VIDEO CHAIN

OF
A DOORDARSHAN STUDIO AND
OB VAN

Qimat Kumar
ASSTT. DIRECTOR
STI(T)
 OBJECTIVES OF DOORDARSHAN STUDIO

• 1) To originate programmes from studios

• 2) To knit various sources of programs i.e.,

camera output, OB out, M/W, VTR out, video
graphics and characters generator etc.

• 3) Processing / distribution of different sources.

• 4) Routing of programme for recording/

transmission via MSR and Micro Wave.
 Activities in a Television studio can be
divided into two major areas such as :

• 1) Action area (Studio)

• 2) Production control room (P.C.R.)

 Action area
• This place requires large space and
ceiling as compared to any other
technical area.
• Action in this area includes staging,
lighting, performance by artists, and
arrangement to pick up picture and
sound.
• Typical size of TV Studio is 20 x20x8.5
cubic meters
 REQUIRMENT OF TV STUDIO
• Very efficient air conditioning
• Uniform and even flooring for smooth
operation of cameras.
• Acoustic treatment
•Effective communication facilities
•Studio cameras (three to four) with
teleprompter
•Tie lines for video and audio from C/R
•Cyclorama and curtain
• Luminaires and suspension system
having grids.

• Audio and video monitoring facilities.

• Studio warning light and safety devices like

fire alarm system and fire fighting equipments.

• Digital clock display.

 Production control area

• Activities in this area are:-

1.Direction to the production crew by the
producer.
2.Timing a production/telecast.
3.Editing of different sources available at the
production desk.
• Monitoring of output/off air signal
 Hardware provided in this area include:

1. Monitoring facilities for all the input and output

sources(audio/video).
2. Remote control for video mixer, and special
effect (ADO) etc.

3. Communication facilities with technical areas and

studio floor.

4. Vision mixing and switching

5. Character Generator (CG)

6. Sync Pulse-Generator (SPG)
7. Camera Control Unit (CCU)
8. Light Control.
9. Audio mixing and control
10. Video Tape-Recorder
11. Electronic Still Storage System
12. Post Production Suites
 Electronics Patch Panel M
CAMERA &
1 CCU VDA

2 CCU VDA

3 CCU VDA

VCR (Pre View)

VDA V
I
D
E P/V
O
VCR MSR
VDA

S
W
MW
I
ADO T
C
H STAB AMPLIFIER
E
R
CG

OBS FS

OTHER
SPG 1 SOURCES

C/O

SPG 2
BLOCK DIAGRAM OF VIDEO CHAIN
• Operational requirement from the
technical crew may vary from
programme to programme. These
requirements for lighting, audio pick up
and special effects etc. depends upon
the programme requirement such as
establishing a period, time, formal or
informal situation.
Vision mixing and switchingUnlike films, television media
allows switching between different sources simultaneously at
the video switcher in Production control room operated by the
Vision Mixer on the direction of the program producer. The
producer directs the cameramen for proper shots on various
cameras through intercom and the vision mixer (also called
VM engineer) switches shots from the selected
camera/cameras with split second accuracy, in close
cooperation with the produce. The shots can be switched
from one video source to another video source,
superimposed, cross faded, faded in or faded out
electronically with actual switching being done during the
vertical intervals between the picture frames. Electronics
special effects are also used now days as a transition
between the two sources.
 In Video Switcher Mixing is possible

