[Tim Ward]

$10k isn’t exactly a lot of money for that sort of thing (like $7k for an encoder). Plus, unless you have A TON of UPLOAD bandwidth (and the TV station would probably have to have more than just regular cable/DSL service), you won’t get good SD quality, and you can forget about HD. And that’s even if you’re encoding with AVC/H.264. And then you would still have to worry about whether you would actually maintain acceptable bandwidth between your location and the TV station. Instead, contact the cable company about sending the video through them. There are channels below CATV Channel 2 used for this purpose. Maybe they’d have a solution for HD as well. Also, you might check into microwave transmission to the TV station. It supports analog/digital/SD/HD. Doubt it’ll fit in your budget, but you could also check with the TV station if they have a microwave system you could use.

[Tim Ward]

[Kevin Reinicke] “No they didnt give me anymore info.

so AAC codec should be fine?? What you guys think abt this codec?”

I’d ask them again for detailed delivery specs. Don’t do AAC, do PCM (uncompressed). This is a MUSIC video where the AUDIO is the focus, so don’t slack on the audio at all. Give the station the best they can take (which 48kHz PCM should be fine).

[Tim Ward]

[Kevin Reinicke] “the channel wants me to send them a high quality quicktime file (no more informations) of it.”

If that’s all the information they’re giving you, then they obviously don’t care. 48kHz PCM is pretty standard for audio, but if they have delivery specifications–meaning they give specific requirements, and not just “a high quality quicktime file”–then go by those.

[Tim Ward]

[James Reid] “The HDMI specification requires HDMI monitors to support unencrypted inputs.”

See, the HI5 will work fine.

[Tim Ward]

[Christopher Tay] “at say you ?”

Completely agree. It’s like after you’ve just mixed that awesome soundtrack for a new program, and then playing it through your internal computer speaker to hear how it translates in lo-fi situations. But I still use the nice studio monitors for mixing. 🙂

[Tim Ward]

Digital or analog, it’s still not going to be a reliable display for accurate, critical production. That’s what professional displays are for. You wouldn’t use your analog living room CRT TV for professional production, even if it does have those nice Y’Pb’Pr inputs. You’d use a professional/broadcast monitor. It just depends on what kind of production you’re doing, and how accurate of an image you want to look at. It may suit you fine if you’re off-lining or doing DVD/BD stuff, but not really for broadcast on-lines.

[Tim Ward]

[Matt Larson] “I couldn’t find any info on Google for Acoustech, do you have a link or contact info? We currently use DG, and that seems to be the only game in town.

I was wrong with the 10Mb data rate. It is actually 18Mb. Still, had I known the CC process once it leaves here as an MPEG (upload to them, dumped to tape(!), captioned, recompressed) I would have suggested we find an alternative sooner.”

https://www.acoustechmusic.com/

The guy I deal with is Wayne Dykes. They’re an audio production house, but have a Final Cut Pro/Kona system. We’re kinda locked into using them for now, but I don’t have any complaints about them. I can’t testify to the integrity/quality of the digital distributions, since I haven’t been able to see one of our spots after a TV station gets it–that is, I don’t know if they got it from DG or Beta SP, nor the steps they went through to put it on air, but I haven’t seen anything bad.

[Tim Ward]

I’m interested to see what you find, and if I’m an anomaly or not, or I have a problem. Hopefully there aren’t any differences with how the Boxes obtain their audio (since the LH has analog outs). Do the RCA’s on both Boxes derive their signal from the same source?

[Tim Ward]

Matt-

Here are a couple of things I’ve done.

1. Send 10-bit Uncompressed SD QT’s to a company called Acoustech in Atlanta. They close-caption the spots and send them out through DG (I believe), and on Beta SP for stations that aren’t set up for DG.

2. For smaller distributions, send video for closed-captioning, then get a QT Animation .mov file back of the Line 21 CC, drop it on the highest layer in the sequence (D1 sequence, that is), crop it to where just Line 21 shows, and export it or edit-to-tape. No generation loss. Sweet.

10Mb/s is low IMHO–especially if it’s not the final stream. Now I’ve seen tons of 15Mb/s MPEG-2 (hardware-compressed) spots which look great–as long as it’s the first compression, and not re-compressed. If they’re editing that MPEG TS you send them, that’s leaving room for possible audio/video sync problems, AND they re-compress it. Yuck.

[Tim Ward]

[Bob Zelin] “what do you think – you are going to be able to take the RCA analog outputs of the Kona 3 and go into the analog XLR inputs of a Sony analog +4dBu VTR without amplification ?”

-I do not think that at all. As stated above, I have an LHe, not a Kona 3. I didn’t mention any connections to a VTR, and I didn’t mention a mixer, because I thought that was understood.

“RCA outputs do not have +4dB outputs – from anyone, for any reason, nor should anyone expect this.”

-I stated that I knew they should be -10dBV.

“Thats why EVERYONE (except you) owns a MIXER !!!!!!!!!”

-I use a Mackie 1402.

XLR analog outputs –> Leitch ASD-880 (FR684AV frame) DA –> Sony PVW-2800 + Tek 1760 scope + KRK V8 monitors (through mixer) + dub station

XLR AES output –> Logitek UltraVU meters

RCA analog outputs used to go to V8’s (through mixer)

Outputting a -20dBFS sine wave, the RCA outputs read -4dBV (not -10dBV), while the XLR analog outs read +4dBu and the XLR AES outs read -20dBFS (all measured with a Phonic PAA3 RTA). The RCA’s clip (as in, it comes out of the Kona that way), and the XLR’s don’t.

The way the monitors are connected now gives me no clipping, and doesn’t prevent me from doing anything, so I’m satisfied with it. I just posted my situation and findings to see if anyone else knew of, or experienced this.