Broadcasting best format

[Bouncing Account needs new email address]

Broadcasting WHERE and what kind of program?

You need to provide MUCH more information.

[Del Holford]

The best format for broadcast video currently is HD at 1080p downconverted to 1080i or 720p. This can be at 25 fps or 29.97 fps depending on the national standard where you reside. Output to D5 or HDCamSR and you have nearly uncompressed video for broadcast playback. Then transmission takes over and reduces bandwidth by extreme compression.

Del
fire*, smoke*, photoshopCS2
Charlotte Public Television

[Fedodedomedo]

in fact the mpeg2 video file is not for client use, its for broadcasting, we are using play box broadcasting system with black magic deckling, as i know we have only tow choices to properly broadcast by play box system, MPEG 2 and AVI DV. so you believe that mpeg 2 is not good for broad casting via our system. So if you please what video codec type do you recommend??

[Fedodedomedo]

we are using play box broadcasting system with black magic deckling( 720*576 25 fps pal system), as i know we have only tow choices to properly broadcast by play box system, MPEG 2 and AVI DV. So if you please what video codec type do you recommend??

[Andyw69]

What do you shoot and edit on? If its dvcam or dv the best quality will definately be a dv avi, does your broadcast go directly to air, if so a high quality mpeg2 should also be fine.

Andy

[Boyce Johnson]

We recently installed the same PlayBox system. Our old server was a Matco MA600 that played MPEG2s. We intend to use DV files with the new server for a number of reasons. First of all, we’ve found MPEG2 to be a huge pain in the butt. Some players and/or servers will only play files encoded with certain software or hardware, using certain parameters. Producing an MPEG2 that works in all applications has proven to be impossible. Also, the MPEG2 files aren’t particularily useful for anything other than playing out from the server. We edit with Final Cut Pro so we can’t just dump ’em back into a timeline.

Even though it’s lossy, DV is the better choice for us. We can quickly and easily dump it out of FCP. (Unless you have an older version of PlayBox, it should be able to play Quicktime .mov files as well as AVIs.) Those files also play back in other media players around the shop, and the files can be dropped into FCP timelines for editing or imported as assets into DVD Studio Pro for DVD authoring.

It depends on what editing software, DVD authoring software, and other media players/servers you have at your facility. We found it impossible to produce an MPEG2 file that would work everywhere we wanted it to. DV files are much more useful to us.

[Krissy]

I have been trying to figure out the best codec for b-roll. I want to put some b-roll on an FTP server to allow TV stations to pick it up and use for broadcast. The Video I have is Digital HD and I have heard that MPEG2 is the standard compression for HD but this thread seems to say something else. I need to be able to compress the video enough so it doesn

[Paulo Gordon]

This post is from 2007, so just wondering how much things have changed as far as codecs for broadcasting networks (HBO, Cinemax, Discovery, etc.). What do they want? I’m thinking XAVC HD 1920×1080, 4:2:2 10-bit color sampling, with 50Mbps, and at 24 or 30p ….Any thoughts? Thanks.

[Puhflower]

I´m wondering the same. I work for a small university tv station and they´re finally migrating to digital (I´m from Costa Rica, we still haven´t done the analog switch-off -I think no one knows when it is going to happen-) and they´re not sure of which format editors should use.

I have many different questions (and I hope someone could help me with them), for example:

Considering that it is a small station with little storage capacity, which would be a good format to save programs in HD? I mean, many people say ProRes (which brings the question of a similar format for those working on Windows), but it can take up a lot of a space in a storage dock, especially when those programs probably won´t air anymore and are saved for video library purposes only.

Some others say that if you don´t have ProRes you could use Avid´s DNxHD, I´ve been doing some tests and I think it works great, but the smallest target bit rate I have is 36 mbps 8 bit.

Which brings me to the next (and final) question: What about BitRates for Broadcast? I read once that most broadcasting stations won´t do ok with big bitrates. Is this right? Which is a good target number for HD broadcast?

Thanks

[Paulo Gordon]

I was told they want a minimum of 50Mbps.