• Broadcasting

  DVD for Broadcast?

  Posted by Greg Gilpatrick on April 25, 2010 at 11:15 pm

  Hi,

  I just finished a music video that we mastered to 1080P D5, PAL HD D5, NTSC Digibeta, and NTSC Beta SP. I figured this would have covered the bases but I got two strange requests:

  • The American record label wants a DVD to service “local markets”
  • The European record label wants a DVD to distribute the video to broadcasters over there

  Unfortunately, they don’t understand the technical aspects at all, so I need to guess what to deliver. Do broadcasters in America use DVD-Video for playback? If so, is there a standard way to master this DVD – like it should it start playing immediately, does it need to be compressed to a certain datarate, etc?

  Same questions for Euro broadcasters. I assume it should be PAL – is there something else I need to do?

  Thanks

  Carly Smith replied 16 years ago 4 Members · 3 Replies
• 3 Replies

• 

  Grinner Hester

  April 26, 2010 at 1:00 am

  no, not even ntsc broadcasters use DVD unless they have no master.

  
• 

  Mark Suszko

  April 26, 2010 at 2:25 pm

  Well, they *may* accept a spot that’s on a DVD as DATA, not necessarily mpeg2 DVD. I have heard of that being done for delivery of spots versus tape, particularly where the spot is going directly into a server, in which case it only matters that the program data on the disk is correct. These days FTP technology is progrssing so fast that FTP is becoming the preferred way to go over shipping tapes or disks.

  The bottom line is that it often depends on the individual station, where the sales and traffic office often can override the Engineering and QC staff to say: “They are paying, we’ve already cashed their check, never mind your tech standards, just make it work somehow”.

  Now, if you are sending stations PSA’s where you hope they will play your spot out of the goodness of their (alleged) hearts, then yeah, forget it; a spot that isn’t paid for is very easy to reject for any minor technical infraction.
• 

  Carly Smith

  April 27, 2010 at 6:53 pm

  I’ve had requests for spots in QuickTime/H.264, Mpeg-2, MPEG-4, and plain vanilla .mov with the regular codec.

  It really does depend on the individual station, and some aren’t able to accept digital files through FTP and ask for a DVD so they can rip it into their system.

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