commercial media output

Brian Babarik · April 15, 2005

I believe that most commercials are still transmitted from Betacam stock but in all honesty I am not sure. It may be digibeta, HD, or SD although I would think that the cost of Digibeta and HD would be high for most commercial budgets and that the quality of SD would be too low except for low budget commercials. I guess my question would be: What media are most commercials, after a master copy is made, sent to Broadcasters on SD, HD, DigiBeta or Betacam (or some other stock)?

Also, sorry to make this a two part essay question, but, what is a good (high quality) stock to use for this purpose, and also, do different tape stocks have different effects on the quality of the image? I know that sounds redundant so please allow me to clarify. Do different tape stocks react differently to color, luminance and latitude (ana analogy would be to how different film stocks react differently to the same situations)?

Thank you for any input I suddenly feel very inquisitive.

J. Lamar King IMPOSTOR · April 15, 2005

I can't speak nationally but all the local affiliates of the major networks as well as major cable outlets in my region (Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, New Mexico) take Beta SP. Most of them I believe take Beta SP only. There is also some way that commercial's are "piped" to the stations via broadcast transmission or something. I can't speak to how exactly that works though. On the commercials I've shot all the traffic was done by the lab on Beta SP tape stock.

I'm speaking only of commercial's for 4:3 SD broadcast.

Edited April 15, 2005 by J. Lamar King

John Mastrogiacomo · April 15, 2005

I can't speak nationally but all the local affiliates of the major networks as well as major cable outlets in my region (Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, New Mexico) take Beta SP. Most of them I believe take Beta SP only. There is also some way that commercial's are "piped" to the stations via broadcast transmission or something. I can't speak to how exactly that works though. On the commercials I've shot all the traffic was done by the lab on Beta SP tape stock.

I'm speaking only of commercial's for 4:3 SD broadcast.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I send out a lot of dubs (30 - 40) for a NASCAR spot I do every year. Almost all of them are BetaSP. 3 or 4 of them are DigiBeta. All the local spots I do are on BetaSP.

I prefer the Fuji BetaSP stock over the Sony stock. :)

Brian Babarik · April 15, 2005

I send out a lot of dubs (30 - 40) for a NASCAR spot I do every year. Almost all of them are BetaSP. 3 or 4 of them are DigiBeta. All the local spots I do are on BetaSP.

I prefer the Fuji BetaSP stock over the Sony stock. :)

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

What are some of the differences that you see in the Fuji stock over the Sony stock. Do they represent colors differently? How is saturation? Is this because of a cost difference? Any information is useful and I do appreciate all the other information left by these posts. Thank you.

Jon Allen · April 15, 2005

Since the firm I work at doesn't have any Beta gear, we're slowly teaching the local stations to accept digital file formats. Thank God we don't have HD to send to them yet "how long will that upload take on my dial up?"

We normally just ftp a file to their server. For SD production, all they *SHOULD* need is a common .mov with uncompressed audio and an animation codec running at 29.97fps. aaaaand 640x480 screen size is preferred.

Brian Babarik · April 15, 2005

Since the firm I work at doesn't have any Beta gear, we're slowly teaching the local stations to accept digital file formats. Thank God we don't have HD to send to them yet "how long will that upload take on my dial up?"
We normally just ftp a file to their server. For SD production, all they *SHOULD* need is a common .mov with uncompressed audio and an animation codec running at 29.97fps. aaaaand 640x480 screen size is preferred.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Now that is what I am talking about. I was checking prices at one post house in chicago and for a 5min Beta Sp tape and copy from a master they were charging seventy (yes $70.00) for one tape. the math for five hundred copies for different markets was more than a new Beta deck and the stock. Talk about mark-up!

Jon Allen · April 21, 2005

Now that is what I am talking about. I was checking prices at one post house in chicago and for a 5min Beta Sp tape and copy from a master they were charging seventy (yes $70.00) for one tape. the math for five hundred copies for different markets was more than a new Beta deck and the stock. Talk about mark-up!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

What's to stop you from getting your own beta deck, then? Even if you only charged your clients half of that (even a quarter) you'd still be ahead. That's assuming you build the copying and distribution into your contracts.