I am creating my first show that will be broadcasted at the end of next week. I am delivering the show to the customer who will in turn drop it off at the local facility.

He has assured me that they do accept shows off of the dvd format.

My question is what else should I do to make this show broadcast-acceptable. I'm using PP 1.5 and figured I'd drop the 'Broadcast Colors' filter onto the entire final project.

What else should I do?

Color bars at the beginning of the disc? I assume I should be monitoring video levels, but I am unsure of what to look for or how to correct it ect.

Thanks in advance.

Drop the broadcast filter on, and pick the extremely conservative setting. If it has smoothness settings, turn them up a little bit.

Toggle it on/off to see its effect on your footage. Usually its default settings are fine. If it makes your video look bad, then you can go in and manually color correct things to make your footage look better.

Audio:
Dub to pro digital video formats:
-20dBFS nominal level and -10dBFS maximum for broadcast
Record a -20dBFS tone at 1khz along with color bars at the front of the tape.

Dub to miniDV: Use -12dBFS for nominal level and tone. Don't let maximum (of peaks) exceed -2dBFS.

DVD isn't typically a mastering format so it may be hard to find information on proper levels for it... and they may decide to do their own things with it. You might want to err on the side of caution and use -20dBFS for nominal level and -10dBFS maximum. If they screw up, your sound should be 8dB too quiet (and the commercials may be a little loud). Viewers adjust their TV volume to compensate. If you did it the other way, it might be too loud and get distortion.

2- The sure-fire way is to talk to their engineers.

Thanks for the help!

I talked to my audio guy about what you said and he said it wouldn't be hard for him to do it at all.

Also I am going to attempt to speak to the actual engineers tomorrow if possible to learn more...

I don't have access to any betacam dvcam ect decks - so would the best format, in your opinion, to deliver in - be MiniDV?

If it's on your computer as DV, then technically the best mastering format would be mini-DV, DVCAM, or DVCPRO. If you use firewire, you will not get any generation loss (the transfer is lossless).

However, not all stations accept mini-DV/DVCAM/DVCPRO.
DVCAM and DVCPRO may be needed if the station wants a specific formatting for the timecode. i.e. program starts at 01:00:00;00.

Some stations may only accept betaSP (or digibeta), in which case make sure you get a proper betaSP dub (with proper 7.5IRE setup; you can bug the engineer/dubber at the dub house to see if they know what that is).


Disclaimer: I've never made a broadcast master. Ever. But as far as I know, they do get rejected from time to time.