Following up re: digital delivery

[Bob Zelin]

I would LOVE to read a “Digital Delivery” forum. I would ask questions like “who is using FileZilla”, and other specific questions that are difficult to get answers to.

Yesterday, after reading this thread, I called up my cable company (my client) and asked a question I never asked them before – “how do people send you files for delivery – do you accept YouSendIt” – to which they replied “well, mainly, they ftp us the media” – to which I again asked “what does that mean, how do they do it, what is your requirement for delivery” –

After 20 questions (who is your sales account rep), I finally dug out of them that they use Telestream AdManager to accept and transcode digital delivery. It was like pulling teeth to get this simple info. I would LOVE to be able to ask questions like this (and more specifics) on a forum, because you all know that EVERYONE wants to do it, and everyone wants to spend zero money, so while Telestream, Digital Rapids, and others have expensive solutions, this forum would address the important questions (like every other Cow forum) – I don’t have much money, how can I do digital deliver (and how can I accept digital delivery).

I am all for this forum !

Bob Zelin

[Mark Grossardt]

Rich (or anyone else using DG for SD distribution), you might want to seriously consider Extreme Reach.

We’ve only just begun using ER (based in part because of a recommendation found on the COW). So far, I’ve been impressed. They were founded by the guys who started FastChannel, so I get the impression that ER is the new and improved version of DGFastChannel. They’re all software/cloud based, so nobody has to acquire proprietary gear to work with them. They take a high quality mpeg 2 or ProRes HQ master file and encode it specifically for each station’s playback server, so automated re-encoding by the stations shouldn’t be an issue. (Incidentally, the ProRes HQ file is a much more accurate representation of the spot sitting on my NLE timeline than the mpeg 2 format for either ER or DG). The list of stations using ER is large and growing, though not quite as ubiquitous as DG’s. If a station isn’t partnered with them yet, they can also dump the spot to Beta SP and have it delivered, much like DG. Since there isn’t any proprietary gear for a station to buy in order to partner with ER, it seems like stations are coming online with them pretty quickly.

So far we haven’t had any complaints about their customer service/billing/traffic departments. We’ve had a few hiccups with DG in that regard. Nothing that serious, but I know some others have had worse experiences with DG.

Another nice thing about ER is their online portal. You can view everything you’ve ever uploaded (in multiple formats for those married to a particular platform), enter traffic instructions, track uploads and deliveries, download QC reports if a spot is flagged, etc. You can even give clients limited access to the portal so that they can have an online library of their spots. And it’s very user friendly.

So, the comparisons between DG and ER are such that we’d migrate our workflow over to ER even if they charged the same as DG, but fortunately, they’re way cheaper than DG. Even for those guys who love good ol’ tape, one look at the ER rate card will make ’em think twice about ever sending out another Beta SP.

Lest I start to sound like an ER honk, I’m really hoping that ER’s HD delivery prices start coming down, as the price is still about 10x that of SD delivery. That’s enough to make me want to actually call up each station to request their HD formatting specs/FTP address info. And we all know how much fun that conversation can be …

I once had a guy tell me I could just email a flash file. Seriously.

Mark Grossardt
Video Editor
Clark Creative Group

[Todd Terry]

[Mark Grossardt] “you might want to seriously consider Extreme Reach.”

Sounds good, but I bet a lot of people are in the same boat as me… we don’t get to choose the vendor.

Our main clients are a dozen or so advertising agencies. In our case for clients who want digital delivery, it is the agencies who make that choice (usually DGF, it seems) and actually own the account and pay the bills. We are just stuck with using whomever they are using, and often inherit the technical problems that go along with whatever vendor they have selected.

Maybe someday it will all get better. Maybe.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Chris Blair]

In terms of what does FTP mean…we upload to dozens of network affiliates and regional cable systems here in the midwest, including markets like Louisville, Nashville, Indy, St. Louis, Paducah, Bowling Green, Lexington and several others.

We just use a professional level FTP software application (in our case CuteFTP Pro). We encode the spots to the specs of the particular station or cable system (usually MPEG2 or Quicktime H264 but also a few other formats/codecs). Then we log onto the station or cable systems FTP using FTP addresses, user names and passwords they provide. Then we just drag and drop the file to the specific directory they’ve given us (which can be navigated to automatically by the FTP software).

Now if all that sounds simple…IT’S NOT. Just like Todd Terry’s post…we end up going round and round with stations and cable systems about finding the files, even though they’re uploaded to the SAME place time after time. The BIG problem with most stations and cable systems is that the process does NOT involve people. The spots are uploaded to systems (typically a flavor of Telestream) that are setup to automatically grab you’re uploaded file and either place it onto their servers for air (or more typically) re-encode them to their specific playback format and move them onto the playback server.

A human being does NOT look at the file, does NOT check it for quality, or for that matter, check it for content. This is not a good way to do business as many of our spots end up with reversed fields (because Telestream’s software/hardware systems often have to make a guess about the field order if they re-encode and they have a 50/50 shot of getting it right), messed up colors or they’re squeezed or stretched incorrectly for HD playback.

But…as far as the FTP part of it, it’s as simple as using off-the-shelf FTP software and logging onto the station or cable company’s server and dragging and dropping the file. That’s really the easy part of all this. The encoding and quality control is the problme area because if you’re sending to multiple stations and cable systems, you might have to encode one spot into 4 or 5 different formats/codecs. Then…your encoded file will invariably get re-encoded by a machine and/or computer/software combo…not a person.

