more expensive than evaluating the tape before reuse.

The Orange Coconut process also tests cassette shells for mechanical robustness, since all tapes are rewound using broadcast standard decks as well as in the RTI evaluators.

The recent HDCAM SR tape shortage has increased the reuse of this stock.

The tolerances of high definition tapes are much tighter than for standard definition tape.

Since HDCAM SR uses the same width of tape as standard definition, technology has been pushed to its limits to accommodate the high definition signal, leading to the same issues that were applicable to D3 tapes, which, in their day, were also pushing the technology envelope.

This means that all elements in the editing system need to be as good as possible, from correctly lined up machines to the highest possible quality tape.

Using Oranges Coconut for tape evaluation also means that all fully evaluated videotapes are guaranteed to perform without failure on their first pass through video recording equipment.

In the unlikely event of any videotape supplied by Orange Coconut failing to meet this performance standard, it will be replaced like-for-like free of any charge, subject only to the customer’s commitment to return the defective tape for technical assessment.

Gary, is a big fan of Formula 1 racing on the BBC, he has cut a Formula 1 HD tease (above) and we love the picture quality of the coverage broadcast on BBC1 HD.

But did you know that Orange Coconut provides evaluated HD stock to BBC Sport for the HD recordings?

Sony have stopped the manufacture of HD broadcast video cassettes due to the recent tsunami in Japan.

This has led to a worldwide shortage of HDCAM SR tapes, which are produced at Sony’s Sendai Technology Center – the factory is expected to be closed for months to come due to damage caused by the tsunami.

Orange Coconut currently have a limited stock of recycled HDCAM SR tape and only a few new tapes.

The Orange Coconut low carbon videotape recycling service allows customers’ own HDCAM SR tapes to be evaluated for re-use.

During this period of HDCAM SR tape shortage, Orange Coconut will be donating a percentage of the cost of each HD tape sent in for evaluation to the Japan Tsunami Appeal; please consider donating to this fund administered by the Red Cross.