I tunes quality requirements

mainstreetprod

mainstreetprod

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I'm currently in negotiations with a major distributor on a feature I just finished, for DVD, VOD and digital. He said their normal routine as a quality check is to submit to iTunes first, as they are by far the most likely to reject it. What will iTunes be looking for and how can I be proactive and try to fix what they might have a problem with?
 
The doc in my sig is on iTunes but in our case we made DigiBetas (Looking for Lenny is SD) per the specs of our distribution company, they QC'ed the tapes and then handled delivering the appropriate materials to everyone else (iTunes, Amazon, various cable companies for VOD, etc.,).


-Andrew
 
Distribbers technical requirements are helpful, but what I'm wondering is when an HD feature is submitted as a Pro Res file, as they seem to allow, what will Itunes kick it back for since it does not have to meet IRE specs for broadcast, etc. Even safe area shouldn't be a concern since there is no overscan on streaming video. What would get a file rejected?
 
Can you ask the distributor what iTunes normally flags?

Have you seen the iTunes Video and Audio Asset Guide 5.0? Just from skimming it it looks like you need a ProRes HQ file in REC. 709 as well as closed captioning. I'd wager typical b'cast delivery guidelines should still be followed as Apple would want the content to display properly on a TV.
 
I would suspect it would match the typical broadcaster's specification for image. As far as other deliverables, close captioning, 5.1, stereo, and such - the receiving entity provides that upon request. But I agree with adkimery that just because it is delivered as a streaming format, it still needs to play on home television monitoring which is Rec.601 or Rec.709 or somewhere in the neighborhood of those color spaces. For example, if you deliver black levels at 0 rather than the SMPTE level of 16 (in 8 bit terms), and the viewer at home decides to use "cinema mode", it is basically moving the blacks down from what is assumed to be 16 to 0 along with other contrast tricks. So anything you had in the 0-16 range is gone. Same for highlights between 235-255, but those are not as obviously noticeable as black levels.

Michael
 
If you use any of the default setups for HD in FCP you'll be working in the 709 color space but making sure your image stays within typical broadcast legal limits is a different matter. You can stack a few filters in FCP (b'cast safe and RGB limitier I think) or turn on the "broadcast safe" option in Color (it's in the settings panel I think) and those will impose hard stops for brightness and color levels but it probably will result in unneeded clipping, artifacting and loss of detail. Keeping things legal and looking pretty is where a good colorist comes into the picture. They will (well, should) have the right gear to objectively (via scopes) and subjectively (via a proper monitor) grade your project.


-Andrew
 
Well, I've got Color rendering out a broadcast safe version. Tomorrow I'll look at it with a critical eye and see if I need to turn it over to a colorist or not.
 
OK, I had cleared 110 gigs off my internal HD to make sure Color had enough space to render (the complete movie prores file is only 76 gigs). The HD filled overnight and rendering stopped. Anyone know where to look for the Color render files? They don't seem to be in the FCP render file folders.
 
Look in your Documents folder for a Color Documents folder (that is the default location). What export settings did you have for Color?
 
I exported at 1080P Prores HQ (original file was not HQ, but Itunes asks for that). Otherwise, I was exporting exactly what I imported, just made it broadcast safe.
 
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