Need help with a commercial shoot/post prod

hey guys
so im shooting a low budget commercial for someone around my town for a small amount of money. if he likes it, then well go with a decent budget for renting better equipment ect.

so right now i have my dvx, FCP, and adobe suite, and thats pretty much it.

i know that commercials have to be done differently, for example they dont accept pure blacks (or something like that)
so what im asking is, what do i need to know? if you have the time, pretend i have NO experience (which is true in the broadcast tv field)

some specific questions:

shoot in squeeze or 4:3?
its drop frame timecode right?
can i color in 16/32 bit? do i need to go back to 8 bit?
what do i need to know about blacks/whites?
title safe? why?
when its final, what should i render to to hand it to the broadcast company?
24p or 24pa or 29.97? 23.976 is ntsc right?
audio set to... (44.1...ect.)?
usually i shoot 24pA. when i capture to FCP, usually i get an interlaced frame about every 4 frames. am i making a basic mistake?
what settings should i use on the dvx? right now im pretty sure (not home) i have everything at 0 and detail level at like -2

please and thank you!
-ben

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Hi, Tazer,

The broadcast landscape is changing considerably, as far as what is acceptable and what is not, and local spots have a lot of flexibility depending on the stations that will be running the spot. You should produce your spot exactly the way you would for your own projects, with a few caveats:

- Call the stations to find out what the deliverables need to be (DVD, tape, DL from internet, any special settings or limitations).
- Run a "broadcast safe" filter on your completed spot (FCP comes with one, as does AE under the CC filters tab).
- Decide if you want letterboxing on 4:3 TVs, or pillarboxing on 16:9 TVs. That will determine your aspect ratio (shoot 16:9 for letterboxing, 4:3 for pillarboxing).
- Do not run your titles outside the title safe area, or they will be cut off on SOME TVs.

Hope this helps,

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Jamie
www.crashandannie.com

hmm so i would imagine with alot of tvs being newer ones nowadays (at least in miami where the commercial would air) i think squeeze makes the most sense
ahh okay didnt know thats what broadcast safe meant, thanks

anyone else have any input? to some of my original questions or to anything in general?

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the broadcast safe filter can be harsh and ugly - I would go through the whole thing using 3 way CC or Colorista and scopes first to make sure everything is within limits and then run the broadcast safe filter, just in case you missed anything.

	Quote:
	- Call the stations to find out what the deliverables need to be (DVD, tape, DL from internet, any special settings or limitations).

I totally agree. Also ask about audio levels as well as limits for white and black. If it's a commercial, don't compress the audio too much -- it really annoys rather than sells.

Magic Bullet also has a "broadcast safe" filter which keeps you legal without ruining your color balance.

Although the broadcast world has gone to bits, the installed base of televisions is huge, so it's really unclear whether or not 4:3, the usual television screen size, is the way to go or not. You must ask the broadcasters.

It might not be ideal for composition of shots, but you might want to consider shooting 4:3 in such a way that if it gets trimmed, nothing important will get trimmed out. Titles must reside in the title-safe area because user television receivers must all be able to read all the text. This is not a broadcaster's problem.

If white is > 100 and black is < 7.5, broadcasters might not want to show it for technical reasons. I don't understand the engineering magic behind this, but that's the way it is.

-- Paul

If your broadcast-safe filter has the option to "Key out unsafe" then you can put it on an adjustment layer over your whole comp and it will flag up any unsafe areas. You can then use controllable CC filters to get your colours safe.

The station should have a sheet that tells you all of the things they expect - both video and audio wise - If they want a 2-pop, NDF or DF etc. etc.

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hey guys thanks alot for all the info
can someone answer these?

what settings should i use on the dvx? right now im pretty sure (not home) i have everything at 0 and detail level at like -2

24p or 24pa or 29.97? 23.976 is ntsc right?

thank you

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NTSC color encoding is used with the M format, which consists of 29.97 interlaced frames of video per second. Each frame consists of a total of 525 scanlines, of which 486 make up the visible raster. The remainder (the vertical blanking interval) are used for synchronization and vertical retrace. Originally designed to be blank to allow for the simple analog circuits and slow vertical retrace of early TV receivers, some of these lines now can contain other data such as closed captioning and vertical interval timecode (VITC). In the complete raster (ignoring half-lines), the even-numbered or 'lower" scanlines (lines 21 to 263 in the video signal) are drawn in the first field, and the odd-numbered or "upper" (signal lines 283 to 525) are drawn in the second field, to yield a flicker-free image at the field refresh frequency of approximately 59.94 Hertz (actually 60 Hz/1.001).

