Booked a commercial and they want it delivered on beta tapes to air on TV?

[Sergio Perez]

It's a bit of a messy ordeal. Here in Macau the local tv station still demands... Beta SP 4:3. There's a lot of places still broadcasting 4:3 so a big concern depending on your market. Also make sure you have your color grading done with broadcast in mind. Over saturation means big disaster. Broadcast also seems to boost noise tenfold. For audio make sure to let someone used to broadcast to do the final mix. Broadcast tvcs use compression algorithms to boost audio levels. If you don't do it, your commercial will sound with a low volume vs the others. Look for a house with broadcast experience for color grading. Include this on your budget!

 

[Brian Merlen]

In CT, one of the richest states in the US, where the bankers live with the trophy wives.......... they still shoot news on beta....


Granted its local news...but my point is companies invest in an ecosystem, sometimes with millions...or hundreds of thousands...They are married to it...

Also have you considered going 29.97fps? If its for NTSC broadcast... But thats insane they want it on beta...are you the editor too? Cuz I could totally see an editor being asked for old weird formats, happens to me constantly. But a contemporary shooter delivering on that when the camera shoots high end digital is a tad weird..

PS one of my buddies does grading and legacy format conversion. He just moved and quit the post house we freelanced for, and is available if you want to get it done probably for a more competitive rate then sending it to a major post house for grading and laying to tape

 

[Mike Garrick]

This is great. pes

I wonder if there is such a similar service for Japan?

Must research...

Ivan I believe Adstream can deliver into Japan not sure where but they can do it.....I think? Japan will have a similar services for the local market.

P.S. In a similar vein I have a TVC for On air in US shot @ 29.97 . A question for US broadcast types ........Do the networks accept progressive or must it be interlaced. (groan) I was going to deliver SD progressive. Thanx

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

The agency will usually just give us an ISCI code and tell us which service (like adstream) to deliver to along with a PDF of acceptable formats. What they accept varies wildly from company to company. Whether they accept progressive I think is largely immaterial though since I'm pretty sure the ad distributors just convert it in-house to interlaced.

 

[Marc Wielage]

Which means that you should have it specified by the client if it is to be 4x3 cropped or letterboxed.

I did mention asking the client for a technical spec list, right? That would include aspect ratio.

If you submit files or tapes for a job and you have no clue what the specs are, you could chase your tail for weeks with endless rejections and redos, not knowing specifically what the client (or their distributor) wants and expects.

 

[Adam Eden]

I still use digibeta everyday to deliver tv commercials via Adstream.

Its a lot quicker to drop of a digi beta with 20 commercials on it to Adstream (they are 4 kilometres away from my office) than to upload 20 TV commercials.

Unfortunately we still air 95% of our tv commercials in SD

 

[Nick Morrison]

One of my main clients was GIVING away Digibeta decks earlier this year. Literally. I know a lot of people who were more than happy to take them off their hands. There were about six I believe that flew the coop. Amazingly, these once $50-100k machines were deemed to be worth only about $250.

 

[Mark Toia]

I still use digibeta everyday to deliver tv commercials via Adstream.

Its a lot quicker to drop of a digi beta with 20 commercials on it to Adstream (they are 4 kilometres away from my office) than to upload 20 TV commercials.

Unfortunately we still air 95% of our tv commercials in SD

You serious ... ? Wow.
None of my ad's have touched tape in over 2 years now.
We put into a real time Encoder to create H264's as per Adstream requirements and upload in real time.
I didn't even know Ad stream still took tape.
It's pretty simple when you know how.

Can you still buy digi betacam tape. How much is a cassette these days. ? And you have a digi betacam recorder/player?
I have one also... But I doubt it still works.

And yes your right. We still upload PAL dimensions . Crazy hey!

 

[Björn Benckert]

I have a digibeta player/recorder for sale... A sony, In good working order. Atleast when I checked last time... 4 years ago I took them out of the rack and figured that we go file based instead. People though I was crazy back then so to no make them flip completely I saved this one unit. But now I think it's safe to let it go. I was actually paid quite well or the other once. My biggest loss on tape decks where A WooddooD6 deck, bought it for 220 000 USD hardly used it and a few years later sold it for 3000USD... D6 was the betamax of the hd.... 8 bit HD uncompressed. People went for 10bit super compressed HDcam instead and then HDcam SR. But I was smart enough not to be fooled again so I never got a HDCamSR...

This Digitbeta for sale goes for 800USD + shipping. One day it will be worth a fortune, when you are the only one having one and somebody needs to go trough the tape archives

 

[Mike Garrick]

I've a wardrobe full of metal digi betacam tapes anyone want to buy some ; ) ...going cheap.

