BROADCAST QUALITY?

Hello

I have a lot of problems outputting broadcast quality video.

I shoot on a Sony Z1U and export using compressor. But the results are often disappointing.

For example, when I try MPEG2 HD exports, the video is jerky or the audio plays intermittently. Sometimes the MPEG2 files will not even play on apple computers. If I try SD the results are smoother and the audio is fine. But the quality is, of course, lowered.

This is very frustrating because when I edit or print to tape the video looks great, but it is on tape. The broadcast quality video that one sees on TV's everywhere looks like the video that I get when I print to tape.

Does anyone know where I can get information on outputting broadcast quality video that will play on any computer or DVD player?

Thank you.

I've been keeping an eye on your posts, and it seems like you're really frustrated. I'm very sorry for that.

"Broadcast quality" means two different things depending on the context. It means that a piece of tape or digital media compiles with the various specifications and standards set down by a given broadcaster ? this is not what you mean ? or it's a totally subjective term that means "looks like TV." I think it's clear you're talking about the second thing.

Trouble is, that's a subjective thing. We can't know, from here, what you mean by "broadcast quality," or more to the point, what you mean by "not broadcast quality."

First things first: The Sony Z1U is an HDV camera, which means it's limited. If you go out and shoot a lot of fast-moving action, like cars driving by in the background of a shot, your footage will break up. That's just the nature of the HDV format.

Next, when you say you "shoot on a Sony Z1U and export using compressor," you're leaving out practically your entire workflow. HDV requires a several-step process to digitize, edit and master. What steps are you using?

Why are you delivering in MPEG-2 format? Is this material going out to a broadcaster who requires MPEG-2 program streams? Compressor's MPEG-2 encoder is just okay; it does a great job with 24p SD material and 24p HD material downconverted to SD, but it's far from perfect. Pretty much the industry-standard MPEG-2 software encoder for broadcast is Telestream's Episode Pro. That's what, for example, DG Fastchannel recommends for encoding MPEG-2 spots for delivery over their network.

MPEG-2 playback on a computer is not going to work very well no matter what. MPEG-2 is a broadcast format, not a format that's been optimized to play back on computers. If you have to deliver in MPEG-2 but also want to be able to deliver low-res proxies or whatever, you'll get the best results by creating two deliverables, one in MPEG-2 and one in a computer-video format.

In particular, when you refer to "broadcast quality video that will play on any computer or DVD player," the short answer is no. There's no perfect format that works equally well on a television and on a computer. The two technologies for playback are just fundamentally different; televisions are interlaced, computers aren't, et cetera and so forth.

I get that you're frustrated, I really do. But I'm afraid I can't offer anything more than this general advice without a lot more specific insight into your system, workflow and deliverables. "Broadcast quality" just doesn't mean anything, objectively speaking.

What is broadcast quality? Is it something you could show on your TV at home with decent quality- then yes sure the Z1U is broadcast quality. Is it something a majority of TV networks would accept for broadcast- then no the Z1U isn't even close, at least not as a sole aquisition format. For that you'd need to move way up the food chain into Sony F950s and F35s, RED ONEs, Panasonic 3700 etc.

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Broadcast quality basically means you need to meet QC requirements for most networks. So you need to check the specs sheet.

BBC requires acquisition with these formats:

Panasonic HDX 900
Panasonic 'Varicam' HDC27F & H
Panasonic HPX 2100, 2700 & 3000
Sony HDW 750
Sony HDW 790
Sony HDW F900R
Arri D21
Panavision Genesis
Thompson Viper

>This is very frustrating because when I edit or print to tape the video looks great, but it is on
>tape.

Heck. What's wrong with tape?! I deliver tapes all the time, and in the SD world, no one argues that digital beta is not broadcast quality!



www.strypesinpost.com

Yeah most broadcasters, distributors and film festivals are still using tape....

Noah

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Author, RED: The Ultimate Guide to Using the Revolutionary Camera available now at: [www.amazon.com].
Editors Store- Gifts and Gear for Editors: [www.editorsstore.com]

Hi Zuill,

From what I understand from your question:

(1) You want to play back your video, in high definition on a computer. You want to the video to appear to be at least as good as "broadcast quality" - what you see on your high definition home television.

(2) You don't actually need to send your video to a TV station or network for broadcast.

(3) When you output your video from FCP to your HD camcorder, the video plays back fine in HD from the Z1, but when you encode to a similar MPEG-2 file, playback is intermittent and choppy when played back from Mac and Windows computers. If you create a standard-def MPEG-2 file, it plays back fine.

There are several issues that need to be dealt with, when playing back MPEG-2 files from a computer:

(1) Disk transfer speed - your hard discs need to be able to transfer the data fast enough to keep up with the video stream.

