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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

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

R

Robert Bentley

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I'm new to shooting commercials. The client said they usually have them put on beta tapes and then are delivered to a tv station to have them aired. I'm not familiar with beta tapes, is that even the right term of tape or the best to deliver? Do I need to shoot on Red then get it to a post house or something who has beta drives? I searched newegg for beta drives and didn't find anything.

Which make me wonder, what else do I not know about shooting commercials that will air on TV? I know it needs to be broadcast quality which the Red is. I plan to shoot at 24 fps and then try to get it on beta. Anything else I need to know? :huh:
 
Beta typically means DigitBeta or it could be shorthand for HDCam (same form factor, but DigiBeta is the newer SD format [as opposed to the older Betacam that was the SD standard before DigiBeta], and HDCam is, well, HD). Many TV stations, especially smaller or local stations, still use tapes as opposed to a digital format. The transition to servers holding all content really hasn't happened yet. Some places will accept either a file to be FTP'd over, or tape: DigiBeta and HDCam.

The decks typically cost multi thousands of dollars (used to be around $50k to $100k, much lower now, but still quite a pretty penny for something you may use either once or occasionally). In my opinion, if you are asking the question of "What is this" then the answer is "Don't buy one." There are plenty of transfer houses that you can send your content to, and they can master out the tape and ship it to the receiving party. As an added reason to do such a thing, there's a good deal of technical finesse that could go into setting up the deck and getting it to work properly. Not something you want to deal with at the 11th hour. Just make sure that your client realizes that the spot has to be finalized a day or two early to allow time to get the digital file to the transfer house to master out.

I'm not sure where you're located, but there is at least one place in the Boston area called, aptly, Video Transfer that will take just about any format in to just about any format out. There are a bunch of places in NYC and LA that do the same thing.
 
We just take it to a local company as an uncompressed Quicktime or AVI and have them lay it to tape. It's an unfortunate reality of a lot of commercial work but it's mostly being handled now by intermediaries who are responsible for distributing to the TV stations. Thankfully we can just FTP it to one of those companies and they handle all of the tape deliverables and specific delivery requirements for different stations.

The one thing that still drives me crazy about delivery is that everybody still seems to demand interlaced footage. So much can go wrong with progressive -> interlaced conversion that I really wish it was handled by the distributors as part of an automated process. Then they could make it bullet proof instead of hoping that you submitted your 23.98 footage in the right interlacing for their encoders to flag it as 24p.
 
Wow! Really? I have not had a client ask for a beta tape in years. I would try to talk to the station. I would be shocked if they don't have a way to take it in file form.
I still have a Khona LHe in my MacPro (conforms and down-converts from HD to SD) and a SP beta deck. I think I even have some raw beta stock.
Send me a link to a HD file and I can master it for you.
Email is ralph@ralphmadison.com if you want to hit me up.
 
Not sure what country your in.

I went tapeless 5 years ago. If you look for companies like "Adstream' they can deliver datacopies to all relevant staitons via you uploading to them the TVC at the correct specs. generally H264 in its various "best" flavours.

Most stations will accept digital delivery from vendors like Adstream or similar as this is the route international/national agencies deliver there advertising content to relevant stations....ie major revenue source.

Hope this helps.
 
I just had a request for a Digibeta master as well as an HDcam master for a PBS project. Happily I still have an old steam-driven Digibeta deck, covered in dust and spider eggs, so I shoveled in some coal to get the pressure up and made sure it still worked. But some places out in the world are still not only using tape, they are using SD tape. Museum quality...
 
Robert Bentley said:
I'm new to shooting commercials. The client said they usually have them put on beta tapes and then are delivered to a tv station to have them aired.
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Are you doing the final edit? As far as I'm concerned, delivery on tape is not something a DP or a camera crew should have to worry about.

If you are, in fact, doing all the final post work -- editing, color-correction, VFX, titling, mixing, and final output -- then yes, you would have to find a post house that can handle taking a file and outputting it as Betacam SP. If I were you, I'd ask for a very specific delivery spec list detailing exactly what they want to see. They may be using the generic term "Beta," but this could mean HDCam-SR, or HDCam, or Betacam SP, or god-knows-what else.

