Robot Rebellion brings back BBC cameramen
The modern TV news studio is a masterpiece of live video and CGI, as networks compete for the flashiest presentation. BBC News in London is no exception and embraced the future in 2013 to the point of replacing its live cameramen with robotic cameras. At first glance, this made sense; it was cheaper, and newsroom cameras are more likely to record a set range of very similar shots. A decade later, they are to be retired in a victory for humans, as society tires of the viral failure stream, leaving presenters scrambling to catch up.
A media story may seem thin for Hackaday readers, but there is food for thought for technical minds. It seems the cameras had a set of pre-programmed maneuvers that production crews could select for their various shots, and it was all too easy to activate the wrong one. There's also a suggestion that the age of the system might have something to do with it, but that's somewhat undermined by their example we've placed below from when cameras only had one year.
Since a modern TV studio is a tightly controlled space and sensing where the presenter is and whether or not they are on shot shouldn't have been out of reach in 2013, so we're curious why they didn't take that route. Maybe OpenCV for detecting a human, or just detecting audio levels on microphones before committing to motion might do the trick. Anyway, we welcome back cameramen even if we never see them, although we will miss the funny viral ones.
The modern TV news studio is a masterpiece of live video and CGI, as networks compete for the flashiest presentation. BBC News in London is no exception and embraced the future in 2013 to the point of replacing its live cameramen with robotic cameras. At first glance, this made sense; it was cheaper, and newsroom cameras are more likely to record a set range of very similar shots. A decade later, they are to be retired in a victory for humans, as society tires of the viral failure stream, leaving presenters scrambling to catch up.
A media story may seem thin for Hackaday readers, but there is food for thought for technical minds. It seems the cameras had a set of pre-programmed maneuvers that production crews could select for their various shots, and it was all too easy to activate the wrong one. There's also a suggestion that the age of the system might have something to do with it, but that's somewhat undermined by their example we've placed below from when cameras only had one year.
Since a modern TV studio is a tightly controlled space and sensing where the presenter is and whether or not they are on shot shouldn't have been out of reach in 2013, so we're curious why they didn't take that route. Maybe OpenCV for detecting a human, or just detecting audio levels on microphones before committing to motion might do the trick. Anyway, we welcome back cameramen even if we never see them, although we will miss the funny viral ones.
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