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Video on computer looks great – Broadcast on TV looks horrible
I am a beginner video editor and I have made a video that was broadcast on satellite television. The video looks great on my computer and on my living room digital tv although once it was broadcast the quality took a big hit and the major issues was that the whites were completely blown out that you barely make the faces.
Of course I did my research and determined I would need to remain within broadcast standards so I used the Sony Vegas broadcast colors plugin and picked very conservative. Even with this option once the video was broadcast quality was low and whites were blown out. I looked at Sony video scopes and luminance was well below 100.
Since I was using my computer monitor for color correcting (yes I know very very bad) I got an ADS Pyro AV link and an external JVC 1300SU SMPTE-C broadcast monitor. When I look at the video with this monitor it looks almost just as good as it does on the computer.
What am I doing wrong?
I am shooting with a Canon 5D Mark II at HD quality then I drop it in into Sony Vegas as HD 1080, after I am finished editing I render as DVD Architect NTSC Widescreen and I burn the DVD I send the TV station with Sony DVD Architect.
I must be doing something very wrong, because this video was sent to 3 different TV stations and all got broadcast with blown out whites and general low quality.
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2 Replies
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Jason, the short answer is that very likely you’re not doing anything wrong.
I’ve mostly given up anymore trying to troubleshoot and QC the stuff I send to stations. When I’ve spotted things on air that looked like crap I’ve called the stations and get some twenty-year-old on the line who usually says, “Looks good to me here”, which usually just means he sees an image and hears a sound.
I’d say that if you’re checking your stuff on a CRT monitor and it looks good, and the files you’re giving stations are to their specs, I’m not sure what else to tell you. Some others here may have more specific and illuminating advice, but I’ve been creating TV spots for over twenty years and never had problems until about a year or two ago.
So much has changed and there are now so many variables that I don’t know if the target will ever stop moving enough to (consistently) hit the bullseye anymore.
–Kelly
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Thanks for the response Kelly. I understand what you mean about it being hard to determine what standards the TV station requires but since I sent my video to three different station with the same result it leads me to believe that I am doing something wrong.
If my video is within the broadcast colors range provided by Sony Vegas’s broadcast color “very conservative” option is there something else in my video that could be causing my white to get so blown on TV but be perfectly fine on the computer?
I really though that once I got the external broadcast crt monitor I would see that I am not really within broadcast color but everything looks great on my external monitor.
I feel like I am doing something very simple very wrong but can’t put my fingers on it.
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