[Ann Clark]

Jeff – yes, just ask them for their upload options. Someone at NBC may be either used to asking for a Beta, or figured that your school had ONLY old equipment. Most likely they were being lazy. Your facility does mostly instructional DVDs, then? This is your first broadcast shoot?

When I asked NBC for specs they sent me a 48-page PDF on the topic. Buried in there, they say that they go through DG Fastchannel. You have to sign up for DG through someone like Treehouse Media, and there’s a fee. So maybe handing them a drive is really the most expedient, if they’ll take it. 🙂

Of course, if you’re talking about a local NBC affiliate, they may offer you access to an FTP site that they run themselves. That’s always the easiest, fastest (and often free) option, IMO.

That said —

I vastly prefer uploads, too – but once in a while there’s some local broadcaster or cable system that is still very limited in its hardware, so we keep in touch with a guy with a Beta machine. 🙂 Also, no matter what network, they’ll pretty much always take a Beta SP tape. Old and reliable. We’ll see what the next 5 years brings – hopefully universal FTP.

It’s not that the nets haven’t come around to “accepting” the idea of digital. They have a burdensome obligation, if you really think about it, though. The real world – from the TV station to the home viewer – does not yet truly revolve around digital. National nets have cash for new equipment and training, but local stations across the country limp along with old equipment they can’t afford to upgrade – nor can they afford to hire new talent. A veritable explosion of new producers are trained only in digital, and a great many are coming out of school with very few clues about the low-tech real world they are about to enter. Honestly, acceptance has to go both directions.

It would be easier for everybody if there weren’t a.) old standards that are expensive to upgrade from, and b.) way too many new standards to choose from.

MacPro 2 x 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon 14GB memory – OSX10.6.8 FCP7

[Ann Clark]

Shawn, re-reading your note in the context of 30 yrs. experience, I see what you’re driving at. My comments about making dubs are actually meant for general consumption. ‘Pologies for not being more clear on that. 🙂

Still, I’d think that after 30 years, there’s nothing the nets could say that would surprise you.

When it comes to TV commercials, the local nets have been flamingly Beta SP across the board, with the occasional footnote of “accepting” HD format with a boatload of format restrictions. For national nets, the story is somewhat different, with both being accepted, but 4×3 still the norm. A few nets take only HD for spots – notably the sports nets are big on HD. Everybody seems to want their HD center-cut ready, not letter-boxed, which means a lot of planning, at least for creating spots.

Our company also places air time, and what I’ve seen from nearly 100% of the advertisers who present our media buyers with their commercials, nobody these days has caught on to how to format an ad for broadcast. So pardon my knee-jerk, soap-box proclamations. I’ve seen a lot of crap come through the door lately. Even simple stuff like keeping the logo in the text-safe zone is ignored — and the “pro” who did the spot gets furious at the suggestion.

I think the nets are more liberated when it comes to intaking complete shows and B-roll. But not too much. ;-o

MacPro 2 x 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon 14GB memory – OSX10.6.8 FCP7

[Ann Clark]

Shawn, I hate to burst your bubble.

Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised that they wanted Beta SP. I WOULD be surprised if they wanted a digital format, only.

Also, networks don’t return your media — so if you want to keep your $50 drive, roll the show onto a format that you don’t mind giving them. Beta SP might be the best bet, there. Whatever you do, never, never give anybody your original material. The other thing is that this Beta might cost you as much, or more than your $50 drive — always account for output in your production budget.

There’s an assumption among the community of all-digital production houses that have sprung up in the last few years that the nets would jump at the chance to have the prodco’s output in whatever glorious digital format they just happen to have. Trouble is, the “digital revolution” as brought chaos to technical standards. For this reason, Beta SP is still the dominant standard at just about every place I’ve sent material across the country.

Networks have many millions of dollars sunk into a system which was built on the Beta SP format, and they’re not inclined toward ripping the whole thing out.

So basically, they’re not concerned about your investment in a slick all-digital system. The nets know that it’s entirely possible to transfer your material to a compatible format. So, I’d suggest you find a good dub house. Dunno which UC you’re at, but Los Angeles has a ton of dub houses, so if you’re in the biz of sending out trucks to shoots, I’d strongly recommend you hook up with one of these places. It’ll be indispensable during this long, long digital transition. 🙂

That said, welcome to the big leagues. Hope this gig leads you to many more. 🙂

MacPro 2 x 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon 14GB memory – OSX10.6.8 FCP7

[Ann Clark]

To Everybody — if you recently started to get a ton of permissions errors after installing an Apple update, I’d love to hear from you.

