Bars and Tone Standard?

[William Velasquez]

Hello group,

I was wondering if anyone know what is the standard time for bars/tone at the beggining of a video that is to be broadcast?

30 seconds of Color Bars and Tone?


What about AFTER the Color Bars and Tone? How many seconds am I suppose to leave out (black) before the actual program starts?

10 seconds?

Also anyone know of a pluging for "Custom" color bars other than the Eureka?

btw by custom I mean you can add the title of your production studio etc.



Thanks in advance

[Rick Tugman]

You know something .... I work in television and I used to know these things ..... the normal used to be 1 minute of bars & tone.... then 30 seconds of black. This was when we used to record shows on 1" tape - the format may have changed due to newer tape formats and from the more recent videos I produced & directed, I believe there may have been less time alotted for bars & tone. However, I wasn't the editor or the person setting it up so I don't really know if it changed. On the shows I directed years ago at the station I used to work at I used to do Bars & Tone 1 minunte, Slate for 10 seconds then black for 30. There may be a newer standard which I will look into for you.

[William Velasquez]

Thanks Rick!

btw: what's "Slate for 10 seconds"?

[Rick Tugman]

"A Slate for 10 seconds"..... a Slate is what the contents of the video tape is .... Show, show number, date, revision date, producer, production company etc. It should be formated something like this:

Production Company (it can be a logo etc.)


Client: (If you like)

Title: Whatever it is! (Description)

Show #: (this can be a job number as well)

Date: August 4, 2003 (and/or revised date)

TRT: 30 seconds

Editor: (if you like)

Producer: John Doe


The slate can provide various information depending on what your final edited master actually is. If there are segments and segment times, you can list the segments and the actual times of each and how much black there is in between. This give the operater or logger all the information about the contents of the tape and how it breaks down.

As for the production company logo etc... you can just put that below the Producer if you like with contact information. In my opinion it looks nicer if it is all formated to look like you do this all the time and this is your format for the slate.

By the way... TRT means Total Running Time.

Sometimes slates are included as the countdown to the beginning of the show. On the actual slate there would be numbers counting down in the lower right corner 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3 Black Program Start. As the numbers counted down there would be a bleep of tone audio... I'm sure you've seen this in the movies as the countdown leader counted down.... 4,3,2 ..... etc. Get the idea?

But it all depends on how much work you want to put into it and how professional you want it to look.... you should just be fine with the information about the show whatever the product is as the countdown is not really necessary.

If you have any other questions please let me know .... good luck.

[Jeff Donald]

That's pretty much the way it still is at major production companies and bigger network affiliates. Cable companies, public access and the like are much less strict. We used to strip the master tapes so the actual program started at 00:00:00;00. The time code then reflected the TRT as well. The TC generator would be set at 58:00;00 so the program would start at zero (the TC flips over at 59:59;29). The two minutes gives you the time for bars and tone, slate, and black.

[Rick Tugman]

Hey Jeff:

I didn't want to get that compicated but was going to mention that in my post as well! Using timecode at the zero hour is the way we also do it remote trucks, but it does vary and is usually done by the better tape operators. The only difference in sports television is the time code is time of day and the only thing taped is the show open... everything else is live.

Also by using time of day TC, replays can be logged and gotten to quickly especially for halftime. Producers take the highlights of a game with them to the next city and a log is put together from the "time" the highlight/play was made. The tapes are then stored by date and what teams played.

For William I wanted to make it as clear as possible since I didn't know what kind of show, presentation or video he was making. I wanted to be sure my explaination was easy for him to understand and your addition to this post is by all means correct.

[William Velasquez]

Thanks guys for all of your imput.

It is really cool to see so many people giving their input at once :)


Rick: The program I've done and will continue to do for at least a year(according to contract) is a church program designed by me :)
The program was shown to the pastors of the church and also the elders for aproval... about 10 - 12 people were present.
I went in to the chapel and played the video.... while the video was playing no comments were made.... I was concerned

When the program ended I received praises about my work and how they really enjoyed it. They congratulate me and thanks to that effort I was offer a one year contract to produce a 30 minute program for broadcast.

hmm am I boring you guys??


Anyway, to make a long story short, I got the contract I'm happy they're happy and that's the reason I wanted to know about the color bars and tone.

:)

[Rick Tugman]

Congratulations William. That is great.... having a contract for a year is a good thing. So if your show has commerical breaks you could list the segment times and how long the breaks are on the slate. Total running time in most cases is 28:27. This allows for a 1:30 end break and 3 seconds for a station ID before the next program begins at the top of the hour. That is all determined by the actual breaks and timing of the show. But that is usually the norm.

As Jeff mentioned, you could start your program at 00:00:00:00 hours and then as your editing you know exactly where you are in the show. You know you need to be faded to black no matter what at 00:28:27:00 if that is the end break format. So you see it is quite simple. Just begin your Bars at 00:58:00:00 and then Slate at 00:59:00:00 then black for 30 seconds beginning at 00:59:30:00 then your show begins at 00:00:00:00.

Congratulations once again now go out and make the big bucks as we say :-)