[SBE] The life of a spot after DG sends it to you...

[John Peterson]

Ryan brings up an important subject, special with HD productions. Most
distribution methods use some form of digital compression. Multiple
encode/decodes can leave the original product looking soft and washout. One
bad or heavily compression link will give that blocking look.

Producers need to be careful about using too much high chroma motion, lots
of fast cuts or noisey video (old film look might be popular but it is hard
on MPEG encoders). Also with HD, upconverted SD segments might look ok on
the master tape but the added noise in the segment will not look good when
the piece is encoded at 10-18 Mbps for ATSC, HD Satellite or Cable.

John




On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 5:56 PM, Ryan Salazar <ryan at ryansalazar.net> wrote:


> Hello,

>

> The complaint came from a client that was viewing the spot locally. Never

> thought about the cable tv company being in the middle. The other spots

> before our spot didn't look so hot either, but ours was really bad.

>

> Ryan

>

> -----Original Message-----

> From: sbe-bounces at sbe.org [mailto:sbe-bounces at sbe.org] On Behalf Of Crum,

> Kate

> Sent: Wednesday, May 20, 2009 3:42 PM

> To: sbe member discussion mail list

> Subject: Re: [SBE] The life of a spot after DG sends it to you...

>

>

> Where in the chain were you receiving the complaints? (CBS, affiliate,

> viewers?) Sometimes we have issues with our local cable companies resulting

> from their compression of our signal. That may or may not be another factor

> to consider, depending on where the problem is showing up.

>

> Good Luck!

> Kate

>

> -----Original Message-----

> From: sbe-bounces at sbe.org [mailto:sbe-bounces at sbe.org]On Behalf Of Ryan

> Salazar

> Sent: Wednesday, May 20, 2009 3:12 PM

> To: sbe member discussion mail list

> Subject: [SBE] The life of a spot after DG sends it to you...

>

>

> Everyone,

>

> I figured this would be the best place for me to ask this question...

>

> We send spots (post production facility), to DG Fast Channel via

> automation. DG always tells us the spots look great, in fact, better than

> most spots they receive. They then send the spot to stations via their

> "Spotbox".

>

> Recently, we had an instance where they sent a spot to CBS-National. CBS

> then fed the spot live via satellite to a local station. That local station

> then fed it to the viewers. We received a complaint that the spot was

> pixelated and blurry. I will admit, our disclaimers were way to small, but

> we had strange artifacting that we don't normally have an issue with. I also

> saw a considerable amount of blocks on the screen during fast movement of

> graphics. I've seen this before after files were converted over and over.

>

> I assume this is because of all the levels the file went through. Us to DG,

> DG to CBS. Then, CBS via Satellite to the station and the station

> broadcasts.

>

> Any ideas? I know I can't really control all the points, but want to see

> what else I can come up with.

>

> Thanks!

> _______________________________________________

> The SBE Roundtable, SBE at sbe.org

> To unsubscribe, go to http://seven.pairlist.net/mailman/options/sbe

>

> http://seven.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/sbe

>

>

> _______________________________________________

> The SBE Roundtable, SBE at sbe.org

> To unsubscribe, go to http://seven.pairlist.net/mailman/options/sbe

>

> http://seven.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/sbe

>

> _______________________________________________

> The SBE Roundtable, SBE at sbe.org

> To unsubscribe, go to http://seven.pairlist.net/mailman/options/sbe

>

> http://seven.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/sbe

>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://seven.pairlist.net/pipermail/sbe/attachments/20090520/96e1e7d1/attachment.html>