• If the sources are having H timing

accuracy
between 50 ns to 200 ns

• Burst phase for SC with an accuracy of

1.5 to 5 deg.
• VISION MIXER (or VIDEO SWITCHER)
• Though the video switching is done by the VM at the
remote panel, the electronics is located in CAR. The
vision mixer is typically a 10 x 6 or 20 x 10 cross bar
switcher selecting anyone of the 10 or 20 input
sources to 6 or 10 different output lines. The input
sources include: Camera 1, camera 2, camera 3,
VTR1, VTR2, Telecine 1, Telecine 2, Test signal etc.
Some of the sources that have their sync coincident
with the station sync are called synchronous, while
others having their own independent sync are called
non-synchronous.
• The vision mixer provides for the following
operational facilities for editing of TV programs:-
• (i) Take: Selection of any input source
or
• Cut: switching clearly from one source to
another.
• (ii) DISSOLVE: Fading out of one source of
video and fading in another source of video.
• (iii) SUPERPOSITION OF TWO SOURCES:
Keyed caption when selected inlay is
superimposed on the background picture.
• (iv) SPECIAL EFFECTS: A choice of a
number of wipe patterns for split screen or wipe
effects.
• The selected output can be monitored in
the corresponding pre-view monitor. All
the picture sources are available on the
monitors. The preview monitors can be
used for previewing the telecine, VTR;
test signals etc. with any desired special
effect, prior to its actual switching.
•
• The switcher also provides cue facilities to
switch camera tally lights as an indication to
the cameraman whether his camera is on
output of the switcher.
• Present day PCR’s have:
•
• * 24 input video special effects switchers
 (CD 680 or CD 682-SP)
 Digital video effects- type ADO-
2000/ADO-1000/ADO-100(Ampex)
 Character generators
 Telecine/DLS remote controls
• Adequate monitoring equipment
• Ampex Digital Optics (ADO-2000)
•
• ADO is a very useful aid to production. 30
preset effects can be recalled through the
keyboard. Various picture manipulations are
possible. The picture can be compressed,
size can be reduced and cropped into
another picture. The principle of operation is
that the input Video is converted in digital
form using A/D and then the digits are
manipulated to create the desired effects and
then it is converted back to analog form using
D/A.
•
• Ampex Digital Optics (ADO-2000)
•
• ADO is a very useful aid to production. 30
preset effects can be recalled through the
keyboard. Various picture manipulations are
possible. The picture can be compressed,
size can be reduced and cropped into
another picture. The principle of operation is
that the input Video is converted in digital
form using A/D and then the digits are
manipulated to create the desired effects and
then it is converted back to analog form using
D/A.
•
• CHARACTER GENERATOR
• Characters Generators are provide titles and
credit captions during production in Roman
script. It provides high resolution characters
different colors for colonizing characters,
background, edges etc. At present bilingual
and trilingual C.G are also being used by
Doordarshan.
•
• Character Generator is a microcomputer with
Texts along instructions when typed in at the
keyboard is stored on a floppy or a Hard disk.
Many pages of scripts can be stored on the
disk and recalled when needed, by typing the
adresses for the stored pages, to appear as
one of the video sources.
•
 Central apparatus room
• This is the nerve center for a television station.
Activities in this area include:
• 1 Distribution of stabilized power supply to different
technical areas with protection devices.
• 2. Sync pulse generation and distribution.
• 3 Distribution of sources to various destinations
• 4. Video processing and routing.
Electronics for camera chain, video switchers,
special effect generator, and test signal and pattern
generator.
• 6. Monitoring facilities
• 7. Patch panel for video and audio lines
• 8. Electronics for micro wave links
•
 Sync Pulse-Generator
• It is essential that all the video sources as input to
the switcher are in synchronism i.e., start and end
of each line or all the frames of video sources is
concurrent.

• SPG is normally duplicated for change over in case

of failure.
SPG provide the following outputs:
• -Line drive

• -Field drive

• -Mixed blanking

• -Mixed sync

• -colour subcarrier

• -A burst insertion pulse

• -PAL phase I-dent pulses

 GENLOCK (slaving)
• In production it is necessary to mix between
two sources which are not synchronized.

• This is possible when the local SPG has

been synchronized with the external source.

• To overcome this problem, SPG is fitted with

a GENLOCK facility.

