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Color bars?
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Look, I’m not arguing that this is a GOOD thing… I’m arguing it’s what the STATIONS are starting to demand.
Since I happen to have them on my desktop, here are the current KNSD (NBC San Diego) spot upload standards…
Acceptable file format for KNSD:
ü Advertiser name, Isci codes, length and HD for High Def or SD for Standard def.
ü No slates
ü No bars
ü Video file must have the exact length of the commercial
ü Video files must be in .MOVThis is a cut and paste DIRECTLY from their current spot standards page.
No slates and No bars are SPECIFIED.
Yes, they accept Digital Betacam as well. And as soon as that physical tape hits the back room, they rack it up and encode it to these SAME file standards before uploading it to Atlanta. Again, no slates, no bars. Why pay for the sat bandwidth costs for stuff like bars and academy leaders that will never see air? Makes NO sense.
Again, I’m not arguing that it’s the right way to do things. In my opinion it’s totally screwed. I’m arguing that this is where the industry as a whole is moving.
It’s driven by MONEY. It saves a TON of money to shut down local master controls and simply serve all the content from a single shop in NYC, Atlanta, or the one a couple of miles from me here in Scottsdale that serves multi-station content to the Pacific Northwest 24/7/365.Today, you’re DAMN LUCKY if anyone qualified beyond the level of an overnight teenage button pusher sees your spot before it gets broadcast in a whole lot of cases. I know that’s the reality because I’ve spent quite a bit of time on the phone with these back room kids on behalf of my clients trying to find out if there’s ANY way to avoid the rampant center-punching of HD feeds auto re-purposed for parallel SD channels. (There never is, btw – offer to send them a separate SD letterbox upload and they admit that nobody can even access the SD feed – it’s typically just an auto-pillerboxed incremental revenue enhancer in management’s eyes.)
Argue all you want about how crappy it is – heck I’ll join in – loudly.
But to argue it’s not a reality spreading like kudzu is, IMO, denial of the first order.Broadcast TV is under SIEGE with the economics of the internet age. And cutting expensive engineering labor is one of the quickest and easiest ways for station management to stem red ink.
Yes, there still is a decent bit of high end professional infa-structure serving of the ad agency industry and network prime time needs. But behind the scenes, I’m telling you that I’m seeing the day to day ‘non-top 10 major market” plumbing being functionally torn out across the industry.
Driven by the same forces that cause big companies to gobble up smaller ones. Consolidation drives profits. Simple as that.
And in the future, that’s likely the environment your work WILL be delivered within – regardless of how you produce it or care about it.
Sucks. But it’s reality in my recent experience.
Feel absolutely free to dismiss this thinking. It would be better for all of us if you’re right and I’m wrong.
For what it’s worth.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Conner
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We 3D guys have to deliver several different file formats and a left and right eye HD master with bars and tone to EVERY 3D broadcaster. Used to be SR, I guess we could use the deck if the were tape anymore. Bigger question is that do you guys ever calibrate your monitor from your edit system bars? Sure is easy and smart the way it was….just saying.
Don Wilson
donwilson.tv
AmericanaMediaInc.com
V3Dfilms.com
818.660.2915 studio
818.207.6924 cell
818.760.1828 fax -
Why not open FCP 7 (for those who have it), go to the bars and tone generator, and export a clip in the size and frame rate you need. Import that into FCP X. :30 seconds at ProRes wouldn’t take up that much space.
Lee Berger
http://www.leebergermedia.com -
If you have produced your spot to spec using the scopes in FCP to check your levels then the digital file should not be any different no matter where it goes unless it goes through an analog process. That analog process should be set to broadcast specs by the broadcaster so that your spot passes through unchanged.
When I worked with a lot of analog media that included bars and tone it was typical that the spot was not referenced to the bars and tone anyway. By this I mean that I set proc amp and audio levels to the bars and tone and then found that the spot that followed was out of spec and I had to re-set everything to the spot making the bars and tone worthless in the first place.
I quickly learned to set levels to the spot itself and bypass the bars and tone. This includes spots that came from many different sources including independent producers, broadcast stations, dub houses etc. This is my experience in over twenty years. It always seemed to me that very few people really knew how to calibrate their systems when making dubs.
My local broadcast stations do not want anything in the file but the spot. Cable varies but in the Northeast they want just the spot and will typically take SD and HD spots. You also never know what kind of processing your spots will go through once they reach the play-out facility and propagate through the system. All the bars and tone in the world can’t help you there.
NT
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“If you have produced your spot to spec using the scopes in FCP …”
No, I use real Tektronix scopes.
“…then the digital file should not be any different no matter where it goes…”
Incorrect. I did a series of tests for the International Teleproduction Society with the help of Tektronix and there was only one post-production system that had the input equal the output. A Quantel Harry. Every other VTR or disk system changed the images. Some changes were not obvious to the naked eye but changes were made by the process.This was because the Quantel kit stored the images uncompressed. If you shoot with a DSLR, edit in ProRes and output to H.264, you have changed the image at every step.
“When I worked with a lot of analog media that included bars and tone it was typical that the spot was not referenced to the bars and tone anyway. ”
Yes, there are untalented amateurs in every business. That doesn’t mean you should not follow industry practice.
“I quickly learned to set levels to the spot itself and bypass the bars and tone. ”
I would not want someone changing my levels, especially someone who had no idea why we set levels a certain way based on the emotion we were trying to show. And what standard would you be using to change my settings? Your opinion? Not valid. Can you imagine changing the levels in a motion picture because the overall levels were not high enough, in someone’s opinion, but that is where the director wants them?
