Broadcast Templates?

Fleshpainter wrote on 11/19/2003, 2:35 PM

Probably not the right term, but I have not been able to get any strait answers as to how to lay out a timeline for videos which will be submitted to various cable stations. Example: Time Warner told me that for a 30 second commercial, they want 20 seconds of color bar, 5 seconds of black, 30seconds of commercial, and 20 seconds of black. A company which does print to film gives a longer list but just as specific as the above with beep tones and one frame of the number 2 and 59 frames later do this... etc. I'm looking for, and cannot find a similar set of instructions for a typical 30 minute TV program. I'm getting "I think it's 24 or 27 minutes or whatever but I'm not sure... etc" Does anyone have anything more solid on this? Receptionists at TV stations just hook me up with answering machines which never result in returned calls.

Comments

BillyBoy wrote on 11/19/2003, 3:09 PM

Yours is the type of question that if you ask 20 people you'll get 20 different answers.

Case in point... In another recent thread I mentioned that I have so-called premium digital cable where I get most of the channels possible from a cable company. I guessed a little over 150 at the time. I actually counted them the other day, and it was really 236 channels. The point is if you do some serious channel flipping while a "live" signal is being broadcast by multiple networks like was the case today with the breaking Michael Jackson story where the district attoney and the sheriff were holding a news conference you'll see a wide variance in the skin tones of the two speakers channel to channel. Since it is the SAME event, being broadcast live and some probably pooled coverage as well, if everybody is doing a "legal" signal and prior to going on air they adjust with color bars at the scene and again at some control center before it getting on air nobody here has yet explained the reason why there is such a huge difference between the various network broadcasts other than to suggest someone along the line is a little more than a little careless.

farss wrote on 11/19/2003, 3:27 PM

There are no templates that will magically produce what you need.
But the PTT does let you specify what you need or you can just make it up on the timeline using generated media.

In general I wouldn't freak out about too much for television, they'll usually copy your material onto digibetacam and set the leaders and TC to suit themselves as different stations do it differently. Countdowns are mostly not used anymore but you should include a board or slate identifying what the tape is, actual program runtime and format etc. Again probably not a showstopper but my attitude would be its a bit like sending a handwritten CV versus a typed one.

Try to get the program to start at a sensible TC, one trick I've learnt is set it to 10:00:00:00. BBC and ABC are about the only people who do this but it makes a lot of sense, it avoids having to work with negative TC if you get the idea.

johnmeyer wrote on 11/19/2003, 4:45 PM

The few things I've submitted to broadcast, I just handed them a DV tape with some video on it. They're going to do their own "stuff" with it, so I wouldn't spend even ten seconds trying to prepare leaders, trailers, etc. Just make sure the stuff that counts (i.e., your video) is really good, because a lot of people are going to see it, even if it appears on a public access cable channel.