Broadcast Safe Colour Pallette

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Thu Jun 21, 2007 10:37 am

Good lord man!

Does this mean that all of the people who produce those YouTube videos that get broadcast on television purchased one of those "$5000" magic boxes?

I had no idea it was so expensive to get your youtube stuff on TV.

This falls into the category of... "who is best QUALIFIED or TOO LAZY to do the work."

The "tech" guy has the tools and the qualifications to do it... but he doesn't want to do it because... of all those other reasons that slowtiger mentioned.

This is a temporary symptom of the change in this medium. The EXACT same thing (same conversations even) happened in the print industry when desktop computers hit the mainstream.

A conversation from the dawn of professional digital printing nearly 20 years ago...

"Mr. Zehr, we can't use those... pathetic, embarrassing, disgusting computer generated 'film negatives' you provided for the annual report project since the trapping wasn't precisely 0.176350 / pi * sqr(6)" which is the EXACT amount of spread and choke required for our 200 year old hideously expensive proprietary offset printer that is completely mechanical and without any 'mikro chits' or 'compooterised softy wares'.

And we are going to charge you 50 bazillion million dollars extra to have Bob our 97 year old trapping and color separation expert RESHOOT your films and use alchemy and a magic stick to create the proper trapping and 4 color plates by hand painting them with a very tiny brush and expensive really really dark black ink."

I exaggerate... but only a little bit. I had conversations very similar with printers who didn't think that the "computer fad" was going to "catch on with the young'uns" like it eventually did. They were ANGRY and pissy about EVERYTHING and sent EVERYTHING BACK and charged enormous fees to do all of our work over again from scratch...

... until they went out of business after we started using professional printers with Macs and QuarkXpress hooked up to high resolution digital film output.

I see the same happening with the television and film industry. It may take a little longer that's all.

-vern

slowtiger · Post by **slowtiger** » Thu Jun 21, 2007 11:01 am

As an ex offset printer (at a Heidelberger sheetfeed A2) and film layouter I know how much accuracy really is required. But the amount of sheer ignorance about any production process is amazing. People tend to think that a xerox copy is "as good as" an offset print, that a crappy mobile phone video is "good enough for broiadcast", and so on.

They forget that there are a) minimum requirements everywhere, and b) that new technologies may make it easier for ordinary people to produce something themself, but that the machineries needed for this are so extremely sophisticated that only a small elite of specially trained technicians can really build and repair them. It is not really a progress, but only a trade-in.

DK · Post by DK » Thu Jun 21, 2007 11:11 am

Hehe...Slowtiger and Vern...you guys are spot on with those descriptions. I'm really sorry if I come across as being a bit cynical in my posts but i've had ten years of dealing with digital discrimination, like you have Vern, and i'm afraid i'm just a bit thin skinned these days. This forum is such good therapy

Cheers
D.K

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Thu Jun 21, 2007 12:48 pm

At the time we KNEW what was required. This was a big ad agency and we had people with decades of print knowledge. We bought a few million dollars worth of printing every year.

When desktop publishing hit the "high end" market, the "forward thinking" print shops worked with us to find out how this new thing was going to work. They were the ones who bought into the technology right away and trained on it WITH US. The equipment they had to buy was very expensive and very complex. They lost money and ate the costs, but they stayed in business and found the solutions. They were the only ones so they got ALL print work.

Then there were the old school printers who were just annoyed that they had to use a mouse and spend a lot of money for stuff they didn't know how to use. It wasn't that it was "easy" or "better" it was just "different". These printers were EXPERTS. We relied on them, but they just couldn't make the transition.

They made things difficult by making up "excuses" or piling on outrageous charges for working with computer generated films. Those were the printers that eventually folded up shop. There were about a half dozen or more high end printers in my area that just vanished practically over night or got bought out.

It was a tough time and there were many cases when the films WERE total crap and it was our fault... my lord I remember those early days of the computer... it was a freaking nightmare... postscript errors... to many blends in your illustrator file...

... but more times than not our films were perfect but the printer knew we used a computer service bureau for output and would go out of their way to find a problem to charge us for. They were losing a ton of money since they couldn't charge for the film. We knew that's what was happening and all we could do was wait for them to catch up.

