DV broadcast?

What are pro opinions on uncompressed DV into FCP, manipulated via filters, then DV out printed to tape as broadcast capable?



- A

If you are talking about Mini DV, then it is already compressed in the camera to get it on tape. So as far as manipulating it with filters in FCP and then printing back to tape for broadcast. Well that would depend on whether the station you are submitting it to will accept Mini DV material. Some stations will accept a certain amount of Mini DV content in a show but it would probably need to be submitted on a Beta SP or Digibeta tape.

and you know....as long as the footage is good (exposure, composition, quality etc) it should be good for boradcast. There are entire reality shows shot on MiniDV or DVCAM.

Ha! Submit on Beta SP ! Reminds me of the early days of FCP At a major network news organization I worked/work for....engineers took the little mini dv tape and thurst their nose in the air (shot on highest quality cameras....) said "this isn't broadcast quality)

Had it dubbed to a Beta SP tape (exact same tape - excpt now down a generation from the digital video on DV )

Engineer pops the new "better" beta sp tape in and says - "see that's broadcast quality!"

Kind of like the coke/pepsi taste test -- kind of silly

totally agree andy, I used to work at the big station down in Miami as a news editor (crazy deadlines) and those guys were the same way, and the thing is that back in those days (1997) a BetaSP was around $30 so we got a lot of live out of them, 80-90 passes before we shelved them. by the 50th or 60th pass the quality was almost down to VHS quality with all the hits on the tape. One day I shot something with a Sony DVCAM DSR500 and took the tape to the station and nobody wanted to touch it. hahah funny enough, I dubbed it to a Beta and it looked so much better than most betas in the house...

I have a friend who did this regularly to get around Discovery's DV moratorium.

But if the original question was proposing capturing DV via analog using a capture card (not straight from tape through firewire), then the quality will suffer. it'll go through D-A, then A-D conversion. But in some situations, this helps things (like poorly shot DV chromakey) by smoothing out the image .



HarryD

<<<Engineer pops the new "better" beta sp tape in and says - "see that's broadcast quality!">>>

Yes, well. Not all Tape Operators came from MIT.

Picture this: The Tape Operator looks up from the ad for a DV Camera and he's considering buying one for his niece in Staten Island. This 18 year old walks into the station holding One Of Those Tapes and claims the broadcast show the station bought is on it.

What's wrong with this picture?

Now lets try to get the tape into the station. We need it to pause five seconds before first picture and wait for us to roll it. What do you mean you can't cue it? Just roll it back and stop on 59:55:00.

How come it's so dark? Where's the setup? We can't broadcast it that way.

You know everything over 100 is going to get wacked off in the transmitter, right? Can't you adjust the camera so the picture never goes over 100 like the big kids?

etc. etc. etc.

My first Broadcast job was a network affiliate in a major television market. We were told we were going to air some of our "off prime" programming from 3/4" tape. The only reason we didn't actually pull it off was we couldn't cue or roll the tape accurately.

If, after that experience, someone walked in with a less-than broadcast format, I would have had them shot on the spot.

Koz

> Had it dubbed to a Beta SP tape (exact same tape - excpt now down a
> generation from the digital video on DV )
> Engineer pops the new "better" beta sp tape in and says - "see that's
> broadcast quality!"

Which reminds of Graeme Nattress' assertion that DV is a better format than Betacam SP...

Technically, there's no such thing as "Uncompressed DV for Broadcast". DV is 5:1 compression / 25 MB p/s natively. We do not air anything DV...we use it for offline edits in FCP & batch uprez after approval.

If I am forced to air a DV project (which I always fight tooth & nail against), I will run it through Magic Bullet Suite 2.1 in After Effects - cleaning up the artifacts & treating the color / contrast.

- Joey



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