How can I easily/confidently ensure Broadcast Safe video

[Sean Oneil]

What exactly is wrong with Final Cut’s filter? I’m not saying there’s nothing wrong with it, I just want to know what it is.

[Shane Ross]

Quick and easy solution to ensure broadcast safe? Sorry, there really isn’t any.

Color correcting and prepping a show for broadcast is a highly technical skill. So much so that there is an ENTIRELY separate class of editors who specialize in this process…called “Online Editors” Not only do they assemble the shows at full resolution, but they capture the material at the appropriate levels (bringing it in as legal levels) when possible…then color correct shot by shot when needed to bring the show into “legal” limits.

Just dropping a filter on a neste sequence then calling it a day is an example of what NOT to do.

Open your workbench…go shot my shot and use the 3-way color corrector to bring each shot into legal limits. There is even a preset FCP layout for this purpose. And turn on the setting (gads I forget what it is called) that gives you a green check mark when things are legal, and a big red exclaimations point when you are not.

Quick and easy are terms that don’t really belong in editing for Broadcast Television.

[Uwe Klimmeck]

I usually rent this piece.
100 Euros a day here in Munich. Retail about 6500 US $.
Just plug it in and you’re always safe – especially from gamut errors.
https://www.videotek.com/products/DL810.htm

Greetings
Uwe

[Graeme Nattress]

Final Touch does seem to include features for broadcast limiting.

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP

[Michael Alberts]

Uwe,
I know of a few FCP post houses here in Los Angeles using that box also. We also use it on a “as needed” basis. In fact I’ve been renting it so much that I’ll be buying one for the facility next week. We received a quote of $4500. This is a SD only box. I took a look at their HD-SDI box at NAB this week. That mode, the HD-850 costs $9000. A bit too steep for me. Besides, the HD version only does HD, not SD.

Michael Alberts
Ambidextrous Productions, Inc.

[David Gaudio]

Here’s a related question: what about the SDI proc amp listed on the Hotronics.com site – a few thousand dollars cheaper than the SDI Legalizer from Leitch and also promises to keep chroma and luma levels within legal limits in real time?

For the amount of money that the Leitch SDI Legalizer is going for (around $4500), I assume it offers something more…?

Anyone with an answer please respond – I’m working on a series and will be outputting it soon. Would like to know what my options are!

Thanks,

David

[Cameron Campbell]

Indeed, doing onlines takes a great deal of understanding, knowledge, and patience. I am in that class of being an “Online Editor” and have been doing broadcast for years on a Flame, Inferno, Smoke, Avid Composers, DS’s, even tape rooms…but I am fairly new to FCP (2 years). In those past couple years I have had problems with very minor gamma problems on output. Even with the broadcast filter in FCP applied there have been single frames with illegal colors that inevitably gets kicked back from the network (like I said earlier, if an image is only a half of one percent out of gamma on any pixel of any frame it will come back). Under the most conservative setting in the Broadcast filter, I still received 20 error frames per hour.

One response was to use FCP’s range check. The only problem with that is it is displayed only when you are paused on a frame. That means you have to go frame by frame to check an edit. There are also hundreds of scenes per program making scene-to-scene color correction too cost/time prohibitive.

We are very careful checking levels going in and out, and we have a TBC that will do error logging as well. But when faced with the unbelievably high price of D5 output costs, extra confidence in a perfect, rock solid broadcast signal is what I am looking for.

I did some research and found that Videotek has a product, the DL-850HD, that does legalizing for both HD/SD/RGB. Has anyone used this product yet?

It would also be great for FCP to include an error logging system of it’s own.

I hope that answers some of the questions, and I would love to hear more feedback/suggestions.

Thanks in advance,

Cameron Campbell
LUSTRE Communications Inc.
1505 Western Ave, Suite 601
Seattle, Washington 98101
cameron@lustrecommunications.com
Office: (206)622-0475
Cell: (206)953-2194

“Computers are worthless,
they only give answers.”
-Picasso

[Michael Alberts]

I’ve been in communication with Tektronix to port their WFMNLE plug-in over to FCP. It’s currently available for the AVX Avid architecture at the moment. Some reps from the company flew down to Los Angeles to meet with me and a few other users that I put together. It was a very promising meeting. I also ran into one of the Tektronix engineers, who was at the meeting, at the Tektronix NAB booth. He was showing the WFMNLE app at the booth. He told me that only two people HADN”T asked if the plug in ran on FCP. I hope they got the hint. It’s a great plug in. You can check it out on their site.

https://tektronix.com/Measurement/cgi-bin/framed.pl?Document=/Measurement/video_audio/wfmnle/index.html&FrameSet=television

You can read the spec on the product. It’s a measurement tool, not a legalizer. But it’s a damn good measurement tool. It would be good if people politely emailed Tektronix a request for this plug in to be ported over to FCP. I’m sure there is some politics and economics involved in developing this app. Let them know you would be willing to support it.

Michael Alberts
Ambidextrous Productions, Inc.