Bars & Tone
 

Hi,

When shooting a PD-150 for broadcast television, is it necessary to add bars and tone at the beginning of the tape? I know that color bars are in the menu, but how do you get tone? Or do you just keep the audio between -20db and -12db? Finally, do you use IRE 0, or 7.5?

Thanks,

Alan

Tone is set in your NLE and you probably want to keep the audio between -20 and -12. As for exact details I would contact the station and ask them for their standards. Some won't accept anything DV, others don't care, some want certain things.

Best to check with them first.
Don

You should never submit a tape to the broadcast folks without first getting and following their rule book. Unless, of course, they really want what you have in which case they'll take almost anything.

Bars and Tone are requred most places and there is a formula layout for the beginning of a master tape that does include bars and tone.

The 0 or 7.5 IRE setup selection will make no difference to your DV footage. It is always recorded and played back at 0. The setup selection is for analog out.

You want to shoot bars so you can make your baseline recording normal to your other work. At least you would if you were operating a big pro post process. Most of us don't although I do record bars just in case. I've never found my digital tapes to deviate in any way when the bars are measured with a vectorscope/waveform monitor. Except in one way. The 150 will record 100% bars at 110 IRE. So if you must have a maximum of 100 IRE in your final output, you can adjust the level of the entire tape down by using the recorded bars.



Analog recordings are a different story.