Burn dvd for broadcast

[Bob Zelin]

Boy, you are lucky. I have never heard of any broadcaster – even a small station, being willing to take a DVD as a “master”.

bob Zelin

[Maurice Jansen]

DVD broadcast hmmm really.
since when are tractor’s allowed in formula 1

maybe they want a Media/data file on DVD ???
since it’s 15 Seconds this easily can be on DVD in a realbroadcast format.

ask for more info at the station.

greet
Maurice

[Mark Suszko]

Bob, Maurice, it is true. I just posted two spots a couple weeks ago and from a choice between betasp, DVCpro25, FTP, and DVD… They asked for it on a plain SD DVD.

My guess is that they either then ripped the DVD files to transfer them to their play-out server… or they played the DVD out as analog into a free-standing encoder for that play-out system. I know, I know: I should be telling this story by a campfire with a flashlight shining up from below my face, and somewhere I need to work in that they found a bloody hook…. but yes, it is true. And the real horror is, it is NOT uncommon in small markets.

My suggestion is always to call each station’s engineering department directly and ask what they can handle, and what they specifically prefer, because the people in the front offices are busy counting money, and do not speak technical jargon.

[Mark Suszko]

I forgot to add, maybe this is not as bad as sending analog tape; at least you don’t worry that the player machinery is out of spec as much as if they were using beta SP or one-inch or whatever. If you built the spot right with proper levels, I think it has a better chance at staying legal and correct playing out of the DVD player than the analog tape because it seems today’s techs at stations are very casual about TBC’s and frame synchs and those green tv’s with the stair-steppy lines on them.

Shipping the spot dub as data on a DVD, uncompressed, would look way better, and if starting in plain DV, you need all the help you can get, because you don’t know what kind of Kwality Gauntlet ™ it is going to go thru at each station. But the disk has to come labeled with clear instructions that it won’t play in a standard player, or they won’t know what to do with it.

[Jason Jenkins]

A few months ago, a small local cable system here (for which I have produced some ads) got bought out by Comcast. A gal from Comcast called me to say that they couldn’t find a particular Beta SP master, so could I dub one, please. She was aghast that I wanted $40 for a dub, but agreed to it. 15 minutes later she called back, “Never mind! We found a DVD, we’ll just use that.” Obviously, their first concerns are ‘cheap’ & ‘fast’. I thought about calling the client and telling them that Comcast was using a sub par master for their ad, but, I’m not a troublemaker, so I didn’t.

Jason Jenkins
Flowmotion Media
Video production… with style!

[Tyler Ries]

Just a bit of extra information, I know that you can adjust the settings of the compression used in DVD Studio Pro, but I am not really sure about iDVD. Taking the DV video and using the DVD Studio Pro compression will most likely yield higher quality results than just the standard compression settings in iDVD.

I would also recommend exporting from FCP using Compressor, then burning that with DVD Studio Pro. Compressor has some settings specifically for making DVD’s and the settings can be adjusted. In Compressor you can be sure that the conversion will be at the highest quality (and it doesnt sound like you will need to worry about going over on disc space).