Discovery Channel Delivery Specs

LuckyStudio 13

LuckyStudio 13

The Tapeless One
A good guide for you aspiring Discovery Channel shooters.
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Non-HD Footage Limitations:
Maximum of 25% non-HD material is allowed in production, with no more than 1 minute of contiguous non-HD footage in any sequence.

Use of HDV Footage:
1080 line HDV footage may be used in HD programs with the following restrictions:

 Program may not contain any more than 15% HDV footage.
 The combined percentage of HDV and SD upconverted footage is not to exceed 30%.
 Producers wishing to use HDV must submit an approved post production path outlining their handling of the footage in the editing process.

Video Footage:
Video Footage should be acquired using any of the following formats, taking in the non-HD footage and HDV footage limitations above:

High Definition Formats Acceptable Up conversion Formats

( Film Formats )
70mm Film
35mm Film


( Acceptable Up conversion Formats )
Sony Digital Betacam
Sony Betacam SP
Panasonic DVC PRO 50 (tape)
Super 16mm Film (non-HD Guidelines)
Sony MPEG IMX 50 (tape)
Sony MPEG IMX (XDCAM)


( High Definition Formats )

Sony HDCAM
Sony HDCAM SR
Sony XDCAM HD (35 mbps only)
Panasonic DVC PRO 100mb (HD)
Panasonic HD-D5 (Film Transfers)
HDV at 1080i (with restrictions)
HVX-200 DVC PRO HD 100 (with HDV restrictions)


( 720P Camera Masters )

720P material is acceptable, only with a pre-approved post production path and budget. Delivered Master must be at 1080 resolution.

Footage may not be converted from 1080i to 720P for post and converted back to 1080i for
mastering. We cannot allow multiple resolution changes on material. If you have an editorial need to use mixed resolutions, please discuss this with us.

Film Footage Transfers:

 35mm Material – High definition datacine transfers of this material produce perfectly acceptable results.

 Super16mm Material – High definition datacine transfers of this material do not currently produce results that
are acceptable for usage in Discovery HD programs. Usage of this material is limited to non-HD footage guidelines.

 DVCam and Mini DV – High definition up conversions from footage acquired using these formats do not produce results that are acceptable for usage in Discovery HD programs (DVCPro HD is acceptable as noted above).

Visual Effects and Footage Treatments:
Any visual effects that seem to add grain or noise to acquired material require pre-approval by Discovery’s Network Presentations Department (sample materials will need to be provided). As with film and lower end digital video formats, any significant video noise or film grain will potentially create complications during distribution.

VIEWER ADVISORIES

Disclaimers will count as program content, and will be edited onto the broadcast master by the production company.

Disclaimer Placement:
Disclaimers must be placed at the beginning of the program and at the top of each program segment.

Discovery’s Executive Producer assigned to the program must approve wording of the disclaimer.

All Disclaimers shall use the following Format:
Black background, white text
No Discovery logo, no music
Must be voiced (preferably by the narrator)
Minimum: 06 seconds in length

The following are examples of advisories pertaining to sexually explicit material, coarse or offensive language intended for adult audiences, or other subject matter.

They are provided as a guide to assist broadcasters in fulfilling their obligations to the CAB Code of Ethics, to ensure their viewers are provided with adequate information in making their program selection.

"The following program contains scenes of coarse language and is not suitable for younger children."

"The following program contains sexually explicit material intended for adult audiences. Viewer discretion is advised."

"The following program contains sexually explicit material. Viewer discretion is advised."

"The following program contains scenes of violence, coarse language and nudity intended for adult audiences. Viewer discretion is advised."

"The following program deals with mature subject matter and is intended for adult audiences. Viewer discretion is advised."

"The following program deals with mature subject matter and contains scenes of nudity and coarse language. Viewer discretion is advised."



Look at the Specs Here.
 
Barry_Green said:
It is selective indeed; Original Films is doing a huge Iditarod documentary shooting exclusively on the HVX200.
Click to expand...

Barry,

Are you sure they are shooting EXCLUSIVELY on the HVX200? I was hired to shoot video of the Iditarod by one of the sponsors of the Iditarod. While I was there I saw the Panasonic crew. They did have HVX200's but they also had a bunch of HVX500's and the other Panasonic P2 DVCPRO HD shouldermount cameras...(not sure of what models they all were.) Maybe the crew I saw was a different crew, I just know they were following the ENTIRE race from start to finish, which is a massive undertaking to follow the race on snowmachines as it is a 1150 mile race!! And in some pretty cold temperatures too! Most people who cover the race fly in to checkpoints each day ahead of the mushers, but these guys were actually on the trail with them!
 
Different crew. The Iditarod organization shot on HPX500s and HVX200s. The production I'm talking about is by Original Films, and they're using 21 HVX200s for the entire thing. It's for a miniseries of six hour-long episodes, and the deliverable requirement is (get this) a hard disk!
 
