Structure of a Television Studio

Television studio is the place where video production activities take place. A television production studio is similar to any other video production studio. A professional television studio has three main rooms connected via intercom.

The physical structure of a television studio comprises of one or two studio floors, production control room and master control room. There are also some other divisions like library, green room and storage attached to it.

Television Studio or Studio Floor

A studio floor is the place where the television program is recorded. It is a huge closed room which can be altered according to the requirement of the program. The decoration or alteration made in a studio is called a set. Television production may include a number of Jibs, track and trolleys, large number of studio lights and lighting rigs. A studio should be large in size to meet the space requirements for all these devices. It is installed with several monitors for live preview of the recorded content. The floor manager controls the area management for all the equipment and the set used in a production, and the program producer controls all the technicians and artists through a public address system which will be installed in the studio. All the professional video cameras will be connected to the production control room via cables.

Production Control Room (PCR)

Production control room is a place where the composition of outgoing programme takes place. It is also called a studio control room or SCR. It is situated near to the studio floor, with a glass window placed between them for direct visual contact. The entire production happening in a studio floor is queued and recorded from the production control room. The cameras from the studio floor will be connected to the vision mixer in a production control room through coax cables. A vision mixer or video switcher is a device used to select between several different video sources. It is a large control panel commonly used in multiple camera production. In some cases it is used for compositing video sources together to create special effects. In newer versions of vision mixer a DVE or digital video effects is integrated to manipulate the video sources. In some productions the camera actions in the studio floor will be controlled by the operators in production control room. A PCR will be installed with a video monitor wall. It is a set of monitors which is used for program, preview, camera out, graphics and other video sources. The PCR also includes an audio mixing console for recording and mixing audio from the production, and a character generator or CG to generate on screen graphics and titles. The final out from the production control room will be transferred to the transmission control room.

Master Control Room

A master control room is different from the production control room. It controls the on air signals from a studio. Master control room is the final point before a signal is transmitted over-the-air for terrestrial television or satellite provider for broadcast, or sent on to a cable television operator. Television master control rooms include video monitors, satellite receivers, video servers and transmission equipment.

Other than these three divisions there are also other facilities like green room, library, etc.