I remember a specific project when we had to switch printers at the end. They kept rejecting our films. We went over them with a fine tooth comb... They were perfect. They just made it their policy not to use any films for printing unless they produced them, but they wouldn't take digital files. We had to get out put and paste it up the old fashioned way. End of story. We had to move on without them.

The print quality in my opinion got much better. You should see some of the stuff I was producing... it would have cost thousands upon thousands to produce the kind illustrations and photo manipulation without the computer.

The types of print work we were able to do kept improving AND getting cheaper. Eventually digital plate technology came along (no films, digital files straight to the printing plates). I worked on a lot the promotional and technical brochures for DuPont who was developing a lot of advanced digital printing technology at the time. I remember doing my first 7 color poster using brand new ink technology... yikes. 600dpi poster... Dang photoshop file was 1gb. Had to split it on 3 hard drives.

Now days it's print on demand. It looks as good as all of my portfolio pieces from the "old days". I have gotten two books published through Lulu.com that uses direct digital print on demand publishing. One was a hardback, black and white book with photos, the other full color cover with color illustrations.

I swear no one could tell these were printed using a glorified "zerox" machines. Amazing quality and cheap cheap cheap to produce.

I have been out of the print biz for nearly 10 years. I just started recently getting back into it. So much easier and cheaper to get stuff printed now days.

Sometimes I miss my waxer and cutting rubylithe.

Sorry for the long post. It was exciting being right in the middle of that time.

-vern

slowtiger · Post by **slowtiger** » Thu Jun 21, 2007 1:51 pm

My experience is similar. I worked as a printer until 1989, I did film layout in 1986. In 1993 I was introduced to Macs and digital graphics. I spent a whole year setting up workflow and test the results with a new print shop round the corner. I don't know how often one or both of us fucked up, but with time this became rarer and rarer until I reached the point where I could guarantee a certain colour.

Today there's a digital printer at every corner. Of course they're all cheap and fast - but only a few of them deliver reasonably satisfying results. There's still some knowledge required about which paper to chose and which direction to feed it into a printer, especially if it's not just a small flyer or brochure but a whole book.

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Thu Jun 21, 2007 4:14 pm

There's still some knowledge required about which paper to chose and which direction to feed it into a printer, especially if it's not just a small flyer or brochure but a whole book.

My sister's book that she is publishing through Lulu.com is a full color illustrated book.

My sister did the illustrations and I designed and laid out the book, scanned and cleaned up the images and designed the cover.

When I got the first proof... I was absolutely SHOCKED at the dead on perfect color match. I could hold it right up to my monitor and there was barely any color shifting. The paper and print quality was amazing.

They require that you submit a PDF with RGB images only. I think that is the key. If the images look good on a calibrated monitor in RGB the CMYK conversion on those high end printers is going to be pretty darn perfect. They said most people complain about color shift because of out of gamut images... idiots.

Man, if I ever decide to write my own Anime Studio book, I would definitely publish it through Lulu.com. It costs nothing to publish the book and then you just wait for people to buy it! If you purchase distribution through the big chain book stores (B&N, Amazon, Borders etc, about $100) they handle the whole thing including providing an ISBN.

Print on demand is the future.

-vern

Rhoel · Post by **Rhoel** » Fri Jun 22, 2007 9:32 am

slowtiger wrote:I don't even know which TV standard they use in Australia, but I assumed they had their equipment up to date with the rest of the world. To repeat myself: check with the local stations, or better, with some post production facility.
They also accused me of making animation that went outside the safe zone!!!
This is plainly ridiculous. The "safe zone" refers to titles or any essential information only, which should appear inside the borders of the "safe zone" because otherwise it might not show up on old or badly adjusted TV sets. It was never meant to prohibit any animation outside of it.

Australia is PAL.

There are two safe areas, the action safe and title safe. With plasma screens and HDTV sets these areas are less of a problem.

What the TV station is saying is the key action should be withing the action safe area - having two characters talking to each other on opposite sides of a 16:9 screen will usually get a reject notice ... it simply will not look good once through and ARC. (Aspect ratio converter).

There are also the 16:9 centre cutout safe areas to consider too - which makes life even more interesting. I posted a safe guide a little while back ... I load it as standard into every scene (it's part of my start-up file): It is immune to camera movements. Having worked as a supervising onnline editor in a digibeta suite, we used to see a lot of problems from animators who were not familiar with the standards - often it was heartbreaking to tell someone they have to go back an rerender something.