Barry_Green said:
Different crew. The Iditarod organization shot on HPX500s and HVX200s. The production I'm talking about is by Original Films, and they're using 21 HVX200s for the entire thing. It's for a miniseries of six hour-long episodes, and the deliverable requirement is (get this) a hard disk!
Click to expand...

Ya Barry, the crew I was thinking about was the Iditarod Insider. They are the 'official' crew for the race, annd have 500's and the 200's. They do all the 'official' coverage for the Iditarod. I wasn't aware there was another crew filiming for a miniseries. I do know that the P2 (and the XDcam Sony 350's the year before) both stood up to the cold Alaska winters VERY well. Of course I've shot in -60 Alaska winters with a little PD-150 and not had any problems so I'm not sure exactly how much advantage the solid state thing is in cold weather. Logically it seems that it would be better.....not as many moving parts and all. Anyways, I will be eagerly awaiting this miniseries on the Iditarod, I am always interested in seeing how 'outsiders' cover the stuff I shoot allthe time. Getting a fresh new perspective always helps me.
 
I thing "selectively" is the right term. We just had a crew in our studio from New York's "True Entertainment" who were shooting a segment for "Mystery Diagnosis" on Discoveries Health Channel. They were shooting totally in HDV with the Sony FX7 !!!!! As a matter of fact, the New York producer was going to hire me to shoot some surgery scenes that week. I mentioned I would be using my new EX1. They said "Ooohhh, they would love to use that camera... someday. But right now, all Discovery would accept was a tape format such as HDV since that was the only way they could capture with their Avid NLE set-ups".
Sooooooo......
 
An insider told me there might be a possiblity they will watch my storm / tornado doc that is shot on several hvx 200's... The footage looks pretty sweet :)

Talk about good news!!!!
 
FrankC said:
I thing "selectively" is the right term. We just had a crew in our studio from New York's "True Entertainment" who were shooting a segment for "Mystery Diagnosis" on Discoveries Health Channel. They were shooting totally in HDV with the Sony FX7 !!!!! As a matter of fact, the New York producer was going to hire me to shoot some surgery scenes that week. I mentioned I would be using my new EX1. They said "Ooohhh, they would love to use that camera... someday. But right now, all Discovery would accept was a tape format such as HDV since that was the only way they could capture with their Avid NLE set-ups".
Sooooooo......
Click to expand...

It's really gonna suck to ask a post house to convert my dvcpro HD 1080 4:2:2 footage to HDV 4:2:0... WTF?
 
RCFisher said:
Discovery enforces these specs very selectively. Deadliest Catch is shot all DV/HDV.
Click to expand...

Yeah better safe than sorry! If you have an ok series but have some amazing high def shots with a super high res EX1 discovery might play it because of the quality. Content is king but quality is queen when we talk high def.
 
Dxmetal said:
 Super16mm Material – High definition datacine transfers of this material do not currently produce results that
are acceptable for usage in Discovery HD programs. Usage of this material is limited to non-HD footage guidelines.

Look at the Specs Here.
Click to expand...

Now that one really threw me for a loop...literally! The last time I handled Super 16mm we transferred in @ uncompressed 10 bit 1080. You can't get much better than that. I would think shooting on slow stocks with decent lenses and doing a very good pro transfer @ 1080 on up would make s16 an acceptable HD delivery format.
 
Last edited:
RCFisher said:
Discovery enforces these specs very selectively. Deadliest Catch is shot all DV/HDV.
Click to expand...
They (and other broadcasters) all have similar policies, and what is key to remember is that they are not hard and fast rules but guidelines. Stick to them, and you won't have a problem, period, as long as the material is good enough content wise. Go to them with a proposition ("I can do this for you, but because of xxx, yyyy, zzzz I need to shoot half of it on a Z1, half on an HVX200") and they are likely to say "why"? Give a good answer ("small camera essential because......") and they're likely to be reasonable, give an inadequate answer, and they're likely to show you the door. Sounds reasonable to me.

Codec (ie HDV) is only one half the problem - by and large no camera with 1/3" chips is approved for unrestricted acquisition, which is one plus point in favour of the EX series and 1/2" chips. AFAIK it's the only prosumer type camera that most of these broadcasters will accept without limitation, reservation or prior approval.

As for Super-16, I was surprised when I first heard about it. I believe the reason for it's limitation (and many of the others) is how it stands up to the broadcast chain, and transmission bitrates. For Super-16 the problem is apparently that the grain causes it to compress badly, compared to other HD acquisition formats
 
harddrive said:
As for Super-16, I was surprised when I first heard about it. I believe the reason for it's limitation (and many of the others) is how it stands up to the broadcast chain, and transmission bitrates. For Super-16 the problem is apparently that the grain causes it to compress badly, compared to other HD acquisition formats
Click to expand...


