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MiniDV commercial delivery question…
So, I’m delivering a commercial to a station that accepts miniDV.
I will be delivering on miniDV.
They require the show to be shot and edited on “broadcast quality” equipment (specifying Betacam SP or Professional DV formats as a minimum). Of course the commercial was shot on miniDV with a DVX100 (what I consider a non-professional format) and therefore “not acceptable”. But the fact that they allow delivery on miniDV implies to me that, they wouldn’t even know the difference whether it was shot on miniDV or something else. This statement begs the question though, how does video compress to miniDV? Would something shot on say, digibeta exported to a miniDV tape in theory provide the same quality as something shot on miniDV and exported to miniDV?
So after those questions get answered. In your professional opinion (not taken as a fact) what are the chances this small cable channel even cares?
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5 Replies
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The smaller the station, the more likely it is that they don’t have the right gear or manpower to handle numerous format conversions. They are asking for a DV25 format like DVCPro25 or Sony’s version of the same thing, DVCam25, these decks play each competitor’s tape formats but can only record in their own format. They will also, with an adapter cartridge, play a Mini-DV which is also DV25.
The cameras they specified are broadcast-quality analog format cameras, but they use big sensors and big lenses, and generally are used in a context of pro lighting and sound gear as well, this is what the station was getting at, because home camcorders running in DV25 format have pitiful image gathering qualities by comparison. It’s not the codec in this case, but the camera that made the difference. The betacam, dubbed to a DV25 format tape, will look better than a master made from the consumer grade home camcorder in the same format.
Practically speaking, you really don’t know,or want to know, how the sausage is made at the station. Since play to air these days is about 99 percent done from a hard drive based server, your DV25 tape is going to be played into some kind of converter/compressor system, either an NLE workstation or more likely some video card connected to the server. It will take an analog output of the station’s DV deck, re-digitize that into probably mpeg2 I’m guessing. That mpeg file will then be played to air.
Theoretically, if YOU did that compression yourself, taking great pains to keep quality high, it would behoove the station to take your data DVD disk and import the stuff direct to their server.
However, everything I’ve ever heard about small market stations is that this is almost never done. Their workflow is set in stone so that any dummy can execute the work to a basic and uniform standard, and any process that’s not part of the daily approved workflow, even a superior process like importing your files from a data DVD or portable hard drive, well, they don’t like square mpegs in their round holes.
Master in highest quality, but resign yourself to your “baby” getting badly mauled on the path to the final destination.
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I’m in total agreement with Mark. The only thing I would add, is to check and see what other DV formats the accept. I was delivering on Mini-dv for a while, then found out they also could accept DVCAM. I purchased a 1000 deck and a bunch of tapes on E-bay, and for a small investment, the final product looked that much better.
Chuck
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Mark has a great quote here:
“Practically speaking, you really don’t know, or want to know, how the sausage is made at the station.”
Hopefully nobody who acquires and edits video at high quality and delivers spots for broadcast while not knowing that most of it ends up as MPEG2 is reading this.
This is the perfect reason to make sure you show your client your final deliverable in a proper monitoring situation before it goes to air. That way, when your client sees it on TV and says it doesn’t look right, you can say “hey, wasn’t me.”
One of my personal favorites is when I see a spot on a national network’s SD channel that is anamorphic.
Chad Brewer
Senior Broadcast Videotape Operator
TeleVersions, LLC -
[Chad Brewer] “One of my personal favorites is when I see a spot on a national network’s SD channel that is anamorphic.”
I am working as hard as I can to popularize this great blog post by Ross Daly [link]:
Today a co-worker and I were discussing the need for a word to describe a video that is simultaneously letterboxed and pillarboxed. I dislike that particular lapse in effort so much that the word “Litterboxed” seemed to be the best fit. So there. Run wild with it, internets.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
Litterboxed!
I love it. I will now use that term when describing the Letterboxed/Pillerboxed effect to my clients. I had been describing it as “Postage Stamped” but litterboxed is more descriptive when explaining to them just how crappy it will look.
TomE=MC2+/-2db
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