Broadcast Ready HDV

[Cranky]

This is a BTS shot from season 6 (or is it 7?), you can see the Z7 (or is it Z5?)



BTW, I watched the Panama episode couple of days ago, looks every bit HD to me. There was one funny scene with curved airplane rotor blades, but otherwise no glaring rolling shutter artifacts.

[Cranky]

Food Porn, Season 5, episode 6, still using the V1u (notice the OEM WA adapter, it costs whopping $500, a matching hood is included):

[Cranky]

Not just a bare camera (Season 5, Episode 14):

[Cranky]

Rust belt: Zach, Alex and Todd shoot while Tony, Zamir and 2 men eat in Detroit.

[Giganova]

I don't understand what the point of posting pictures with certain camcorders is. I could post tons of pictures where they shot "Ice Road Truckers" (broadcasted in HD) with Canon HV30s or even smaller lipstick cameras -- and these pictures would not tell you anything about the show's format requirements.

Every show has a certain allowed percentage of footage in a certain format, that's why you see more expensive and less expensive camcorders during the shoot.

Also, if you get hired to do a show (or would take the time to read the white papers channels post on their web site), I guess you would know the answer. If you were not hired to do a show, what's the point of knowing given the speed technology progresses?

[Cranky]

Consider me a fan of the show.It is interesting to see different equipment they are using. As to linking to existing images, their BTS pages do not have unique URLs for every photo, they have bunch of photos published under one URL, hence linking to individual photos here.

[milksac]

notice the OEM WA adapter, it costs whopping $500

***begin rant***

I don't need an photo to notice that many of the cable shows are using cheap wide angle adapters on their cameras. Just watch any of these shows in HD and you'll see that everything that's not directly in the center of the frame is blurred. And of course the sharpness falls off dramatically at the edges. IMO, it's pathetic how far the bar has been lowered on quality standards. There was a time when the term "broadcast quality" actually meant that the video had to meet strict standards in order for the broadcaster to air the material.
Now it's all crap TV - anything goes.

***end rant***

[Cranky]

Milksac, did you notice blurring in this particular show? I haven't watched older episodes in HD, and Netflix has then in DVD quality only, but this particular WA lens cannot be that bad for its price. what about newer episodes they shot with the Z7? They look pretty good to me. Not exactly eye-popping HD, but good enough for bit-starved satellite channels.

[milksac]

No it wasn't on that particular show - I've seen it on other Food Network shows such as Ace of Cakes. And I've noticed it on some of the various Discovery channels. If you're watching a center cut downconvert then most of the edge blurring has been cropped out.

good enough

I think that's the heart of my gripe. Today's "good enough" consists of a lower quality product than yesterday's "broadcast quality". If you've seen Diners, Drive Ins and Dives you might have noticed that have about 3 or 4 music cuts that are used for everything. It doesn't matter if they are in New York, New Orleans or Topeka - they're all underscored to the same 3 or 4 cuts (every episode). From my point of view this is either lazy or cheap on the part of the production company. This particular gripe of mine is more about production values than it is about production quality. Either way the bar has been lowered.

[8string]

Just updating this old post, as I found some info and was looking to see if it was put up here already. PBS publishes a "Red Book" which clearly states their broadcast ready production values. One interesting thing here, was that they state that the production should 29.97. I find that sort of clarifies to me that I should be shooting 30 fps (US). Correct? Or am I misreading this?

Field and Frame Rate
2.4.1 is 59.94 fields per second (60 multiplied by 1000/1001). The frame rate for both standard definition (480i) and high definition (1080i) formats is 29.97 frames per second (30 multiplied by 1000/1001).

http://www.pbs.org/producers/TOS-1-2...ion-to-PBS.pdf