Re: [Avid-L2] Another SD/HD Question

I can tell you that we deliver an HD master - and a centercut SD master. Also, as art directors are laying out titles in the HD master - they have to keep in their design that the spot will be centercut - so they have to design title layout accordingly.
This is one of the things that has bothered me the most when watching HD broadcasting... seeing how much of the screen is just treated as 'extra space' because they seem to feel that they can't do too much with the space that isn't center cut safe. It is particularly noticeable when watching the local news, where off on the sides will sometimes be a vertical logo (to fill the empty space from the SD newscrew footage) or you can see the background on the set just kind of peter off in to boringness... like the big video monitors behind them clearly don't extend off on to the sides.
But that is off topic isn't it?

All spots we ship as spec'd to deliver HD master - and a centercut safe SD version.

I've yet to see one of ours end up with both pillarbox and letterbox on the HD stream - but, like you, I've seen others get treated this way!

Jeff

On Nov 14, 2010, at 3:41 AM, Ian Johnson wrote:

> This is about delivery and broadcast of commercials-
>
> Sometimes when watching an SD feed, there will be some postage stamp
> commercials- letterboxed within the 4x3 pillarbox. Switching to the HD
> feed, some of those commercials will play in HD 16:9. Sometimes however,
> they are still pillarboxed with a letterbox inside. How does this happen?
> Do all commercials these days ship HD masters only, with the carrier
> deciding for themselves how they will format the SD feed? I see enough full
> frame 4x3 commercials on HD channels to think this isn't the case, though I
> can't imagine why an agency wouldn't produce everything in HD.
>
> Do SD masters get sent out with the letterbox burned in to avoid the problem
> of 4x3 protection, and to take the formatting decision away from the
> carrier? Do some agencies prefer to send only one master to networks, and
> make it the SD master? Formatting in commercial breaks in some HD cable
> channels are all over the place, with spots in 16:9, 4:3, and 4:3 with a
> letterbox inside. I don't understand why the only version a network would
> have of a commercial is letterboxed SD, and be forced to run it in their HD
> feed rather than an HD version of that commercial.
>
> Ian
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>

------------------
Jeff Hedberg
Union Editorial
575 Broadway
6th floor
New York, NY 10012

212-863-3030

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

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