 

[Nick Pasquariello]

I did mention asking the client for a technical spec list, right? That would include aspect ratio.

If you submit files or tapes for a job and you have no clue what the specs are, you could chase your tail for weeks with endless rejections and redos, not knowing specifically what the client (or their distributor) wants and expects.

Oh, I know. My comment was more about how there isn't a set opinion on whether SD spots shot in HD should be cropped or letterboxed. Personally, I'd rather see an image letterboxed because of the compositional aspects, and I've spoken to many that agree. Many want to see the spots cropped because they don't want to feel like they're wasting pixels. There's no set rule-of-thumb on this one.

 

[Robert Bentley]

WOW, thanks everyone! There is a wealth of great info in this thread and on this forum. What I plan to do is shoot it 29.97fps like others have recommended and contact the local advertiser that the client typically goes through to confirm what they want.

 

[Patrick Lavaud]

You serious ... ? Wow.
None of my ad's have touched tape in over 2 years now.

I'm surprised Marc, I know you have done some TVC here in Indonesia, great ones by the way, and, dealing with Indonesian TV deliveries daily, I unfortunately always have to give deliveries in beta SP... it is so sad and so back to the nineties but that's the reality here with Indonesian TV Broadcaster, it all end in Beta SP... I guess you are the not one dealing with TV deliveries here, you saved some tears !

Look forward meeting on your next stop in Jakarta, don't hesitate to drop me a line !

 

[Björn Benckert]

WOW, thanks everyone! There is a wealth of great info in this thread and on this forum. What I plan to do is shoot it 29.97fps like others have recommended and contact the local advertiser that the client typically goes through to confirm what they want.

My opinion...
Do not shoot 29.97 as it looks plain ugly. It's believe it or not better to shoot 24p and convert to 29.97. There is a reason for this, and thats how commercials have been shot since film and telecine to betacam SP even. It's simple 29,97 shot material looks like video. So do proper 24p shooting and then let somebody that knows what they are doing do the rest. With the rest I mean downsampling and framerate conversion to the given spec for each channel and also let them handle the shipping of tapes or uploading of files.

The guys on this forum that tells you to get your own Beta deck and such do not know what they are talking about, since even if you get a deck, you need to be doing dubs full time and have all the audio scopes and really know what you are doing with the tones and bars, fade up fade downs, 10 second freeze in the end clocks etc. As all channels/countries have their standards, some start on 10:00:00:00 with a 30 sec -3 sec countdown as a lead, freezeframe 10 second in the end and some start on other timecode and only have 15s clock etc. etc.. it's basically a jungle and it's not something a producer, dp or production assistant or even an editor should be dealing with. As if you do it wrong your client will sue you big time. Post houses have dedicated people for mastering and they also got insurance that covers when the that little commercial shows up as black or the sound levels are off, wrong audio file is attached, the stereo mix should have been in mono or the wrong title version goes onto the wrong channel etc, etc...

So basically the cost for having the master dubs done and sent out by a third party is the way to go. Then all you have to do is to double the number on the invoice they give you and forward it to your client. If they ask why there is such a high cost you tell them that you looked over the process making sure things went as they should. And more important if shit goes wrong you do not loose your client, as you then can simply blame the posthouse... so having the post house as a buffer is a guarantee that you do not get any bad air between you and your client.

So if you try to make the dubs your self you might fuck things up, and then your client will come back to you and explain that they paid so and so many 100k USD's to broadcast and you failed and they did not get their airtime, jada jada... Then, thats when you wished you never asked how to do transition masters.


I have been running Syndicate for 13 years, we have been doing dubs and transition masters for about 4000 advertising projects, many with more than 50 films going out to multiple countries with multiple TV stations in each country... And I have seen things go real ape shit when people want to save some bucks on this little last step on the production and it's simply not worth the hassle. We got one guy, he do all the dubs, masters, H.264, quicktimes, ftp loads etc. and has done so for 13 years. He knows whats what and his track record is fantastic... but still, I keep the insurance cover high, just in case...

 

[shashbugu]

WOW, thanks everyone! There is a wealth of great info in this thread and on this forum. What I plan to do is shoot it 29.97fps like others have recommended and contact the local advertiser that the client typically goes through to confirm what they want.

