Following up re: digital delivery

[Jeff Strachan]

Our station has DG Fastchannel, Extremereach, and Mijonet.

the biggest problem is with Mijo who will send an e-mail that a spot is ready and when we look for it, nope, not there. They will claim up and down that it was sent out to all stations yesterday and later discover that oops they missed us somehow.
Mijo also does not arrange the spots on the server by date they were downloaded.

At least with Extremereach I can go and force a download myself.
they were also obviously hungry to get as many stations on board when they were starting up. We are very small yet they took the time to give us all the support we needed to be using their service delivery. That impressed me.

DG is usually on top of any issues like this and often calls us to let us know that there was a problem in trying to upload a spot to us(usually a modem/ISP issue) wheras Mijo seems oblivious when that occurs.

We also have DG’s Pathfire for full length show downloads but we have not used it now for a year. This is a scheduled satellite download and they keep moving to different sat’s. I have one, fixed, dish to use for this and its a real pain to have to re-aim it twice a year because CBS or Fox decides to change sat feeds.
we get all our shows now from Global TV’s Canlink feeds or CTV’s Red,green,and blue national feeds.

[Todd Terry]

All I can say is that, at least here, digital delivery is still a big headache.

Over the last two weeks we’ve sent out boatloads of files to a number of television stations and cable systems. We’re hot-n-heavy in political season, and with election day less than a week away we’re churning out spots by the pound.

We’re not using DGF or any other third party, we’re doing individual FTP uploads to the various outlets.

I will say that here inside our building it’s working flawlessly. We’re making mpeg files that look good, and since we upgraded our internet connection we can usually upload a file (usually about 90MB) in the two-to-four minute neighborhood. It’s finally faster than making a dub.

BUT…

It’s at this point that the wheels fall off the bus. The standard MO is still to do the upload, send a confirmation email if requested, and follow the recipient’s FTP instructions exactly… then just sit back and wait for the phone to ring. Usually anywhere from three to five times….

“Did you do that upload yet?”
“What did you call it?”
“Did you put it where it was supposed to go?”
“Are you sure you used the right folder?”
“We can’t find it.”
“Sorry, again where did you put it?”

…and then finally the last phone call…

“Never mind. We found it. It was where it was supposed to be, I think the production or traffic people were just overlooking it.”

This happens here at least four out of five uploads. At minimum.

We’ve even had our ad agency clients tell us, “After you do the upload to such-and-such, you may get a few phone calls. They can never find spots.” It seems to be the accepted norm.

I think for the last few decades, when things were delivered on tape, there was at least some kind of protocol at each station for shepherding a tape through once it was delivered. Now with file delivery, it still seems to be a total crapshoot.

T2

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

[James Basili]

It’s been about a year since the last post on this thread. I’m curious if people feel the landscape has changed a lot since then. In the thread, people mentioned using:

DG
Extreme Reach
YouSendIt
Hula Media Exchange
Adstream
Digital Rapids
Dropbox

And others, not to mention a variety of FTP configurations.

Some I’ve heard of that weren’t mentioned are SpotGenie and EZSpot (from On The Spot Media).

That was a year ago. What’s going on today?

Or like Tim said in the first post, “Who’s using digital delivery? For what? To whom? Who have you used? What’d you think?”

[Jonathan Thomas]

Yes… I would like to hear more on prices. I know DG Systems Standard Definition is $25.
An if I can remember HD is $200. My client can’t afford that.

[Kent Vanderberg]

When shooting HD and framing for 16:9, must one always protect for TV to center-cut crop the sides of the frame on 4:3 TVs? Our intent was to use the entire width of the 16:9 image and then letterbox it for 4:3 distribution. But a broadcast engineer wandered onto the set and said the letterboxed version would appear both letterboxed and pillarboxed on 16:9 TVs. Our frame included text on a sign which cannot be cut off if center-cropping might occur.
I have a 4:3 TV at home. How is it that I see letterboxed 16:9 national spots all the time? I cannot believe that those spots are being letterboxed and pillarboxed on 16:9 TVs; they’re filling the 16:9 frame.
I would like to distribute the spots in full raster 16:9 for everyone that is viewing on 16:9 TVs, whether viewing the SD channels or HD channels. But I DON’T want those viewing 4:3 SD to have the image center-cropped. How do the national advertisers manage to have their spots letterboxed on my 4:3 TV while playing full screen 16:9 on newer Tvs? Please explain. Thank you.

Kent

Kent

[Alex Elkins]

Hi Kent,

The simple answer to all of your questions is: Do whatever the broadcaster requires.

[Kent Vanderberg] “When shooting HD and framing for 16:9, must one always protect for TV to center-cut crop the sides of the frame on 4:3 TVs?”

If the broadcaster says you should, then you should. Most broadcasters here in the UK allow 16:9 title safe these days, especially for programme content. For commercials it’s still 4:3 safe unfortunately.

[Kent Vanderberg] “But a broadcast engineer wandered onto the set and said the letterboxed version would appear both letterboxed and pillarboxed on 16:9 TVs.”

That’s nonsense. Broadcasters work one of three ways – they letterbox your material on 4×3 TVs or they centre crop. There’s also a happy medium between the two called 14:9, where you get a bit of letterboxing and a bit of cropping. Keeping things 14:9 safe is often all the broadcasters request in my experience.
Again, check with the stations you’ll be delivering to.

[Kent Vanderberg] “I would like to distribute the spots in full raster 16:9 for everyone that is viewing on 16:9 TVs, whether viewing the SD channels or HD channels. But I DON’T want those viewing 4:3 SD to have the image center-cropped.”

That’s not for you to decide unfortunately. Adhere to the broadcasters’ specs or they won’t air your content, it’s as simple as that. The fact is that some broadcasters will do a 4:3 centre cut, some will crop to 14:9 and others will letterbox. You don’t control that, but you can choose to shoot in a way that adheres to some or all of the potential broadcast standards. Check with the stations.

All the best
Alex

P.S. This is really a question more suited to the Digital Delivery forum.

Alex Elkins
Twitter: @postbluetv
http://www.postblue.tv
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