“You also never know what kind of processing your spots will go through once they reach the play-out facility and propagate through the system.”
Actually, that’s the best reason to have bars and tone so you can recover from any accidental changes.
Best,
Park -
“Today, you’re DAMN LUCKY if anyone qualified beyond the level of an overnight teenage button pusher sees your spot before it gets broadcast in a whole lot of cases.”
Every broadcast outlet should review spots for adhering to their standards, both technical and legal. For example, you would not want to air a spot for a cancer cure or a salve for healing baldness, not to mention pornography or slander.
Over-the-air broadcast stations run the risk of losing their license if spots are not reviewed before air. It used to be standard practice.
Best,
Park -
[C. Park Seward] “No, I use real Tektronix scopes.”
As do I. The more recent FCP scopes are pretty accurate.
[C. Park Seward] “Incorrect. I did a series of tests for the International Teleproduction Society with the help of Tektronix and there was only one post-production system that had the input equal the output. A Quantel Harry. Every other VTR or disk system changed the images. Some changes were not obvious to the naked eye but changes were made by the process.This was because the Quantel kit stored the images uncompressed. If you shoot with a DSLR, edit in ProRes and output to H.264, you have changed the image at every step.”
I did not say anything about input to output. I said “if you produce your spot to spec”.
[C. Park Seward] “Yes, there are untalented amateurs in every business. That doesn’t mean you should not follow industry practice.”
You missed my point. I have seen this from any number of sources. I doubt that they are all “untalented amateurs”.
[C. Park Seward] “I would not want someone changing my levels, especially someone who had no idea why we set levels a certain way based on the emotion we were trying to show. And what standard would you be using to change my settings? Your opinion? Not valid. Can you imagine changing the levels in a motion picture because the overall levels were not high enough, in someone’s opinion, but that is where the director wants them?”
If I set my proc amp and levels to bars and tone and the following program material has crushed blacks, whites pushing 110 IRE, blown out chroma and audio pinned in the red would I be doing my job to leave it like that? I’m not talking about changing individual shots but the overall levels in order to bring them as close to spec as they should be. Typically there is not time to get another dub so that type of thing is going to get corrected.
My whole point is that bars and tone do not mean anything at all if the program was not produced to spec in the first place. Given that many places are no longer asking for slates, bars and tone it is even more incumbent on the producer to make sure they are doing a proper job of mastering.
NT
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And how do you know you are “producing to specs’ when you don’t know what’s going inside the machine?
[Nick Toth] “[C. Park Seward] “Incorrect. I did a series of tests for the International Teleproduction Society with the help of Tektronix and there was only one post-production system that had the input equal the output. A Quantel Harry. Every other VTR or disk system changed the images. Some changes were not obvious to the naked eye but changes were made by the process.This was because the Quantel kit stored the images uncompressed. If you shoot with a DSLR, edit in ProRes and output to H.264, you have changed the image at every step.”
I did not say anything about input to output. I said “if you produce your spot to spec”.”
Is not about input or out put, is about how each application manage the same video info.
Apple have been doing whatever they wanted inside QT/FC, allowing them self absolutely off-standard processes.
Process the same file in FC, Color and SHAKE, and be sure you will get three different things on exporting.
With FCPX things gets even less transparent.
rafael -
My point is – when you play back your final master it should be to spec. It doesn’t matter what steps it has gone through up to that point. Those are your decisions to make along the way. As the producer of a video program it is your responsibility to ensure that the final master meets the delivery specifications of its destination.
When I was editing in a linear one-inch suite and got footage on VHS tape that had to be included in the program it was my job to make sure that it was dubbed and edited into the final master properly so that, even though VHS tape is not “broadcast spec”, the overall final one-inch master was.
To get back to the original discussion – adding bars and tone to the front of a program does not perform any magic if the program that follows is not to spec in the first place.
NT
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[Nick Toth] “I did not say anything about input to output. I said “if you produce your spot to spec”.”
When you said, “…then the digital file should not be any different no matter where it goes…”, that means it came out of one machine and went into another. That is input to output.
[Nick Toth] “You missed my point. I have seen this from any number of sources. I doubt that they are all “untalented amateurs”.”
You missed my point. If they are not knowledgeble in their job function, that doesn’t mean you should not follow industry practices. If the bars and tone were set incorrectly by someone poorly trained, that does not mean you no longer have to include them.
[Nick Toth] “If I set my proc amp and levels to bars and tone and the following program material has crushed blacks, whites pushing 110 IRE, blown out chroma and audio pinned in the red would I be doing my job to leave it like that?”
Ah. So you didn’t see the movie “300”? Crushed blacks, blown out whites, excessive chroma levels, over enhancement. So you would change that. Really? You assume you know more than the director how the image is supposed to look?
What if I have a commercial airing at several different stations in a market? Will my spot look different because someone at each of the stations will make different adjustments to my material?
What if you have a two hour movie? Should it be previewed completely to make sure levels are set correctly? Or if the first scene is soft with high blacks and low highlights, do you make the correction on that scene or watch the entire movie to set “to spec”.
Please list that spec. SMPTE spec? I have been a SMPTE member since 1982 and don’t remember seeing a spec that tells me how I must set a level to create an image. It all goes back to “how white is white”?
When I do a college football game and one of the teams has bright white uniforms, am I not allowed to clip the whites? If the team is coming out of the tunnel and I want a silhouette look, am I not allowed to crush the blacks?
Show me “the spec” that says I can’t blow out my whites and crush my blacks.
Set to bars and leave it alone.
Best,
Park
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