So, to answer your question, 23.976 is NOT NTSC. You will have to do 2:3 pulldown on 24 frames to convert it. As to the camera's settings, they are situational so no one here will be able to answer that.

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Pontificatious Ramblings

nice answer shaughan - surprised none of us caught the 29.976 interlaced part of the question - and your reply has me looking up the NTSC spec (VITC?)

and how would you add a pulldown (assuming it was shot 23.976 native)? any way other than a capture card i.e. kona?

Hi, gang,

DV Film Maker is a software that can do a 24p to 29.97 conversion (dvfilm.com), and I think Nattress standards converter does as well (nattress.com).

As far as the 16:9 vs. 4:3 question, I would opt for 16:9 every time unless the client specifies otherwise. Personally, I think letterboxing just looks better on a 4:3 TV, putting 4:3 o an HD set somehow looks unfinished (I always use the zoom button when watching 4:3 material on my HD tv, unless it is too pixellated). And take a look at the commercials out there today. Most of the higher end/expensive looking ones are 16:9 by my admittedly sketchy survey, so producing that way might add a little more production value to your low budget spot.

_________________
Jamie
www.crashandannie.com

Just as an FYI, the station will probably want it on tape and they will specify junk like:

Timecode Content
00:58:30:00 Bars and tone
00:59:30:00 Black audio and video
00:59:40:00 Program slate
00:59:50:00 Black audio and video
01:00:00:00 Program start

A program slate consists of:

* Program Title Producer / Director / Agency responsible
* Date output to tape
* Running time (Never include frames and always round up)
* Audio mix format (stereo, mono, multi-track)
* Timecode format (Drop-frame or non-drop-frame)

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Pontificatious Ramblings

wow shaughan... i thinkk i understood your post on NTSC, but whether or not i did thank you for the write up, i printed it out and put it in my "to do" folder.
so now due to an answer, i have another question.

tv plays at 29.97
so movies shot at 24 are...pulled down to 29.97?

so that means i would shoot at 24p/24pA (no ones answered that yet and its killing me)
remove pull down in the transfer (for 24pA which is what im used to shooting)
edit/sound ect.
find some sort of software or hardware that...puts back the pulldown?

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When you shoot 24p(a), there is no pulldown. You perform the pulldown either after you shoot it or after you post it - I would reccomend posting in 29.97. Consider the following:

The term “pulldown” comes from the mechanical process of “pulling” the film down to advance it from one frame to the next at a repetitive rate (nominally 24 frames/s). This is accomplished in two steps. The first step is to slow down the film motion by 1/1000. This speed change is unnoticeable to the viewer, and makes the film travel at 23.976 frames/s (or 7.2 seconds longer in a 2-hour movie).

The second step of the 2:3 pulldown is distributing cinema frames into video fields. At 23.976 frames/s, there are four frames of film for every five frames of 60Hz video:

\frac{23.976}{29.97} = \frac{4}{5}

These four frames are “stretched” into five by exploiting the interlaced nature of 60Hz video. For every frame, there are actually two incomplete images or fields, one for the odd-numbered lines of the image, and one for the even-numbered lines. There are, therefore, eight fields for every four film frames, and the telecine alternately places one film frame across two fields, the next across three, the next across two, and so on. The cycle repeats itself completely after four film frames have been exposed, and in the telecine cycle these are called the A, B, C, and D frames, thus:

There are tools to do the pulldown for you. I think that Premier has a pulldown that it will do for you in the "Interpret footage" function in it's media browser. AE probably has a similar function.

So, shoot 24pa, then capture and do 2:3 pulldown on the footage and then do post on it.

Here is another explanation from an Avid editor that might be more clear for you:

http://www.zerocut.com/tech/pulldown.html

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Pontificatious Ramblings

Nice thoroughness, Shaughan. Great information.

To tazer I would say:

- shoot 24p. Unless you have some specific reason not to, like using a special post effect or something.

- When you talk to the stations, ask if they will accept a 24p version. The last 2 spots I did for United Way were delivered at 24p, and I never heard of any issues (they looked fine on TV). If not, I would go ahead and post it at 24p, then apply the pulldown to the finished version. (Not being dogmatic, this is just my workflow and I haven't had any complaints yet from TV stations.)

_________________
Jamie
www.crashandannie.com