I was flicking through the channels in the early hours of this morning, and stumbled upon the surprisingly poor technical quality of a show going out on Channel 4.
The first thought that occurred was that this looked like an encoding/ingest issue. Hardly a second passed without a dropped frame – surely a programme wouldn’t be packaged by the production company in this state?
Dropped frames are not uncommon in advertisements (though still inexcusable).
When we first published this short article, Twitter user @BarrioAllen contacted us to explain:
“This was actually an issue years ago when the show was being broadcast on Fox in America, This isn’t just an issue with C4’s broadcast.
“I think it’s more to do with the cameras they used at the time set up around the restaurant to film it all while a lot of people were around.”
On closer inspection, even the pieces to camera filmed outside the restaurant are experiencing the issue. So potentially a problem with the cameras used in the production or an encoding issue in editing/post-production. Difficult to say.
With so many dropped frames, I’m surprised this has been considered acceptable for transmission by major broadcasters.
Acknowledgements
PICTURED: Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares USA. COPYRIGHT: ITV Studios America.
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