Check with Vict, especially if you are doing a national commercial vs local.

This is a good topic - I've just delivered a 30 sec clip (I had to have dubbed from Mini DV to BetacamSP).

I used the default Vegas audio tone and colour bars when printing to tape, but these may or may not have borne any simlarity to the video or audio levels of my avi ... as it happens, both seem ok but I didn't really know how to check ...

I also put a caption saying the 30 sec clip begins 10 sec after this caption disappears ... and it did. But they'd probably have preferred a conventional countdown.

Be interesting to compare notes on submission rules ...

when I worked at a TV station I recieve the commercials. Here's what I hated:

when the tone had no relation to the actual audio level of the commercial (then i'd rather not have a tone).

there was no slate giving the spot a name (i encoded the spots to mpeg-2 and need a name after all!)

no sound normilization (when captured i liked the sound to peak at 0db on the computer. The mpeg-2 playback device automaticly took 6db off everything to start)

countdown is nice but not 100% necessar (msot of the countdowns were off though anyway).

and yes, make the colors broadcast legal. :)

Most places require:
minimum of 30 sec's Bar/Tone. Tone needs to be at -20dB if from digital source. You can often squeak by with -16dB tone, but since Vegas outputs -20dB, might as well leave it set.

5 second black leader after bars/tone. Note this on your production liner/sheet.

5 seconds of black following your spot.

Here is what one of our client's require for a commercial (based on NBC's local requirements)
• The tape timecode must be continuous and in the Drop Frame format. Both LTC and VITC must match. There must be timecode from the beginning of the tape to at least one minute beyond the end of program material.
• The beginning of the tape will include at least one minute of SMPTE color bars along with 1 KHz audio tone on channels 1 and 2 (audio tone should be 0 VU for analog recording formats and –20 dBFS for digital recording formats).
• Program material must be followed by a minimum of one minute of black. Video levels will not exceed 100 IRE.
• For analog formats, average audio levels should approach, but not exceed, 0-VU.
• For digital formats, audio peaks should approach, but not exceed, -10Db. • Audio should be mixed at mono to channels 1 and 2.
• Record in SP (Standard Play) mode only.
Tape Formats: Beta SP, Beta SX, Digital BetaCam, DVCAM
Time Format: Must be cut on half minute and minute notices; tape wrapper notes or other sheet printed information must accompany the tape with contact information, timecode for start/stop points on the tape, and breakpoints from SMPTE Bars and tones to broadcast start.
Hope this helps.

BTW, this is all on the VASST FAQ site.

It's pretty well all been covered here.
From what I'm told countdowns are useless.
BC legal depends on just who it's going to, our national broadcaster will just plain reject anything that isn't, they tech check every submitted tape (what a job zzzzzzz). Still better safe than sorry.

Slates are a mighty good idea.

If it's a 30 sec TVC then it must be 0:00:30:00, not one frame either way. It should start from TC 0 or 10:00:00:00 so the preroll TC makes sense.

Also I seem to recall some need for the first and last frames to be black or possibly x number of frames at start and end.

Bob.

Hey Spot,
Been all over the VASST site but can't locate FAQ. Could you post the link please?
Cheers,
Tom

It's linked to from one of the obscure VASST attendee pages, but we've made it public.

Hey Spot,
In case you didn't know, questions #3 and #4 have their answers mixed up (question #3 has the answer listed for #4 and vice-versa). People would probably figure it out but just thought you might want to know.
Randy

Thanks for the heads-up, but I just now checked the page, and can't see any incorrect links. The correct answer should appear at the top of your browser, and the first 10 questions are all doing that for me. When you start hitting the last 3 answers, the answer doesn't appear EXACTLY in the top, because it's at the end of the page fold, and doesn't have any more horizontal space.
I thought maybe when we copied this from the Sundance page to the VASST pages that something got screwed up, but it appears to be working fine?

