BROADCAST LEGALISING White Paper
The Cutting Room has successfully delivered dozens of hours of standard and high definition TV shows for national and international broadcasters, including the ABC, SBS, Channel 7, Nickelodeon and Al-Jazeera International. There are many things that must be considered when finishing your project for delivery. Online editing is one of the most important areas of the post production process in ensuring your vision gets successfully conveyed on transmission and passes the broadcasters QC (Quality Check) process. This is a highly technical process that requires years of experience backed with professionally calibrated equipment and A grade hardware.
One of the main decisions in choosing your online facility, aside from cost and quality of work, is the digital pipeline. It is well advised to discuss this as early as possible as simple decisions in the initial stages can save you money and a lot of stress. A crucial choice will be the online editing system. We have chosen to base our systems on Final Cut Pro Studio (FCP) and Da Vinci Resolve for several reasons. Most importantly we have found that most of our clients prefer to edit in FCP and by keeping our systems cohesive, preparation for the grade can be as simple as plugging in a drive. If, on the other hand, an FCP offline were to be taken to Avid, Flame or Lustre for onlining, the video would have to be recaptured from tape using an exported EDL (Edit Decision List). This is fraught with danger and days of expensive online time can be wasted recapturing, trouble shooting and recreating graphics, rather than adding the final touches. Taking FCP projects into Da Vinci is a very simple process. We have chosen to use Da Vinci for colour grading because it is simply the best in the world. Furthermore, it is one of the only systems that properly supports post-production for Red RAW and Arri Alexa. What this means is that these digital formats can be used they way they were designed. In their native format with access to RAW data, rather than transcoded files that lose this ability and introduce artifacts and noise.
We have developed a solid post production pathway for a variety of formats and a variety of deliverables. In general, the main standards for broadcast television in Australia are Standard Definition DigiBeta and HDcam (with the exception of SBS, which accepts DVCpro 50 for SD). It is important to know where the project ends to make sure the shooting format will suit your needs. There is a myriad of cameras and codecs, but the most common ones for broadcast acquisition are DV, HDV, DSLR, XDcam, DigiBeta, HDcam, Arri Alexa and Red One. Each of these formats have limitations and it is important to be aware of these before choosing your camera system. However, equally important is how the video information is treated after acquisition. For instance, HDV and XDcam are highly compressed formats that are designed to minimise data rates by aggressively discarding certain information. Be aware that colour grading and compositing in these formats can introduce banding, digital artifacts and motion issues.
Another important issue is the rudimentary technical quality of the deliverables themselves. This is quite an in-depth issue, but one of the most common issues is broadcast legalisation. Different shooting formats allow for different chroma (colour) and luma (brightness) ranges. However, broadcasters require that the provided video stay with in certain parameters to be suitable for broadcast. Some editing software includes broadcast legalising filters. These are very basic mathematical equations that limit the video signals to the desired ranges. Unfortunately, these filters rarely reach technical standard and spikes in colour and luminance often slip through. Furthermore, despite their slow render times these filters are incapable of handling more complex issues such as gamut issues, high saturation luma levels and pedestal levels.
While some stations are stricter than others, should your deliverables not reach the technical requirements of the broadcaster the deliverables will be rejected, costing the production more money and worse, the possibility of missing the air date. To ensure proper broadcast qualification The Cutting Room uses hardware legalisation that reaches the strictest of international standards and it is our guarantee that we make sure all our legalised masters reach this standard (please see our guarantee for further information).
For more information or for a quote please contact us at cut@thecuttingroom.com.au