(2) MPEG decoding speed - the processor, system memory, etc. needs to be able to decode the MPEG-2 fast enough to keep up with the video stream.

(3) Disk fragmentation - large files may be spread over several areas of the disc drive, especially if your disc is pretty full.

(4) HD (1080i) requires six times the amount of data, for the same quality picture as SD.

I've found that many PCs and MACs have trouble dealing with realtime playback of HD MPEG-2 files. You haven't stated what data rate you chose for your MPEG-2 HD files, but you need to factor that into your encoding. If it's too high-you won't be able to take in enough data to sustain continuous data from your disc. Too low, and quality suffers. Remember too, that your computer is busy doing other things besides video playback. I've had much better results using h.264 for HD realtime playback - both on Macs and PCs.

Good luck.

Travis
VoiceOver Guy and Entertainment Technology Enthusiast
[www.VOTalent.com]

I am working on a Discovery Channel show and the Bronze level accepts HDV. But we master on HDCAM SR. Seems like OVERKILL, but, thats what we do.


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when you work in news you soon realise that absolutely anything is broadcast quality

Thank you all for your input. I have to apologize for having used the phrase "broadcast quality". It was intended as a benchmark of quality and not because I needed to broadcast the material (at least not right away).

A large part of the problem I face is that my DVD Studio Pro will not open. I am in a place (Afghanistan) where it is impossible to reload the application. So I must use compressor.

What I need to do is play HD video from a DVD on any computer or DVD player or at least as wide a range of such devices as possible.
QT files often will not play on windows computers and many DVD players. So they are out of the question.

After reading the compressor user manual, the only settings that come with compressor that seem to be applicable to my problem are the MPEG-1 or 2 settings.
But these have not delivered very good results.

You have suggested H.264. The manual says that H.264 is for Apple devices (ipod, apple tv, etc.) and DVD studio pro. So I avoided the H.264 settings.

The data rates I have used for MPEG HD were the lowest that compressor allows (bit rate average: 10, Max 12). But they still seem to be too high.

I have tried H.264. The results look very nice on my computer but there is no audio. I tried adding the dolby setting but got an error at the very end after submitting. If I do get the audio to work, I am still concerned that this is very apple specific software and will not work on a wide range of computers.

Again, thank you very much for your time and concern. I really appreciate it.

Robert

Quote

What I need to do is play HD video from a DVD

DVDs are standard-definition only. You'll have to find a third-party solution if you want to burn Blu-Ray discs, but Blu-Ray discs won't play in SD DVD players. There is no way to play HD video on a standard-definition DVD player.

If you want to create data files that will play on computers, use Quicktime. It's the industry-standard format.

Hi again, Robert.

If you require that your program plays on standard DVD players, you have only one option - make an Standard Definition DVD, set up for widescreen. I've seen several programs shot on HDV and distributed on SD=DVD, and the results have been excellent. Though, of course, not true HD, the "look" of the material was better than a great deal of supposedly "HD" material shown by my Cable-TV provider.

If you want true HD, remember that most PCs, though certainly not all, have Quicktime installed. Anybody with iTunes has Quicktime. - so H.264 is a good choice. You could put "Apple Quicktime" in the "Technical Specs" for your program. Where Quicktime is a problem is that many corporate IT departments don't allow Quicktime or iTunes to be installed, both for security reasons, and to keep employees from using company time and bandwidth downloading from iTunes.

If you want reliable playback on PCs, you need to create Windows Media files. (Google "Flip4Mac" Even regular DVDs are problem on Windows. It's been my experience that about ten-percent of the time, regular DVDs won't play on a PC - usually because someone has accidentally installed an alternate DVD player application which came "free" with an application and the settings got messed up. Also, Microsoft Media Center, if included, is NOT a mature product.

Another option is Adobe Flash, using H.264. Flash is on about 95 percent of computers, although you would then either need to plan on playback from the web, or to set up a Flash "Projector" file which turns your program into a standalone application. Though the last I checked, the latest versions of Flash Projector were for Intel Macs only. You can play Flash media from a local .html file, but Internet Explorer's new "Security" features makes the viewer go through a few permission loops.

(Whew, this is still way to complicted.)

You could also distribute your program in a 3-dvd package - one for Windows, one for Mac, and one for DVD players.

Travis
VoiceOver Guy and Entertainment Technology Enthusiast
[www.VOTalent.com]

Do a Google search on this

[Create BD5/BD9 - Blu-ray on DVD-R Media]

for some exmaples of HD on sSD DVD-R discs.

Bruce Nazarian concocted a method as well:

[www.recipe4dvd.com]

It's under the Docs menu, requires sign-in.

- Loren
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