I believe I've read that explanation somewhere too. I think it had something to do with the fact that random grain compresses really poorly. Does anyone remember the full reasoning behind this? I wonder if this is a limitation of S16 or of telecine and compression. I was at a Kodak Vision 3 event in the fall and they claimed that they had developed a method of analog to digital conversion for film that was different (and far better) than the industry standard. If this is true and if it catches on maybe in the future Discovery will accept s16 more readily.
 
davide said:
I think it had something to do with the fact that random grain compresses really poorly. Does anyone remember the full reasoning behind this?
Click to expand...
Quite right, the reasoning I heard was that the grain causes big frame-frame changes, just what long-GOP hates, at least if the bitrate is restricted. But even worse than conventional fast motion as artifacting then tends to get pretty masked by the motion itself - here it just stands out.

Worst from the broadcasters standpoint is that it can look fine through the production process, when it's being seen at high bitrates, then comes and bites right on transmission. Nasty. That's why broadcasters like Discovery would prefer not to take the chance, it may be OK 99% of the time, but.......
 
harddrive said:
Quite right, the reasoning I heard was that the grain causes big frame-frame changes, just what long-GOP hates, at least if the bitrate is restricted. But even worse than conventional fast motion as artifacting then tends to get pretty masked by the motion itself - here it just stands out.
Click to expand...

That's pretty much it. The grain in S16 (or at least, the grain present in the S16 stocks that TV can afford to use :) -- remember it isn't just the price of the film, slower stocks need more light) cause the codecs to waste too many bits encoding the grain and so the overall picture quality drops. This is visible even at SD in the UK. I know the BBC did tests and found that for S16 originated material the quality drop made the HD version look not that much better than the SD transmission, so they stipulate no S16 (they want HD to be a quality step up from SD).

The other thing to remember is that it isn't just about one codec, it is about a complete transmission chain which will involve many codecs concatenated together. Again using the BBC HD transmission chain as an example. If I were to shoot a programme on my EX1, then the camera master would be XDCam EX 35mbit/s. I'd edit this in Final Cut Pro and finish to ProRes 422 (that's two codecs). I'd now need to output it to HDCam (the delivery format -- at least until November when they move to SR), a third codec.

This would then get loaded onto the BBC's transmission servers high-bitrate MPEG2 compressed and a fourth codec. Finally, it is encoded to 16mbit/s H264 and sent to the viewer, a fifth codec. Each codec adds artefacts, and these artefacts will cause the next codec problems adding more artefacts than if the previous codec wasn't there. So EX or S16 footage may look great, and it may even still look great if compressed to H264, but the problem for broadcasters is whether it holds up going through all five codecs and the answers seems to be that they don't. Which is why the BBC guidelines prohibit S16 and XDCam (bar the 50mbps 4:2:2 version).

Steven
 
I ran into the Disco crew in Hays Kansas and thay all were shooting on the EX-7 cameras, isn't that also HDV?

One of them made me an offer on my hvx.
 
So current BBC HD transmission is at only 16 mbits? Am I getting lost here because 720P EX1 is 25 right, and 1080P is 35, so is the 16 just a poor quality HD for transmission, or is it instead the full 25/35 uncompressed source compressed to 16 to save on bandwidth?

In which case you have the problems because you're re-compressing an already compressed source, as you say, through the 5 different codecs.
 
ChipG said:
I ran into the Disco crew in Hays Kansas and thay all were shooting on the EX-7 cameras, isn't that also HDV?

One of them made me an offer on my hvx.
Click to expand...

Sorry,

I made an error in my above post. The Discovery Channel guys were shooting on Sony Z7U cameras.
 
andrew00 said:
So current BBC HD transmission is at only 16 mbits? Am I getting lost here because 720P EX1 is 25 right, and 1080P is 35, so is the 16 just a poor quality HD for transmission, ............
Click to expand...
Because the UK came into HD transmission later than the US, Japan, Aus etc H264 has been adopted for transmission, and I believe this is what BBC HD is. Hence the same arguments as for AVC-HD - better quality compared to MPEG2 for the same bitrate, but needs more power to handle it. That's less of an issue for transmission than a production codec. (HDV is 25 Mbs, the EX1 is 35Mbs, but they are both MPEG2 based.)

At first sight it may seem that if the BBC only transmit 16Mbs, then 25, 35, must be more than good enough for acquisition. In practice, the truth is as Steven says - the problems come with cascading codecs, and hence the need to try to start with as good an original as possible, hence the restrictions on low bitrate codecs and 1/3" chips.

As regards Discovery and the Z7, then the HD channel has tighter specs than the SD one. Most broadcasters don't simply ban HDV or 1/3" chip cameras for HD programmes anyway, but RESTRICT their use without prior approval. Make a good case for why an entire programme has to be shot on such a camera, and exceptions may be made.
 
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