OT: Slates and Countdowns

In another thread "Delivery of commercial for DirecTV" the use of countdowns and 2 pops for commercial delivery is raised as in issue.

In the early days of film chains and Quad machines with 10 second pre-rolls, before timecode, having a visual countdown was a great visual aid to the director or AD. The 2 pop was great for checking sync on systems where the audio and video might be playing from different equipment.

Time moves on, and in the age of digital delivery and server based playback they seem just a bit of an anachronism.

Do you still add these features on your commercials or live roll ins? If you work in a TV station or network doing commercial integration, do you need them?

For the stuff I do for network air on remote trucks, we now usually use 1 frame of slate, followed by 1 second of video pad. The server playback operator will cue to the first frame of the pre roll. The director call is "Roll machine, (half a beat) Take machine."

-Vance

I add slates to every project I do.

I add countdown and 2-pop only to Discovery network shows.


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We add the traditional 10sec slate and pop on 2 to everything that goes to the networks...actually everything. It's just a good way of keeping track of who did what, audio config, etc...you never know who's going to be cueing the thing and on what system?

It's always been my goal to make slates as if the unknown person who receives whatever it is (Tape, file, disk) has the simplest playback system and/or a remote with only one giant play button. It also helps to pretend the person on the other end is maybe not the brightest bulb on the tree.
Leave it up long enough to get the important info if they couldn't pause it (read the info out loud twice). Don't assume that the metadata (labels, boxes, cue sheets,) will be available to the people who need it. We had a new office intern who eagerly pulled all the cue sheets from 1" commercial reels and made a file of them before sending the reels on to us. It took us a week to track down where they were going to put a stop to it.

My first deliverable tech spec called for 60/30/10/2 (bars/slate/black/cue) and unless instructed otherwise I've used that as a base spec.

ak
Sleeplings, AWAKE!

Thanks for the input gents.

So as long as I am taking cheep shots at editorial traditions, how about this one.

What is the point of adding color bars? That test signal was designed to align analog equipment. In the world of digital tape, file servers and all digital pipelines isn't the "unity" switch enough?

Does anyone actually look at or make adjustments to video based on the bars anymore?

-Vance

I don't know what they do after I deliver the tape. I just know that they still ask for them, so I send them along.

I'm sure they still use them. Are you saying that there is a "magic button" called UNITY that just makes it work? I HIGHLY doubt engineers would rely on that. They are tweakers.


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Most times, I have not needed a countdown or 2pop in any of my deliverables. Bars are essential obviously to ensure luminance and color consistency (or at least CYA). Slates are also essential because you never know who's going to be watching on the other end. Best to assume it's an idiot.

The last time I delivered a countdown was for video playback at a live orchestral performance. The video had been pre-synced to a scratch track with metronome on one channel. The countdown preceded the click-track so that the conductor would know when to begin the music and all the video elements would be in sync.

Still, the best practice is to get the deliverable info from the place you deliver to. Every network, production company, website, etc. seems to have their own preference.

Andy

Sure digital tape machines have a unity button. One of the great features of digital formats. Like taking DV over Firewire, you get what was on the camera, not a processed version of it.

If engineers are tweaking they are probably causing more problems then they are solving. Setting color bars on scopes is not really very exacting. Lots of the digital pipeline these days does not even have controls to set levels. If you ship a file of your finished show on disk, and that is loaded to a server there is not a spot in the workflow to even tweak anything.

I am really just stirring the pot here. I expect we will all use color bars on the top of tape deliverables till tape is completely dead. It just seems to me that it is more of a nod to tradition than a useful tool.

Having color bars lets you see instantly if you got the Pr and Pb cables backwards when you were under the table hooking up your client monitor.

Just sayin'.

Quote
Jeff Harrell
Having color bars lets you see instantly if you got the Pr and Pb cables backwards when you were under the table hooking up your client monitor.

Been there!

_______________________________________
SCQT! Self-contained QuickTime ? pass it on!

"Unity!! I'm Rick James biyatch!!"

Anyone ever busted out an old 3/4 inch where the "timecode" is a computerized voice actually saying the time of day on one of the audio tracks? Blew me away. I had no idea!?

Andre