FCP Output for Broadcast
 

Hi

I was just wondering what format broadcasters like these days, for SD and HD, and how you are producing this from FCP?

Cheers,

Nick

Contact your local broadcaster and ask for their broadcast spec sheet.
Many have them posted online.

Gainesville Market
 

I produce everything from commercials to promos and PSAs at the Gainesville, FL NBC/CBS/MNT affiliates. At the moment we're still doing everything in SD. That's mainly because we're something like market 167, not positive that's exact. Only thing stopping us is that we don't have the equipment setup to air our HD production, nor move it from edit suite to master control. Most larger markets should have that worked out already.

Broadcasting in Asia
 

Hi there,

We produce content for broadcast (commercials and television) in Asia and most of the networks still ask for DigiBeta masters.

We finish from within FCP usually - off of BlackMagic onto a hired DigiBeta deck, unless we're
onlining on Smoke, in which case we finish from within Smoke.

On the few occassions we're required to deliver HDCAM SR we finish at a post house.

Sandeep.

Thanks guys! David - good call to check the broadcasters' websites - here, ITV and Channel 4 both want DigiBeta though Ch4 say they are evaluating MXF file transfer.

N

Most broadcasters will want Digibetas along with DAT tapes to go along with the Digibetas and/or HDCAM SR tapes for HD because of it's ability to have 12 channels of audio making the DAT tapes unnecessary for HD. For Final Cut almost any hardware card will work as long as it has HD/SD SDI and AES/EBU for the DAT tapes. Kona obviously the best but Blackmagic will be just the same if you are only editing to tape.

I have not used DAT tape in many years, and the majority of the broadcast commercials I do are all digital file transfers to TV stations.
Most of the broadcasters I deal with use digital playback servers, so removing tape from the equation saves time & money, and ups the quality.

As far as broadcast specs with the mac, I use an AJA Kona card, and an AJA IO for any input/output and monitoring.

We edit in HD (1920x1080 30p) and then transcode to DV (actually DV-Stream) for distribution to the broadcasters. I wish we could send in something other than DV (ProRes?) but that's what everyone in our market has agreed to. (sigh) We actually distribute DV-stream file as a data file stored on a CD-ROM disc. We're looking at switching to distribution over via the internet soon. That should make things a lot easier on everyone.