Not so sweet sixteen

farss wrote on 5/4/2007, 3:37 PM
I'd mentioned this in another thread but at the time hadn't been able to authenticate the rumour. Now that I've read the article in the March/April 2007 issue of IBE it's probably worth a decent mention.

In a nutshell the BBC has decided that 16mm or Super 16mm film is not an acceptable medium for HD acquisition. Reason given is the grain structure doesn't sit well with their mpeg4 encoding for broadcast. When asked if improvements in the encoders would change this situation the BBC replied no, the improvements would be used to reduce bandwidth. The problem seems to have been made worse by the use of high speed stock, pushing the stock and by those who like to use the 'knee' in film. In other words doing anything that promotes the grain.

Most of us here I know don't have the budgets to shoot 16mm but it does highlight the point that applying temporal effects in post to emulate these aspects of film could either result in programs being rejected or at least how your content finally looks to the viewer not being what you intended. I don't know enough to understand the impact of noise on these encoders compared to the impact of grain but my best guess is that enough noise could also bring you unstuck.
Even if your content is never going to be broadcast I'd hazard a guess that all HiDef distribution options will impose the same limitations.

Bob.

Comments

riredale wrote on 5/4/2007, 4:42 PM
What idiots.

Maybe what they should be doing is suggesting certain formats as preferred over others, but certainly not an outright ban.

Wasn't it last week that Discovery Channel (or was it History Channel, or the Travel Channel?) dictated that HD content meant only certain cameras need apply, not including Z1s. It's like a gallery telling photographers that only 4x5 negative stock will be acceptable, not 35mm or digital.

It IS true that film grain/video noise is an encoder's worst nightmare, but the solution then is a gentle low-pass filter, not an outright ban.
farss wrote on 5/4/2007, 7:19 PM
Not all "bans" are created equal it seems. Subequent to that announcement the Beeb did buy and air a program shot on 16mm but it was shot on a low speed fine grained stock.

Yes Discovery has set the F330/350 as perhaps the minimum standard although that's not quite true from several aspects. They have a list of approved cameras and they made it to that list. Other cams can be used for no more 15% of the final program's content. i.e. you could use a Z1 to shoot one scene as say a crash cam. The other thing as always is no matter what you shot something on if it's killer content they'll buy it.

Also these guidelines seem to apply moreso to broadcaster funded projects than purchasing as such. You go to them with a pilot and they say yeah great idea, we'll fund x episodes of that but give us a price to shoot it according to our standards. Fair enough I guess, it's their money you'd be spending.

Bob.
GlennChan wrote on 5/5/2007, 12:32 AM
Low grain film stocks they probably would allow. However, in practical shooting situations, you'd need to shoot some of the faster, grainier stocks.
Alan Roberts has a pretty good post about this:
[url=http://forums.dvdoctor.net/showthread.php?p=276078&highlight=super16#post276078]

2- At some level, part of it is also politics. When the broadcaster is the client, they wield the power and they get to call the shots. So they can get away with fairly asinine technical requirements, arbitrary rules, etc. etc. They are the client, they can do whatever the hell they want.

Since they generally want the best quality product, they will demand a certain level of technical quality. However, the world is full of tradeoffs. Money spent on a better format means less money spent elsewhere, etc. etc. Sometimes specs (or other broadcaster demands) are written without this in mind. Though in this case it might make a lot of sense to disallow high-speed S16 stocks (and they seem to have tested this).

3- From a business perspective, broadcasters have branding to protect/push. If you flip to an HD channel, they want you to be impressed by the image quality. As long as your material is visually impressive, then you shouldn't really have a problem with these technical guidelines/rules. Of course the broadcaster's main concern is how many relevant viewers your show might bring in (relevant = fits their demographic, fits their station branding).

apit34356 wrote on 5/5/2007, 1:45 AM
farss, the world is complex at times. I been told that rumors of limited 16mm film stock has been driving the new hot argument in EU that film chemical processing is environment and climate unfriendly, now with 4k digital approaching in the near future. I would not be surprise to see the EU ban all 8-16mm film processing in the near future.
craftech wrote on 5/5/2007, 4:19 AM
Unless I am reading it wrong the BBC Post Production service seems to embrace it. That they are considering banning it throughout the EU seems like a stretch.

John
winrockpost wrote on 5/5/2007, 6:47 AM
stuff is getting compressed so much before it gets to my house (dish ) we get artifacts,, bleeding on most graphics and some shows look like they are shot on vhs,, so its kind of a strange deal,, give us the best so we can downgrade it to be almost decent,, if you give us decent it will become horrible , but hey we got 400 channels of crap.
riredale wrote on 5/5/2007, 8:30 AM
It's always been that quantity trumps quality.

Back in the late 1980's when I was involved in the nascent HDTV standard-setting process, I sat in on many meetings where engineers argued heatedly that broadcasters should not be allowed to take one of the new HD channels and be given the option of showing either a single HD program or multiple SD programs in that same slot. The broadcasters won, because multiple program streams equals more revenue and money is what keeps them in business.