Thanks Jay

I was reading a post from a few months back dealing with the broadcast color filter. General thinking seems to be avoid it unless needed on titles etc.

I must say I'm dreading the color part a bit as the majority of this will be shot outdoors with available light (no choice here - the nature of the spot requires it). Will require an extra measure of planning on my part....but I enjoy a challenge.

I'm a little fired up as I've had a couple of things I've been wanting to try and this gives me a good opportunity to try some new stuff.

[edit] Speaking of color standards, I've been noticing that many local spots as of late seem to scream "Standards....we don't need no stinkin standards!" Some are waaaaaay of the charts on both color and exposure.

Colors:

For NTSC (US or Canada), NOT Japan, NOT PAL:

Add a black color generator underneath all other tracks, 16 16 16 in RGB values. Any fade to blacks will have the right level. Check that upper levels don't have compositing modes like multiply or screen- if they do, use the parent/child relationships to isolate the effect.

Apply the broadcast safe filter (probably to the video output track).
115IRE (composite) seems to be the most reasonable maximum level for composite luma+chroma values. Various stations are different standards, but I think they'll all be fine with 115IRE. This is from reading the TIG mailing list archives... there are discussions about it.
In Vegas 5:
Select "Conservative - 7.5 Setup" Preset in "broadcast colors" filter. Under composite, type in 115.00 for max.
You can play around with the smoothness sliders but it probably isn't worth your time. They make clipping a little softer.

With the BColors filter on, your video will generally still look good. What the filter does is clip illegal values. For luminance values, it lowers/raises luminance until it gets into legal range. For chroma, it changes chroma/saturation. For composite, it lowers/raises chroma/saturation values.

For illegal composite values, the BC filter will lower chroma/saturation. Sometimes things look better if you lower/raise luminance, allowing for a more saturated color that's less bright (as opposed to a washed-out but bright color). Use the secondary color corrector for this. Sample settings:
Gain = 0.925
Limit saturation
low 53
high 162
smooth 98

Limit luminance
low 202
High 255
Smooth 108

I would probably apply a secondary CC like that before the broadcast colors filter. Things will look a little better that way.

Some clips may require manual intervention.
For illegal luma, you can use the color corrector filter to tweak things into legal range so values don't get clipped off. You want to do this if you aren't seeing details in shadows or highlights. Play around with the gain and offset controls (the offset control may be a little finicky if you use a mouse). Gain multiplies all values by whatever's in the box, offset raises/lowers thing by whatever's in the box.
Otherwise, leave things alone because you aren't maximizing the dynamic range of your footage.

Another possible tweak you can do is this:
Use the color curves filter and do a film-like gamma curve with it. Make 0 (input) go to 16, and 255 (input) go to 235. Have a very mild s shape in the curve. This does a few things:
A- De-saturates highlights and shadows, which is good because the Broadcast colors filter will clip them off anyways.
B- The image will generally look better. More aesthetically pleasing. This is because saturation and contrast is increased- it seems that most people prefer this.
C- It also takes care of illegal luminance values, which will not get clipped off.
It's a pain to make that curve.

Caveat: I have never submitted anything for broadcast. The information above is what I know about this stuff. I believe it is technically accurate and will give an aesthetically pleasing image most of the time with little work.

2- Stuff I don't know much about:
Delivery formats: Some stations may only accept betaSP or digibeta. They may also want very specific timecode where the program starts at 10:00:00;00 and you have a bunch of stuff before it (bars and tone, slate).
Tone should be at -20dBFS for pro digital formats (DVCAM, DVCPRO, digibeta) and -12dBFS for consumer formats (miniDV). Peaks should never exceed 8dB more than tone.
Analog formats is a different story... watch out for tone in terms of VU, and 7.5IRE setup/pedestal.


Every station has different policies and standards. Some may be pretty lax, and others may be very strict and reject your master for certain things.

Strongly recommend you do a search on this forum. This has been discussed a lot. Use the word "broadcast" and restrict the search to the Vegas forum, and only search the Subject heading.

Here are some sample hits:

Broadcast 1

Broadcast 2

Broadcast 3

The search function can yield amazing results in a matter of seconds ...

good tips.

boomhower (named after the TV show guy?).... i'd find out what the cable/TV guys want first before you start worying about specs. the local station I worked at didn't worry much. Mostly because
a) I edited & ran the board and was damn good at my job & kept everything legal :)
b) we had control room equipment to compensate for extreams (disney ALWAYS has stuff out of range.. watch their cartoons on the disney channel & you'll see sparkels from really bright colors via analog sattelite)

Since I was in charge of editing I didn't realy care about timecode. I ignored the colorbard/tone at the start. They were always different then the commercial anyway (agraviating. Especially since Premiere 6 sucked in the audio dept. Laywer commercials were the worst).

Here's what I'd think about: keep an eye on your audio. don't let it peak. If you have a huge change in audio volume (ie msot of the commercial is -8db but you have a few lound parts that hit -.1. I'm talking the Vegas meter, not the VCR meter) leave a note for the editing guy. They'll appreciate it (and will know not to compensate).

video: keep your whites in broadcast range. nothing pissed me off more then having that loud "buzz" when white appeared. Premiere was hard to fix that too (not everyone uses vegas... :) ) I haven't found black out of ranges causes much of a problem. Most likely because the "floor" was 0 & 16 isn't much above it... but a white at 255 is MUCH higher then 200. :)

Enjoy!