SD still?

[Todd Terry]

We do mostly broadcast commercials… and virtually all of what we produced is delivered in SD. Like Walter, we go through boxes and boxes of good ‘ol BetaSP.

While all six of the broadcast stations in our market are HD, all of them simply pass along the networks’ HD signals, none of them originate any local HD programming nor can they accept commercials in HD. The last thing for broadcast that we delivered in HD was programming for the state’s Public Television Network.

Although we work primarily in our own market, we do occasionally create commercials that air regionally, nationally, or locally in other markets around the country. Interestingly enough we got a message from a station in a tiny tiny market in another state about two years ago saying, “Hey, we can take your commercials in HD now.” I was very surprised… as even the big stations in other large markets that we serve still typically ask for BetaSP delivery.

So far our HD work has been limited to things like corporate films, trade show presentations etc.

If we are shooting a commercial, for example, and I know that it’s an SD project and there’s not a snowball’s chance that I will ever need the footage again, I’ll shoot it in SD (i.e., someone on camera speaking about a specific event). It’s just simpler, and I can use the footage in any of our decks in any of our suites (two of the suites are still SD only, the other two HD). If I think the footage has “legs,” I’ll shoot it in HD.

Sometimes we’ll produce a commercial start-to-finish in HD (frankly, I do that when I think there’s potential for keeping an extra-good spot on our reel for a while). In those instances, I’ll plan ahead with our editor and decide on the exact “look” and framing before directing the shoot. If we decide we want a letterboxed SD version, then I don’t do anything very different. But sometimes we know we will want a full-frame SD version… in those instances I just have to be a bit more mindful of the left and right frame edges… and not include any overly-important elements that would be lost when we do the 4:3 centerpunch version for SD.

SD is alive and well here.

T2

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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Timothy J. allen]

The cost for us to upgrade to HD back in 2004 was pretty substantial – because we had to upgrade the fiber and switches between a few buildings – and because we needed vectorscopes to do it right.

In the past two years, it’s become much more affordable. From 2004 to 2007, about 95% of my productions were shot and edited in HD, but the last two dozen videos I’ve done this year were all SD. Shooting in SD didn’t really save us any money, but it did shave off some time since our interim product was going to folks who are still only set up to work in SD.

Like the others, I still prefer to acquire in HD. That doesn’t meant that I always do.

[Mark Alexander]

Thanks for the continued posts on this.

Mark

p.s. Tim can I come and work with you? You must have one the best job in media – at least as far as I can tell.

Mark

[Timothy J. allen]

The fact that you list playing guitar in your profile automatically ranks you up a few notches in my book, Mark. 😉