Need to add 100/0 Color Bars for HD TV

[Tero Ahlfors]

I’ve never trusted Premiere scopes. The file shows up correct in Resolve and Smoke and hits the 100% targets.

[Matt Quinn]

OK… Fair enough.

Here is a grab of the bars off the ‘official’ DPP AS-11 exemplar which is buried on their website. It goes on to play the UK channel 4 ‘Tokyo’ ident… (https://www.digitalproductionpartnership.co.uk/as-11-v1-1-uk-dpp-example-files/)

So this IS a compliant file as broadcast by one of the DPP Partners.

Now, ironically enough I’m not convinced the ‘red flag’ bars wouldn’t be rejected as non-compliant – rumours abound of anything other than full raster bars being rejected with even a simple text ident over them being an issue.

But level and phase-wise they come in as correct; and do show up as such on Premiere.

And this Is the original question really; how do you set up compliant bars in one of the versions of Premiere that doesn’t have them? – Bars that actually ARE a suitable reference signal for the particular system in use?

[Craig Howard]

Little point I should make to clarify. My experience is in broadcast TV Commercials and my comments relate to this mainly.

Bars and Tone as a Reference..totally understood and have used it for many years..including post prod pipelines and edit suite set ups for monitors etc. We still use bars and tone from cameras and field sources as well.

Digital Delivery changed just our deliverable requirements

The Bars and tone generated by Premiere has always been accepted by the “broadcast gatekeepers” QC when we used it in analogue to set up machines for the inherent station dubbs from Master TAPE ie tape to tape.

Digital does not have the same set up. So what is the point of adding a perfect BARS and Tone reference to the head of a broadcast program that has been manipulated – CC, grade . The bars will always be legal and the program may not be.

Then…the broadcaster has to remove the content ahead of the program by a digital edit and dubb…that might incurr additional changes to chroma. luma etc.

This was a big issue when creating station dubbs from Master files through Final Cut Pro because the famous QT gamma bug issue and the gamma levels of the monitors used!

Keep in mind also that sound levels now have the added “Loudness Standard” which is not much to do with 1000 @XXdB setup tone at all.

In NZ…we deliver content via media servers. I upload online directly to the server and the content is QC;d.
They send a report back to me and then they deliver to the scheduled Broadcasters.

They ask for: a legal video file with a legal loudness audio stream contained, in a few Codec or Format choices ( options).

This file is 1st frame content to last frame content only (exactly) They also ask for separate ID board and the filenames a re a specific protocol of key number. They do not ask for BARS or Countdown leaders. (They used to though)

The QC is entirely on the Video and audio. Why would a perfect reference board help in this regard.

[Matt Quinn]

Possibly a point I should make myself is that I’ve spent over 35 years in the production industry having served the first five years as apprentice to a major broadcaster; I didn’t just fall into the trade. For 30 of those years I’ve owned my own production company and dozen of were spent lecturing (Part time, and by invite) in the subject. In my time I’ve had to originate teaching materials, design and deliver courses to SQA standards… As well as work in the real world…

There is almost-certainly little point in placing random bars from another system at the beginning of a file; which is the point I was trying to gently guide towards… Always better to let the penny drop rather than ping it off someone’s forehead. 🙂 But the presence of meaningful bars at the beginning of an incoming file or recording allows alignment to whatever system it is to be handled on. And the sample footage kindly supplied by Tero provides a good example of why…

Tero is convinced his signal is correct – and it is on his system! I’m not going to dispute that with the guy. But once it’s been passed along the chain (for whatever reason) my system says something else… And it’s my system I’ll be working with. Therefore I know that the first thing I’ll have to do with that footage before I start manipulating it is apply a little baseline processing to bring that incoming signal into line with the system I’ll be processing it on. Lineup makes that fast easy and accurate.

Suppose I take his footage without the alignment signal and ‘correct’ it shot by shot… Takes time (and money) for a start. And any changes I might make to the footage that followed would be a form of ‘summary justice’ that just pulls the signal into what I decide is ‘in line’; and my judgement in that respect could be wrong or at least produce a different outcome from that intended by the originator…

” So what is the point of adding a perfect BARS and Tone reference to the head of a broadcast program that has been manipulated – CC, grade . The bars will always be legal and the program may not be.”

If you left the originator’s Bars and Tone at the head of the programme, and then manipulated it this would be true… Because they provide a reference to the originator’s system, not the one you are manipulating the programme with. That’s NOT what you should be doing!

However, once I’ve ingested Tero’s file (for instance) and applied the baseline adjustments, then made any other corrections or changes required the line-up signals that head-up the manipulated output come from my system… They (should) reflect the ‘benchmarks’ I made my measurements against; because that’s the reference I’ve conformed to.

https://www.commercialapprovals.co.nz/documents/Commercial_Production_Standards.pdf

…The document from which I quoted earlier. It’s quite clear that CAB are requiring line up signals! So this ISN’T a UK/US thing by any means!

“In NZ…we deliver content via media servers. I upload online directly to the server and the content is QC;d.
They send a report back to me and then they deliver to the scheduled Broadcasters.

They ask for: a legal video file with a legal loudness audio stream contained, in a few Codec or Format choices ( options).

This file is 1st frame content to last frame content only (exactly) They also ask for separate ID board and the filenames a re a specific protocol of key number. They do not ask for BARS or Countdown leaders. (They used to though)

The QC is entirely on the Video and audio. Why would a perfect reference board help in this regard.”

What can I say? There are guys who will take money off you to check the tyre pressures in your car, fill up the washer bottle, check the oil and coolant and wipe your windscreen for you. – Or you can do the same thing yourself in 10 minutes on a Sunday morning…

There are third-parties that will provide this service here too… And ultimately a ‘final step’ for us is to ‘farm-out’ the final QC if an item’s going to air as it includes things like an PSE check. They’ll ultimately ‘wrap’ the file with the correct shim and ‘deliver it for us.

Now. Back in the days of tape these guys would have asked for lineup because those bars would either have been internal from the VTR or perhaps ‘house bars’ from the facility; in either case they usefully reflect the finishing system. – You’d actually have to go to fairly silly lengths to stripe a tape with ‘alien bars’, and it would probably get chucked back fairly quickly…

These days? Well, people bluff it! Often quite innocently! …Suppose in all innocence I just used Tero’s bars? And the next person who handles that output assumes those ARE the references from my system; but they’re not! – Meaningful bars would be useful; irrelevant ones a menace that would waste a lot of somebody’s time… I would imagine that many of these guys will be a little ‘weary’ of lineup headers that are just not in any way meaningful. Which is maybe why they’re asking just for content only…

Clearly what they’re going to do anyway is their QC, adjustments, then provide lineup (bars and tone) from their systems and that’s what they’ll wrap and send to the broadcaster…

Not sure that’s best or good practice though. It’s certainly not going to minimise the overhead (time is money!) or contribute to best quality output.

And would it be a good idea for something longer than an ad? Really I think not, personally…

Have a wade through the AS-11 DPP stuff that’s online; It’s a bit like knitting soup as it’s so badly presented. But it does make sense and us likely to ‘thought-lead’ future workflows.

Anyhoo… 🙂 04:10 here in Bonny Scotland! Time I was up the wooden hill!