Tv station specs ... Help please...

S

S0ftfx

Active member
I might have some conferences I shot brodcasted on a university TV channel here in Montréal. They are asking for a dvcam tape, color bars at begining and a tone.

I dunno exacly how to provide them what they want. I usualy shoot for web videos and never had to do this. But I need to learn now because more and more of this work will be aired on TV.

How should I get the footage on a dvccam ? How do I generate a color bar at the begining of the tape ? From the camera ? ( dvx100b ) How do I give em the tone ? From the NLE ? ( premiere 2.0 ) How long should the tone last ? Is there anything else I should give them even if they dindt ask for it ? What would be the standard procedures ?

Thanks in advance ,

-Sfx
 
I'm not familiar with Premiere, but it should have Bars and Tone somewhere.
I usually run 30 secs of Bars & Tone and a 20 sec. slate and then a countdown, and have the program start at the 1min. mark.

A slate is just info: TRT: Total Run Time, Show name, Date, etc.

As far as DVCAM...
You need a DVCAM deck and tape.
If you don't have access to one,
Just tell them you can only do MiniDV.
Send it to them, they should be able to do it.

-BillP
 
S0ftfx said:
How should I get the footage on a dvccam ? How do I generate a color bar at the begining of the tape ? From the camera ? ( dvx100b ) How do I give em the tone ? From the NLE ? ( premiere 2.0 ) How long should the tone last ? Is there anything else I should give them even if they dindt ask for it ? What would be the standard procedures ?

Thanks in advance ,

-Sfx
Click to expand...

1. Rent a deck, maybe? What flavor of DVCPro?
2. Bars/tone should be in your NLE
3. Same as above.
4. Bars and tone for :60.
5. Make sure that your luma/chroma standards are within spec. Chroma is usually fine, except watch with graphics & color corrected material. Watch to make sure that your audio levels don't peak too far above tone too often/ make sure that your audio isn't too low in relation to your tone.

David Kuznicki
Production Manager, WGTE-TV30
 
Put Bars and tone (together) on the head of your tape for at least 30sec. a full minute never hurts. Most any NLE wil generate bars and tone for you to ad into yoru project or record ot the tape before hand.

Often a countdown to the start of your peice is nice. If you do one, make sure it's EXACTLY acurate. The sountdown normall has a "slate" which has all the important info about the program: The title and epidsode number, the exact length (duration), the date of production and the producer.

Always leave 2 full seconds of silent black before the actual start of your program (that means that the countdown only runs to "2" before the black)

then after your program always have some black, at least 10sec, I normlly leave a minute for goo measure before dropping back to bars for the rest of the tape.

- Mikko
 
Guys thanks for such quick answers , Ill look around in premiere and find the tone and color bar tools. I guess there must be a "slate" tool to fill out also ?

Is there something I should tweak in the camera menus for luma levels ? The black pedestal ? At 7.5 ? Am I correct ? Its at 0 now.

Ok so if everything is clear in my heasd now it goes like this :

bar and tone together 30 secs - Slate Info 10 secs - Accurate Countdown from 10sec to 2sec - Black video for 2 sec - Show starts - Show ends - Colorbar to fill the rest of the tape

Export the hole thing on Dvcpro ( upconverting ? Uprez ? ... The resolution wont change 720x480 ? )

-Sfx
 
Close Sfx..

The color bars are found by right clikign in your project window and selecting "create new" -> "bars and tone" and you'll get bars as a clip you can put on the front of yoru project. - the sameway that you generate black by creating black video or a solid color.

A "slate" has no specific tool, it's just a page of graphics made with the titler. Normally to save time the slate title is created over the countdown.

Normally I run the bars for 50 sec, and then the countdown +black to have te show start right on 1min.

Dont' forget to put black on the end of the show before the bars again!

Setup doesn't matter. There is no setup in Digital - Setup only matteres with analog, not an issue here.

Just print it out to DV tape and send them that. - DVCAM equipment all plays DV fine :)

- Mikko
 
Ok guys I called the TV station. Everything you told me here semms to be exacly what they want so I thank you again for the valuable information.

However, the lady told me they need the sound at -20db , she said its rather unusual but for various reasons, that is the way the work. So what does that mean for me ? What should I do to have the sound hover around -20db ? Bring down the sound on the adobe premiere mixer ? Put a limiter and compressor plugin set to -20db ? Im a bit confused ...


-sfx
 
-20dB? That's *really* quiet. If they can take DV/DVCAM they can adjust the levels. (Now it's [very unlikly, but] possible that they don't know how]

Audio signal levels are defined by the format.
DV uses a top limit of 0dB, with tone at -12dB - So this is what you should be using.
Pro Aduio gear [with XLR] (in the analog world) uses +4dB, and Consumer gear [with RCA] uses -10dB

I've never heard of a standard that uses -20dB .. I'll bet no one else is sending them stuff at -20dB.

I'd give them another call and find out what's up. Try to speak to someone in operations - the people in Traffic may not be sure of the right tech specks.

- Mikko
 
I know I konw , it is wierd , but that was the first thing the lady told me. It is unusual but thats the way it works for them... I have no technical explaination for this but now I need to generate a -20db tone.

-Sfx
 
Just inset tone and edit you peice normally.
Then when you export the copy for them, pull your master audio control down -8dB. This will drop the -12dB tone down to -20dB and all the other audio acordingly. :)

-Mikko
 
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