This is just kind of a joke, or at least a bit off topic, but I was once told that the mark of "A TRUE PRODUCER" is when he/she comes up with his/her own Slate and Countdown.
I did one MANY years ago and my boss at the time came to me and said, "Well, I can tell you're a real producer now. You've customized your slate/countdown."
He indicated that it was a mark of personal pride to put that info into a format that was clearly readable and personalized.
Since then, I change my slate once a year. I know that countdowns are useless, but i started using them again last year - because I think that they're cool and fun to re-design.

The funniest countdown I ever saw was a series of dogs with numbers on their sides from 10 -2. Each second the dog changed and there was a BARK instead of a beep. Probably drove TV stations crazy but I laughed everytime I saw it.

Dave T2

Howard Stern's producer allegedly used FARTS for the countdown for the Howard Stern movie when it went to replication.

LOL LOL LOL LOL . .. Ahahahahaha . .. . . . :() . . . . .

National TV4 in Sweden requires one minute of color bars and 1 KHz tone. A countdown with info. Three seconds of black before the program starts and at least five at the end. The program must start at TC 10:00:00:00.

They also need a paper with all information in the countdown plus who wrote the music, the name and number of the CD, song title and how many seconds of it that were used.

Best/Tommy

I'm not sure of a lot of all the legistic requirements, and I never edited the video for commercials but I've done three years of audio post production for radio and TV commercials that have been aired in the U.S. on a national level. If you're familiar with ad agencies these where some of the standards in the U.S. follwed by Campbell-Ewald, Doner Advertising, Young & Rubican, Bozell, and quite a few others.

Audio tone was 1Khz @ -20dB on the digital formats. I will give you smpte start times to better explain how a tape was laid out that would be delivered to a duplication house then distributed nationally.

Smpte Time code at beginning of the tape usually started at 58:00.00 (ie 58 minutes) .

Bars with 1Khz tone started at 58:30 and lasted for 1 minute followed by black.

At 59:45 the video slate appeared, some would have countdowns but more important was the information, which included agency Name that produced the spot, a title for the spot, the duration of the spot, the customer the spot is for, and the spot should also have a spot code. The spot code is unique to that commercial. So for instance let's say I make a commercial, I will assign it some kind of code. I will call the code "RED-001A", then the next commercial behind this one on the tape I will call RED-002A. Now let's say that gets shipped off to the TV stations. I tell them we are running spot # RED-001A for the week of 10/11-10/ 18, then for the next week I tell them to run RED-002A. Now let's say the customer heard/saw something in the first spot they didn't like, so they came back into the studio to do a minor revision on the audio and/or video. We need to now give that spot a new code number, so I'll call it RED-001B. Now when I ship this spot off to the TV station, I'll tell them to stop playing RED-001A and replace it with RED-001B. With a unique spot code it elliminates any confusion that can happen at the station with them having multiple spots, because in my example the customer, the title and everything else stayed the same and I'm not going to rely on someone loading the spot into a cart to be able to tell the differences of one or two words I might have changed in the audio.

Anyways, the spot video slate will last until 59:58, then goto black. At 59:58 there is usually a beep tone, regfered to as a "2 beep". Propbably not eccential, but is usually there so you could easily sync the audio up with the video if they ever got transfered and seperated (ie Video always starts on the hour, and 2 beep always starts 2 seconnds before the video) The spot will start at 1:00:00 (1 hour) and last it's duration of usually 30 seconds. The spot would usually fade to black at 1:00:29.15 (ie 1/2 second before the end of the 30 second duration.

If there was a spot after the first then it's video slate would start at 1:00:45 and then repeat the same pattern where the spot starts now at 1:01:00.

The format of the master tape was usually Digital D-6, D-8, Digital beta SP, or Beta SP. I believe when the master was shipped to the duplication house it was copied to analog 3/4" tape and then distributed to the stations.

Hope this helps,
Red

P.S. If any of you have happened to watch the Superbowl and heard the Disney spots immediately following saying, "John Elway, you just won the superbowl....what are you gonna do next?....John Elway: I'm going to Disney Land!!!!" That's my work :-)