Common mistakes.

Not having the animation filling the screen - ie, characters which were okay for TV action safe but not drawn/painted out to the esge of frame.
Illegal colours. Big problems sometimes. Just try to avoid 100% saturated colours, especially reds and blues. If you use a dark grey background (instead of white), you will get a much better colour balance. (It is no accident that Combustion useds a dark grey for its colour scheme). If you colour balance/create character colours on a black background, then the final results can look even better: Create a black fill object which coveres the screen. Then add a small circle and make it a good grass green colour. Then change the background colour to white - you will then see just how dark that good green colour really is.
Black frames: Some people leave one black frame between the video clips - broadcasters will bounce a tape for that.
Poor safety zones - making a 4:3 master with the idea of making the 16:9 fromthat. This is very dangerous to do, as the resulting widescreen is of much lower quality and the "head romm" often poor or unuseable. Much better to make all films 16:9 then cut the 4:3 from that (Throw way the edges).

I am currently experimenting with a new guide - one which has the mobile phone safe area marked onto it - on the Machine masters short, I har two outputs, one TV safe, the other okay for web and mobile phones. In the edit suite, once the TV version was finished, I just replaced the TVsafe colours with the brighter computer/mobile version: It is a pain but it worked. Getting a better colour balance right at the beginning is the key.

Hope this helps. It sounds more scary than it really is.

Rhoel

DK · Post by DK » Fri Jun 22, 2007 9:51 am

Hi Rhoel.
In that actual case, it would be nice to think they had tried to reject the animation for the perfectly legitimate reasons you suggested but in actual fact there are no characters talking in the ad. It's a simple hard sell TV commercial. They were actually reffering to a zoom shot onto an animated drawing of an ice cream. Extreme close up to mid shot of spoons eating an ice cream in a bowl!!! These guys at the Television Station were just trying to milk extra production money out of the client. What busted them in the end was I had already had the TVC passed and approved by DVDCAD Australia and they did'nt know it and boy did they end up with egg all over their faces. I was actually embarrassed for them in the end. I supplied the client with a copy of the PAL safezone I used in production and a copy of the CAD keynumbers and he marched into the station and exploded. If any of you are interested I will post the actual TVC for you to check out.

D.K

slowtiger · Post by **slowtiger** » Fri Jun 22, 2007 10:55 am

It is nearly impossible to create films which look good in 4:3 as well as in 16:9. Showing one format within the limits of the other is disrespectful for the artist and should be banned - ideally.

Of course, execs see films just as "content". They wouldn't care less if the content was just a bucket of sand.

One must decide wether to just deliver "content" - or create films.

Of course this is different if a client pays me to create something for both formats - like advertising. In this case, best choice would be to deliver two versions, each made as good as possible for its format.

dueyftw · Post by **dueyftw** » Sat Jun 23, 2007 1:58 am

My 2 cents, many years ago when TV’s got repaired you adjusted the set to the color of the face. We can accept that grass is an odd color green, but having someone face color off is very annoying.

I have a book a Lulu also.

http://www.lulu.com/morgan

It been a good place to transfer files because they stay their until you take them down. Lulu does make money and is not going to disappear or remove you files to save server space.

I would love to make the book into an animated movie. I have some money saved but not the minimum of 70 to 300k to do a feature. I was thinking more of just doing a 4 to 6 minute short and trying to get the backing for the whole thing. But that still means an outlay of at least 4 to 6 thousand dollars.

Dale

Rhoel · Post by **Rhoel** » Sat Jun 23, 2007 10:34 am

slowtiger wrote:It is nearly impossible to create films which look good in 4:3 as well as in 16:9. .

You can plan a pan and scan to thet around some of the problems, but this is expensive.

But from BBC to ZDF, the call is for centre protected material. Fact of life unfortunately, they buy the films, they lay down the rules.

Not sure about the colour regs for HDTV. Normal RBG or NTSC Colour safe. Any one have an update on this?

Rhoel

slowtiger · Post by **slowtiger** » Sat Jun 23, 2007 11:22 am

None other than the tech specs which are public. From what I know, there's one standard for digital cinema and another one for digital TV. In my understanding TV should be able to broadcast the cinema standard without problems.