To Curtis,

Thanks for your reply. Your opinions are appreciated.

1.) Yes, this is a crazy amount of permission problems. I’ve never seen this many before.

2.) I noticed on an Apple support thread that someone had similar problems, and I wanted to find out if anyone here on CC had noticed this too – and of course, if anyone felt it was related to the recent update installed from Apple.

Small confession here — I attempted to log into Apple support and for some reason my AppleID would not work, and their procedure for fixing the AppleID also did not work. SO… because I couldn’t write to someone in that forum and ask my question, here I am on good old CC.

3.) Yes, I have utilized the Activity Monitor on many occasions. Just not for this. Why? Because by the time I notice the slow-down, it’s not possible to even open the AM, much less watch it for a while to see what precisely is hogging the bandwidth. So, given that FCP7 and/or Motion 4 seem to be running at that moment, one can assume…

4.) I won’t argue whether “Repair Permissions” is properly named, or even useful. Having had Macs for many years, I know that in the past, one could run this program and actually see results – the errors would not reappear upon re-running “Verify.” Nowadays, it seems to do nothing but report the same problems over and over. File permissions are important for a UNIX type operating system, though; just seems that Apple has abandoned users yet again, here.

– A

MacPro 2 x 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon 14GB memory – OSX10.6.8 FCP7

[Ann Clark]

I understand that NBC uses DG Fastchannel (not a free FTP, but it’s possibly faster than mailing a tape).

If you get a physical tape, be sure you are getting the right format. Likely NBC is asking for Sony Digital Betacam, and not Beta SP. 🙂 Then you can FTP your production to the dub house and have them make your tape.

But it’s 100% certain that you should always ASK them what they want and then be very specific with your dub house.

MacPro 2 x 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon 14GB memory – OSX10.6.8 FCP7

[Ann Clark]

Dave,

Thanks for your inside scoop on this.

Question –

What does your station (and others you know of) do with an SD commercial? Is it run only on your SD channel, or is it pillar-boxed to run on HD as well?

Many of the nets we air on either seem still to prefer SD format, or they take both, but as you say, the text and imagery on the HD spot should be formatted for center-cut.

Your thoughts?

MacPro 2 x 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon 14GB memory – OSX10.6.8 FCP7

[Ann Clark]

Steven,

Could you be more specific? I’m having a problem with the audio of some footage where the interviewee seems to have been in a room with the AC on or a refrigerator on…

I think I only have just a few frames of the offending room sound.

How do I use the isolated sound to specify the sound to remove?

Much appreciated.

— A quick update — I clipped out the room sound fragment and looped it at the end of my clip, which gave me the sample for the offending sound. 🙂

Now, to get rid of the hollow echoing ambient room sound. The interviewee was shot against a wall, using only the built-in mic, so she’s too far away for a robust sound, and the hard wall makes the sound bounce all over.

Any Soundbooth filters for this type of problem?

MacPro 2 x 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon 14GB memory – OSX10.6.4 FCP7

[Ann Clark]

Steven,

Could you be more specific? I’m having a problem with the audio of some footage where the interviewee seems to have been in a room with the AC on or a refrigerator on…

I think I only have just a few frames of the offending room sound.

How do I use the isolated sound to specify the sound to remove?

Much appreciated.

MacPro 2 x 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon 14GB memory – OSX10.6.4 FCP7

[Ann Clark]

My only question would be this – We have Motion 4 running on one of our edit suites, but that machine cannot upgrade to Motion 5 (due to incompatible video card). If someone else wants to send us his Motion 5 project, can he do a “save as” into Motion 4, and send us that file instead? If so, isn’t it just a matter of “save as”??

In other words, does Motion 5 allow you to save-as or down-convert to Motion 4? The guy with the Motion 5 setup keeps saying that it doesn’t do that.

Your thoughts?

MacPro 2 x 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon 14GB memory – OSX10.6.4 FCP7

[Ann Clark]

Hugh,

Sorry, I don’t have a link to the info.

Here’s how I got it. I called the cable station to ask them if my files came in ok. He checked them while I waited (anxiously) on the phone. Perhaps because I was one of the few producers who cared enough about the output that I dared to ask his opinion, he emailed me an actual .setting file to add to my Compressor custom settings folder.

Seems like you are converting raw footage for editing, right? The Compressor setting the guy sent me is for output to Broadcast (specifically that particular cable affiliate), not necessarily for processing raw footage. May or may not be what you wanted.

You might try using the standard Apple ProRes 422 setting in Compressor, and see if it creates a better/gentler compression than MPEG Streamclip.

MacPro 2 x 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon 14GB memory – OSX10.6.4 FCP7