WoW wow, buddy, don't shoot 29.97 shoot 24p 0r 23.98. Dont contact the local advertiser if your client is bypassing them. Go straight to the TV station and get the specs. if its a local or regional broadcaster they might/will do the conversion for you, most likely they would have you ftp it (FTP is pretty standard for most American regional stations). They only ask you for digi-beta because they assume shooting on the red is akin to shooting 35mm. If its a national broadcaster use Adstream.

Don't buy a digi-beta deck even if its free, they are a nightmare to use. Pay a transfer house its only a couple hundred quid. next time bill with the specs in mind. my 2 cents

 

[Adam Eden]

I reuse my digi tapes and yes you can buy them. I haven't bought one in years as i only throw them out when Adstream tell me there are drop outs on the tape, thats usually over 100 re-records.

Digi beta is a workhorse, and somedays we will send up to 40 dubs, as we send dubs to Adstream everyday.

Once the National Broadband hits my area (Lane Cove, im next to Deluxe,etc) then i will upload ads to Adstream. I have all the realtime encoders and all that jazz but it still takes too long to upload to their server as i only have an ADSL2 line and thats all i can get into the business park i am located in right now unless i want to pay $40k to get a fibre line installed.

Digi beta rocks. It takes about 15 minutes per dub to upload on my slow end. So now you can see why i use Digi.

 

[Nick Morrison]

I agree with just about everyone here. Shoot 23.98, and convert later.

I work in broadcast PROMO, not ADVERTISING, but the workflow is almost IDENTICAL.

The one thing I will say is I love mastering our final spots to HD-CAM as it's a fantastic, almost indestructible medium. Also very easy to store, ship and find spots (with a timecode accurate log).

All my broadcast clients are still struggling with how to organize, store, and ship hundreds, now probably 1000's of shoot drives.

 

[Björn Benckert]

I got about 5000 digibetas all only used once if somebody wants to buy bulk I will give you a very good price. Most is 6minutes tapes, but also some large 124minute tapes... all is top grade sony tapes.

Adam, Over here it's basically so that the films are made from files, and they are also graded and mastered as files and then the conversion to "transcode master files" is nothing more than a batch render setup for each channel in episode and then a quite quick upload via adtoox or adstream.

The big save on using files is not really the tape cost and the time saved or wasted, it's just as much or more about the currier costs. Shipping 200 digibetas to 200 TV houses around europe is quite costy especially when it all has to happen over night.... we actually did that back in the digi days when we where doing some H&M Carl Lagerfeldt commercials and the client got a bit of hybris and plainly said, "lets send it on all the channels in europe for 2 days..." I do not know if he realized that there was quite a bit of stations in europe in countries where he did not even have H&M stores... So broadcasting there maybe was not such a good business idea. Just doing the titles and all the prictags etc in the right currancy on about 20 films was quite a big operation, shipping the tapes was not cheap or easy...

Question is "realtime encoders" what you use for going from tape to file? Or just making file to file in realtime? I mean the time it takes to render a 30 second commerical into something else is not really that long of a wait, is it?

 

[Adam Eden]

Björn its not the transcoding time that is the problem for me, it the time to upload them to the Adstream server, i only have a shit internet connection. And last attempt was going to be 23 hours to upload 20 ads. And i make tv commercials everyday that are on air that evening, thats why digi still works for me.

 

[Stephen Strangways]

Up until two years ago I was delivering commercials in Canada on Beta SP. Then we went with uploads to Mijo (now DG Mijo.) I've output thousands of Beta SP tapes in my career. A few tips:

1) If you are doing more than one spot, ask the station how many commercials can be on one tape. I've done campaigns of 75 different spots where some stations will accept 25 spots per beta and another will. only. accept. one. 15-second. spot. per beta. So they get 75 tapes, and each one has about a minute of bars & tone, slate, and black before the 15-second spot.

2) Speaking of which, make sure you get specs on bars & tone, slate, and black they want at the start of each tape.

3) In Canada, we needed governmental approval of each spot, and each spot needed to be issued a number that we quoted on each slate or it wouldn't air. And each spot needed an identifying title/code that became very specific in later years. It's not something you could just make up as you went along.

4) FCP 7 did a terrible job of 3:2 pulldown to convert 23.976 to 29.97. We ended outputting each finished 15 or 30 second spot from FCP at 23.976, doing the conversion to 29.97 in After Effects, then putting everything together with bars & tone, slate, and black, in a 29.97 FCP timeline.

5) That 29.97 FCP timeline was dropframe, and that was critically important to be able to figure out what timecode each spot could be found at on the tape, when a tape contained multiple spots. Initially working on a non-drop timeline and outputting dropframe to tape meant that none of our timecodes matched once they were on the tape.