Mastering and Exporting Broadcast Ready

[Vince Becquiot]

They are refering to video levels and saturation, but they may also require more specific encoding, timing, timecode, format, etc. My recommendation would to obtain the full specs from them and then contact a post house if you are not familiar with these terms. For example “high resolutio” means nothing unless a resolution is specified.

As far as keeping the audio levels in range, you’ll have to look at the dynamics effect and make good use of the compressor. Again, a post house can probably handle this as well.

Vince

[Kim Huston]

Those are as specific as they said, including that it should be either 4:3 or 16:9.
I guess by high resolution they mean the highest you can give, but not 1080i, if that makes sense.

It’s for a contest for a subsidiary channel of nbc, which I don’t think supports 1080i. It’s a satellite channel. But given that it was for anywhere between amateur and professional filmmakers, I think when they say “high resolution” they mean, “don’t give us the crummy low res file we requested for internet streaming originally”. That being said, I can either give them a 1280 x 720, which is what it was shot in, or a 720 x 486 for tv.

My submission was shot in 24p, but will end up being 29.97 for the dvd.

[Blast1]

You might what to check want they want High Resolution and High Defination are two different things.

[Kim Huston]

I’m sending it tomorrow, so let’s say I’m going to export it at 720 x 486. What steps do I need to take from Premiere Pro to get it to adhere to those broadcast specs?

[Jeff Brown]

For one thing, check the audio specs again. It is probably peaking at -10 to -8 dBFS (minus DeciBels Full Scale). Digital audio units don’t go above zero, but analog does. You should be able to add a compressor/limiter effect to limit the peaks.

If you are not familiar with using waveform displays, the best thing would be to add a “broadcast limit” filter to the whole thing and hope for the best.

Check your field order. (should almost always be lower first for NTSC).
As you shot in 24p, check that you introduce pulldown correctly.
Check what codecs they accept. I’m guessing they want a DVD-ROM, not DVD-video. Native QuickTime should be OK, but confirm. Apple Yuv is universal, as is Photo-JPEG. P-JPG at about 95% quality will save a lot of space and still look quite good.

good luck with your submission.

-jeff

[Darren Edwards]

If you have Adobe Audition, a quick way to ready your audio
for TV and film is the following:

– Export your audio as one .WAV file.
– Import it into Audition
– Apply: Effects/Amplitude/Hard Limiting, and set a value
of -8db (or whatever) in the automatically pre-selected top
box ‘Limit Max Amplitude to…’
– Save as .WAV and reimport back into PPro (or during your
initial export keep the ‘add to project’ box clicked so it’ll
automatically update itself in your asset palette).

Whatever your audio app is, it’s a ‘limiter’ that you
need to be looking for.

Traditionally, -1.5db used to the norm limit for TV and -6db
for film, although this is quickly changing now that people
have replaced their rinky-dink portable TVs for 7.1 surround
mega-cinemas capable of sub-bass frequencies, etc. It’s
still a useful reference to work to though, and if they
limits are slightly loud, then the broadcaster is usually
capable of turning it down and conforming it for broadcast.

Whatever you do, though, don’t ever rely on PPro’s
‘Broadcast Safe’ filter as an all-in-solution.

Darren.

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