Can This Be Done In V8?

[Fred Helm]

We are preparing some content for the Outdoor Channel and some of their requirements for broadcast are a little foreign to me. Can someone advise if the listed requirements are even possible in Vegas?

1. Material will be assessed at 525/60. If material originating in other formats is incorporated, care must be
taken to achieve the overall quality required. What is 525/60?

2. In order to aid presentation and reversion, cuts in material must happen on frame boundaries (i.e. between
field 2 and field 1). Motion on frame based material such as film or ‘progressive scan’ video should occur
between field 2 and field 1 (i.e. field 1 dominance). Huh?

3. Timecode should begin at 00:58:30 on all tapes with the start of the show at 01:00:00. All tapes should have
thirty seconds of bars and tone, with a five second countdown, and a properly labeled slate. Properly labeled
slate includes Series Name, Episode Name, Episode #, Total Running Time, and intended air date, expressed
in terms of “Week of [July 3, 2007]” always starting on Mondays. Tape case and tape shell must be labeled. Can Vegas time be adjusted to read as instructed?

Thanks,

[Seth Bloombaum]

Originally Posted by Fred Helm

1. Material will be assessed at 525/60. If material originating in other formats is incorporated, care must be
taken to achieve the overall quality required. What is 525/60?

525/60 is old broadcast speak for 60i NTSC video. The full scan is 525 lines, but the picture part of the scan is 486 lines, of which we use 480. 60 refers to fields per second. So, yes, an NTSC-DV project in Vegas conforms to this standard.

Originally Posted by Fred Helm

2. In order to aid presentation and reversion, cuts in material must happen on frame boundaries (i.e. between
field 2 and field 1). Motion on frame based material such as film or ‘progressive scan’ video should occur
between field 2 and field 1 (i.e. field 1 dominance). Huh?

If you are cutting DV on a DV timeline and have "Quantize to frames" selected in the Tools menu then you're covered on this one. If you are slurping in other footage it is possible that field dominance may get scrambled, though Vegas usually manages this for you transparently.

In DV and most broadcast formats, the field with the odd-line numbers (field 1) is the first field of the frame. In some formats (HDV, I think), field 2 is dominant, meaning that the field with the even-numbered lines is the first field of the frame. Except for some codgers who number the lines from 0 instead of 1.

Vegas uses slightly different terminology: Field order instead of field dominance, lower field first instead of field 1, upper field first instead of field 2. Look for this in media properties and in project properties. Media that is field 2 dominant should be set to upper field first - this is changeable in media properties. Progressive media should be set to progressive. All other media and your NTSC project should be set to lower field first.
Here is some background info on fields, but this is probably the best info.

But the short answer is yes, vegas can manage to cut only on frames, that's what quantize to frames is for.

Originally Posted by Fred Helm

3. Timecode should begin at 00:58:30 on all tapes with the start of the show at 01:00:00. All tapes should have
thirty seconds of bars and tone, with a five second countdown, and a properly labeled slate. Properly labeled
slate includes Series Name, Episode Name, Episode #, Total Running Time, and intended air date, expressed
in terms of “Week of [July 3, 2007]” always starting on Mondays. Tape case and tape shell must be labeled. Can Vegas time be adjusted to read as instructed?

Park the cursor at the beginning of the timeline, right-click on the large timecode display in the upper left above the timeline and select "set time at cursor" and type in 58.30.00. Move your show to start at 1:00:00.00 on the timeline, cover the first :30 of the timeline with bars from the media generator, make some 1KHz sine-wave tone in Sound Forge, make up a slate per their spec and cover 59:00 to 59:30 with it, put in a visible 5-second countdown but cut it 2 frames after the "2" shows up (no "1")...

Now, you need to dump off the timeline to tape using a method that preserves timeline timecode, such as a print-to-tape on DV or DVCAM.


...and label the tape!

[Jason Robinson]

Originally Posted by Seth Bloombaum

...and label the tape!

Very informative post, thanks Seth (and I didn't even ask it). But that does contribute to my suspicion, that Vegas can probably do everything, you just need to know the tricks.

[Fred Helm]

yes! thank you very much. I have already had two seasons of HD shows on other network using Vegas only and had no issues. During that relationship, the requirements were simply to play the DVC ProHD tape and if it was captioned and played, it was good to go. Got a little nervous with the new (same) specs from OLN

Thanks Again