I will say account execs LOVE this process because they literally don’t have to do anything…except call and email you looking for their files even though they’ve been uploaded to the same directory on the same server for the 35th time this year.

Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com
Read our blog http://www.videomi.com/blog

[Todd Terry]

“I will say account execs LOVE this process because they literally don’t have to do anything…except call and email you looking for their files even though they’ve been uploaded to the same directory on the same server for the 35th time this year.

Absolutely. Considering Chris and I have had exactly the same experience over and over again (in completely different markets, five hours apart), would seem to be the norm in the business. That sure needs to change.

As does better quality control… we’ve also had fields reversed on numerous occasions. Once one of the techs we had to call (when they couldn’t find our spot… as usual) actually said, “Well it looks kind of jittery, but I guess it’s ok… found it, thanks!”

Sheesh.

You know, through the years I’ve often thought our once-pristine spots looked pretty crappy on cable, but still always thought “If only there was a way to make them look even worse.” I think we’ve found it.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Mark Suszko]

Sounds to me like an opportunity for the encoding hardware makers to promulgate a single standard, which would grow the market bigger and faster than this mish-mash of formats.

[Mike Cohen]

While we do not deliver anything for broadcast, we do deliver edits and final files to our clients for them to put on their websites and internal intranets.

“FTP” is like “Quicktime” – it means different things to different people.

A client may say “can you put it on your ftp site?”

I make sure the client(person) has an FTP client(software) BEFORE sending them an FTP address and login – inevitably they will paste the ftp address into Internet Explorer – without the ftp:// nothing happens, and even with ftp:// there is no guarantee FTP is allowed on their firewall.

FTP to many corporate folks means a web-based way to download files.

So manage expectations – make sure you and the recipient are talking apples and apples (the fruit, not the computer).

Thus, we have a web-based download system (we access via FTP for upload, downloads are via website) – our IT genius wrote a php file that automatically shows the contents of any folder on the server (within the httpdocs folder that is), even subfolders. If you want, you can add text information and a title to the php file in a text entry area, and we sometimes add a logo for our company or the client, just to remind them what they are looking at.

We also maintain an internal FTP server for uploads FROM clients (logos, PPT files, videos etc) and downloads to clients if they need a file that would be too big to download via a website. Also, since our FTP server is down the hall and our web server is in Arizona, it is faster for us to upload files to FTP vs web download location. But it depends upon the application, and most importantly, as stated above, the client’s ability to access and download files.

Seems like this will be an interesting forum.

Mike Cohen

Medical Education / Multimedia Producer

[Bob Zelin]

Mark writes –
Sounds to me like an opportunity for the encoding hardware makers to promulgate a single standard, which would grow the market bigger and faster than this mish-mash of formats.

Mark – there is a single standard. It’s called Telestream. Let me explain real life to you. People want to do this FOR FREE. They don’t want to buy Flip Factory. They don’t want to buy Episode. They want to do it FOR FREE. If I had the budget to get a Flip Factory, I would not be posting this crap on Creative Cow. The “big boys” all use Telestream – end of story. But the very nature of our wonderful business, is that everyone is looking for “the cheapest way I can do this, that will still work” – and if there is an MPEG2 encoder built into your software already – then “lets use it !”. Hense, the problems.

Anyway, where is the damn Digital Delivery forum – I will be on there every day.

bob Zelin

[Mark Underkofler]

I’ve got many of the same observations I’ve seen in this new forum. I do not have stellar luck with DG. Their “account executives” seem to be very junior and have a very limited knowledge of the process. I’ve submitted spots to DG only to have them rejected, then approved, then rejected again. It is as though someone looks away when a reject light comes on with an automatic “screening” device. It seems as though that “device” wakes up in a new world every day.

I dealt with the DG operations center in Tulsa that looked at rejected spots and said, “oh those are fine, I don’t know why they were rejected – they’re fine.”

Plus, unless I’m a moron (which is entirely possible) there is no software that lets you view the DG encode you’ve made in their strange 720 x 512 Video News Release format mpeg2. At least I haven’t found anything that will play it.

I had HD spots that I released in Pittsburgh and was appalled at the various formats these major station WERE accepting and WERE NOT accepting. There needs to be a standard. Period. It’s insane to have so many formats and frame sizes. TV’s have pretty much standardized on 1080p. Seems that the TV manufacturers decided to use a single standard. No can’t we?

PS. I’ve had luck with a company called Hula Media Exchange. They claim to have as large of base as DG (I can’t verify). But the guys there will bust their butts to get your spot to where it needs to go. Service. Something DG just doesn’t have. I’d probably send all my stuff to DG if they’d provide a sane encoder and not have a website traffic system that was obviously designed by people that never use it. It is counter-intuitive and difficult to use – requiring you to enter information countless times and build groups etc, etc.

Mark Underkofler
Vertigo Post Productions
Dallas Texas

[John Perez]

You should check out these guys https://www.adstream.com.

They specialise in (amongst other related things) storing and distributing TV content to broadcasters and the post industry, they can do this ALL round the world.

As well as their online based services have a turbo charged stand-alone file delivery system called nVerge which is reasonably priced, very quick and 110% secure.

I’ve used them in the past and was very impressed.