Bear in mind if the final output is standard-def, you'll have to worry about cropping the image for 4x3. My gut feeling is that letterboxing is not ideal for standard-def commercials in 2013.
 
Marc Wielage said:
Bear in mind if the final output is standard-def, you'll have to worry about cropping the image for 4x3. My gut feeling is that letterboxing is not ideal for standard-def commercials in 2013.
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Depends on who you ask. The opinions on this are as varied as they can possibly be, and the people that hold those opinions are either the ones pressing the buttons, or the ones calling the shots, or both.

Which means that you should have it specified by the client if it is to be 4x3 cropped or letterboxed.
 
Robert Bentley said:
I searched newegg for beta drives and didn't find anything.
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This made me laugh ;)

It sounds like you might not have experience handling 24p > 29.97i conversions - which are required to be standard NTSC. If you haven't started yet, maybe you should acquire at 29.97 instead of 24p to simplify your post workflow. Everyone else has been spot on regarding tape deliverables. Specs are VERY particular and vary widely from station to station. Get the spec sheet early on from the local stations you plan on airing with and make sure you understand it. When it comes time to deliver, you don't want to be the reason your clients ad-buy is not running because the material can't be properly exported. That can be a sticky situation! I have presets tailored to each of the stations we work with regularly. Thankfully they all accept digital delivery now but we still have a BetacamSP deck on hand!
 
All you have to do is . Shoot and master in 24p and contact a post / dub house a bit in advance (a week before delivery or so), them hand them the spec sheet / dub order from your client and ask for a quote.
Prices vary quite a bit in this field so you might ask two or three places and make sure they give you a complete quote, in other words you give them a 8bit tiff 1920x1080 sequence and a corresponding aiff file they do the rest, just so they do not give you a lot of added conversion fees, sound laybacks and other things in the end that was not calculated for. When doing large amount of broadcast masters these costs adds up. I actually done a lot of project where the broadcast masters where a bigger cost than the film itself. When airing all over europe and such.

When you got your quotes in you choose not the cheapest one but the one in the middle ground and you should be good to go.


We acctually do a lot of broadcast mastering for the states here at Syndicate and I'm quite surprised how the LA companies can still charge so heavily as they do. It's like they still live back in the old D1 era.

So if wanted email your clients spec sheet to "marcus at syndicate dot se" and he will give you good quote. And as I'm pretty sure the stations involved will take "file deliveries" like adstream and such if going trough the right channels, so bouncing the stuff by stockholm sweden is no problem.
 
steam powered digibeta....hahaha

now thats funny, would also caution our original poster from looking for "beta drives" might be a bit hard to come by
 
I still have a Beta Sp deck, that has not been used in years. I would be shocked if this station wouldn't take an upload. I had a client last year that said the same thing when I knew all the stations preferred digital uploads. Once I explained to the client how much cheaper it would be than printing to tape they, of course, choose the digital route.
 
I had the same issue with the requirement for a Beta SP delivery. I found a used SP deck that worked perfectly for $1200. Not only could I deliver the job, but now can play back the last millennium technology when presented with it.
 
Mike Garrick said:
Not sure what country your in.

I went tapeless 5 years ago. If you look for companies like "Adstream' they can deliver datacopies to all relevant staitons via you uploading to them the TVC at the correct specs. generally H264 in its various "best" flavours.

Most stations will accept digital delivery from vendors like Adstream or similar as this is the route international/national agencies deliver there advertising content to relevant stations....ie major revenue source.

Hope this helps.
Click to expand...

This is great.

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

Must research...
 
Robert Bentley said:
...what else do I not know about shooting commercials that will air on TV
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Please don't take this the wrong way, but it is important to recognize when you are in over your head. You are getting a lot of conflicting advice here about deliverables that could be easily solved by partnering with a local production company that understands your market.

There are many things that are different about commercial production compared to drama or indie films. There is a good chance you will mess something up, cost yourself a lot of money and lose a client. Get professional help.
 
Steam powered, well almost... Hey, I brought you guys a box of donuts, could you pull me a half dozen 2" dubs of this 30?

In all fairness there always seems to be some hold out cable company or small TV station which still runs locals in standard definition, and still lists Beta sp and DVD as deliverables. It's been a couple of years now since I have even mucked with tape, as all our TV commercials are delivered to the TV stations via ftp transfer now.
 
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