• More than one sources can be synchronized

by digital Frame synchronizer.
• 1. Camera control unit (CCU)
• 2. Light control unit(LCU) and a dimmer room
• 3. Audio control room (ACR)
• 4. Video tape recording room(VTR)
• 5. Telecine(T/K) and film section
• 6. Digital library store(DLS)
• 7. Video graphic or paint box(PB)
• 8. Post production and editing suites for
outdoor works by the ENG? EFP section
(Electronics News gathering/Electronic field
production).
• Camera control unit
• The television cameras which include camera
head with its optical focusing lens, pan and tilt
head, video signal pre-amplifier view finder
and other associated electronic circuitry are
mounted on cameras trolleys and operate
inside the studios. The output of cameras is
preamplifier in the head and then connected
to the camera control unit (CCU) through long
multicore cable (35 to 40 crores).
•
• All the camera control voltages are fed from the CCU to the
camera head over the multicore camera cable. The view-finder
signal is also sent over the camera cable to the camera head
view-finder for helping the cameraman in proper focusing,
adjusting and composing the shots.
•
• The video signal so obtained is amplified, H.F. corrected,
equalized for cable delays, D.C. clamped, horizontal, and
vertical blanking pulses are added to it. The peak white level is
also clipped to avoid overloading of the following stages and
avoiding overmodulation in the transmitter. The composite sync
signals are then added and these video signals are fed to a
distribution amplifier, which normally gives multiple outputs for
monitoring etc.
• Light Control
• The scene to be televised must be well illuminated to produce a
clear and noise free picture. The lighting should also give the
depth, the correct contrast and artistic display of various shades
without multiple shadows.
•
• The lighting arrangements in a TV studio have to be very
elaborate. A large number of lights are used to meet the needs
of ‘key’, ‘fill’, and ‘back’ lights etc. Lights are classified as spot
and soft lights. These are suspended from motorized hoists and
telescopes. The up and down movement is remote controlled.
The switching on and off the lights at the required time and their
dimming is controlled from the light control panel inside a
lighting control room using SCR dimmer controls. These
remotely control various lights inside the studios
– Modern TV studios have a computer-controlled lighting
system the intensities of various lights can be adjusted
independently and memorized for reproduction. The status
indication of lights regarding their location and intensity is
available on a monitor/MIMIC display. During reproduction
of a particular sequence, the information from the memory
operates the respective light dimmers. Hand held control
boxes are also available for controlling light intensities inside
the studios which communicate via a control panel. Most of
the operational controls of the computerized light control
system can also be performed manually with the back –up
matrix and fadder controls.
• Sound mixing and control
• As a rule, it television, sound accompanies the picture. Several
microphones are generally required for production of complex
television programs besides other audio sources also called
marred sound from telecine, VTR, and audio tape/disc replays.
All these audio sources are connected to the sound control
console.
• The sounds from different sources are controlled and mixed in
accordance with the requirement of the program. Split second
accuracy is required for providing the correct audio source in
synchronization with the picture thus requiring lot of skill from
the engineer. Even the level of sound sometimes is varied in
accordance with the shot composition called prospective.
•
• Audio facilities
• An audio mixing console, with a number of
inputs, say about 32 inputs is provided in
major studio. This includes special facilities
such as equalization, PFL, phase reversal,
echo send/receive and Digital reverberation
units at some places Meltron console tape
recorders and EMI 938 disc reproducers
provide for playing back/creating audio
effects as independent sources (Unmarried)
to the switcher.
•
• Video Tape recorders
• VTR room is provided at each studio center.
It houses at least two console type 1”
videotape recorders (VTRs) and a few
Broadcast standard Videocassette recorders
(VCRs). In these recorders, sound and video
signals are recorded simultaneously on the
same tape.
•
• ACCESS TO ELECTRONIC STILL STORAGE
SYSTEM
• Some PCRs have access to the electronic still
storage system. One replay remote control of the
digital library system is mounted on the video
production control table at the PCR. Still pictures
stored in the library system can be recalled and used
in production by selecting them by their addresses
either from the local or from the remote control
pannel after recomposing if desired.
•
 Post production suites
• Most of the present day shootings are done on
locations using single camera. The actual production
is done in these suites. The job for a post production
suites is:-
• a. To knit program available on various sources.
• b. While doing editing with multiple sources, it
should be possible to have any kind of transition.
• c. Adding/Mixing sound tracks.
• d. Voice over facilities.
• e. Creating special effects.
•
 Coverage of Outside events

• Outside broadcasts(or OBs) provide an

important part of the television programs.

• Major events like sports and important

functions are covered with an O.B. van
which contains all the essential production
facilities.
 Video chain
• Output from the switcher goes to stabilizing amplifier
via PP and VDAs. Output from the stab. Is further
distributed to various destinations. It may be noted
that the use of VDAs helps to monitor the video
signal at different locations and the use of PP is very
helpful for emergency arrangements during
breakdowns and trouble shooting. A separate
monitoring bus is provided in CCU, LCU and END
CONTROL with sources as shown. END CONTROL
also has a remote for the adjustment of levels etc. in
the STAB AMP unit. Route for the other sources is
similar to this and can be understood from the block
schematic.
THANK YOU