Ok Guys… it’s Deliverables time – have some ?’s.

[David Roth weiss]

[Kristoffer Newsom] “we had expected to do a film-out originally, and haven’t concerned ourselves greatly with keeping our images within broadcast safe ranges.”

Kristoffer,

Okay, so now the plans have changed, that doesn’t mean that all reason and responsibility should simply be cast aside. If I were you I would spend 99-minutes to QC the show and take notes regarding anything ouside of braodcast safe ranges and then go back and fix as needed.

David

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

[Mark Raudonis]

Kris,

If you’ve never dealt with this stuff before, you may just want to contract it all out to a qualified post house. For example, you didn’t even mention closed captioning, which is required by most buyers (certainly by ALL broadcasters).

You don’t comment on the audio specs. Most broadcasters want Dolby AC-3 encoding. International audio specs are always different than domestic, and require special treatment (fully filled M & E), unique track assignments etc.

If you’re delivering to a buyer, they will have pages and pages of tech specs for you to follow. I’d suggest you get ahold of that document and make your decisions based on what they require.

As for the rest of your plan, it sounds like you’re chasing your tail! Outputing SD, up converting, new titles in HD, this all sounds way out of whack! I don’t follow why you’re going up to HD, and then back down to create a master. You really have to follow a dual path here. Your timeline is SD. Use that to create your SD masters, both texted and textless. If you want to use the terranex to upconvert, go ahead, but that master now has NOTHING to do with your original SD source.

Finally, a friendly word of advice. You admit that you’re new to this part of the process. This is NOT simple stuff. You’re dealing with extremely specific tech specs that require a strong base of knowledge to get it right. The cost of rejected masters will quickly erase any saving that you’re trying to make by doing it yourself. If you don’t have HD capable scopes to monitor this process, you’re really treading on thin ice.

Good luck.

Mark

[Kristoffer Newsom]

David,

whoah, nobody’s throwing reason and responsibility out the window here… we’re just trying to find the most efficient effective and transparent way of mastering our film now that the plan has changed, without having to color correct it again – that’d take more time than we essentially have.

Are you suggesting I apply Broadcast Safe filtering to individual shots that exceed levels, after checking the film shot by shot and making notes? Or blanket my entire master with that filter and then QC it to ensure it worked properly? Or are you suggesting I manually adjust the levels of every shot exceeding broadcast safe ranges?

What are the specific ranges QC typically uses as their benchmarks? nothing to exceed 100%?

thanks for your help.

[Kristoffer Newsom]

Hi Mark,

Thanks for the advice… Getting ahold of the technical requirements document is definitely something I need to do, trouble is, I don’t know who our buyer will be yet, and I imagine they’ve all got slightly different requirements. And then there’s the question of how will I even GET that document? Is it usually something we receive along with all the rest of the paperwork involved?

The plan was to do a preliminary QC during the upres and if the HD intermediate was way out of range, we’d correct that in FCP. From what David has said, it’s best to start in broadcast safe before going to HD in the Teranex, but I’m pretty sure the Teranex outputs only broadcast safe video, which is why I planned on using it as an intermediate.

The plan with the upres was to create an HD master of the film so we had that as a optional deliverable. Not all buyers are requesting an HD master, but many are. We didn’t want to upconvert our current master with titles because the process is usually not kind to them, hence wanting to retitle in FCP after the fact. Furthermore, from the tests we’ve done before, the Teranex process helps smooth the colors in the film a bit (we’re very satisfied with the current look and visual quality of the film, but that’s like icing on the cake), and wanted to preserve that by doing a downconversion from the D5 master to digibeta to see if the quality of the end product was improved over the original direct to digibeta master. I know that’s not the simplest, but it’s what my producer wants.

Audio is stereo PZM, the ClosedCaptioning is all typed out and ready to be coded in. The trouble is, I don’t think there’s going to be budget to have a post house do all our deliverables (especially since we’ll have to recreate our titles in High Def in order to create an HD master, and that’ll require either time in their edit bay, or renting a D5 deck). I have a pretty solid technical base, even though I’ve never prepared a film deliverable before… I just need to know exactly what the QC is going to look at so I can make sure it’ll pass. If I have to rent scopes to do this or an edit bay to QC the film myself first, then I’ll do so. If anyone has any suggestions on houses in LA to QC a master, I’m all ears for that too, as well as the average costs for doing so… I’m just kinda flying blind until I have more information about what buyers want, which is partly why I posted here.

Thanks for your replies so far.

[David Roth weiss]

[Kristoffer Newsom] “Or are you suggesting I manually adjust the levels of every shot exceeding broadcast safe ranges”

Please don’t take offense at what I said, its just that common sense would suggest that essential steps should not be skipped just because plans have change and time is short.

I am indeed suggesting that the entire project be QC’d and every shot exceeding broadcast safe levels be adjusted individually, just as if the filmout had never been planned. It is the most efficient and best way of dealing with the issue — the Apple Broadcast Safe Filter simply does not replace the human touch.

The basics in NTSC land in the US are:

Black level = 7.5 IRE
White levels = 100 IRE

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

[Kristoffer Newsom]

Hi David, thanks for your help.

I’m not taking offense, it’s just that you’re telling me the exact thing I was afraid of hearing! X0

I’m now in a different city from my project, and starting a fulltime gig tomorrow morning so I’m really not going to be able to give it the human touch unless some major arrangements are made. The Director and I pretty much don’t trust the project to anyone but ourselves, so either he’d have to come down to LA with all the hard drives, or I’d have to cruise up there for a couple weeks. *sigh* I’m continually amazed that anyone ever makes an independent film.

[Andrew Kimery]

If I was me I’d hold off on doing all this until I had a buyer. Right now your are just guessing at what a buyer would want and I doubt you’ll be lucky enough to guess 100% correctly and not have to redo anything. As the saying goes, measure twice, cut once. Unfortunately you don’t know what your measurement needs to be until you get a buyer.

-A

[Kristoffer Newsom]

You mind if I quote you on that to my Producer? 😉

[Andrew Kimery]

[Kristoffer Newsom] “You mind if I quote you on that to my Producer? ;)”

Be my guest. But no need to quote back to me what your Producer says. 😉

-A

[David Roth weiss]

[Kristoffer Newsom] “you’re telling me the exact thing I was afraid of hearing!”

Trust me, I am used to hearing that, but I am just the voice of reality. It’s so very easy to become impatient at the end of a long project, but a big part of managing post is to resist the temptation to look for ways to cut corners as we draw close to the finish-line.

The bottom line is, we are in a business of precision and there’s no substitute and no free lunch, the final steps have simply got to be done, less all the time and effort put in until this point will have been for nothing.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.