Broadcast Television Series Post Production

The explosion of digital camera formats has given producers an unprecedented variety of choices for shooting scenes: Flip Phones, iPhones, Canon D5 and D7 cameras, Panasonic P2 and AVX-HD cameras, Arri Alexa, Sony F3 and numerous others, each with its own unique CODEC. Unfortunately, this variety can create a whole new range of headaches when its time to ingest the footage into non-linear editing systems. PPD has experience with all these formats and can work with clients to find solutions to their digital workflow challenges.

For example, the television documentary 'Hot Toxic Love' included footage from XDCAM-EX, Panasonic P2, Panasonic DVCPRO-HD, AVC50 and AVC100. Our Trusted Post Production Team found a workflow to ingest it all into our Avid Media Composer system. We provided the complete post production process including: offline editing, online conform, colour grading, closed captioning, descriptive video and final delivery on HDCAM and Digital Betacam. Our Avid Certified Service Representative (ACSR) and editor Erin Carroll oversaw the post production process, setting up the media management as well as setting the tone for the project. Michael Burshtyn completed the offline of nearly sixty hours of material, crafting it into the final 44 minute documentary which aired nationally on CityTV HD.

For the Broadcast TV market we have been providing offline and online editing services for many of Canada’s top production companies and broadcasters. If you’re a television producer, line producer or post production supervisor, our Broadcast Demo Reel shows examples of our Television Post Production for Reality TV Series, Poker Shows, Sports Programming, Music Specials and Documentaries. Documentary and Independent Film producers will also be interested in our Film and Documentary Reel.

Digital Capture and Delivery Solutions

PPD offers solutions for Producers, Directors and Editors who prefer to edit in their own Final Cut Pro, Avid Media Composer, Avid Symphony or Adobe Premier suites.  

For example, a CBC documentary is currently being edited using the production company’s in-house Avid Media Composer. PPD digitized all the HDCAM footage to Avid media and copied the files to the client’s hard drive. Once they have picture-lock they will send us the Avid sequence to conform, colour grade, close caption and create a descriptive video (DV) track. We will then process the audio tracks with our Dolby-E encoder and lay the final documentary back to HDCAM (with Dolby-E) as well as to HDCAM-SR with separate audio stems.

Another client edits a Triathlon TV series in his office which is over 85 km. from PPD.  Once an episode is locked he couriers us a fully rendered QuickTime movie along with a transcript. We caption the episode, output from our Avid Media Composer with closed captioning (CC) to HDCAM and ship directly to TSN, ready for broadcast. Our editors quality control the show during output to ensure there are no technical glitches and that broadcast standards are met.

Our clients come to PPD for digital media outputs and delivery knowing that we carefully watch every show we output. It’s not just another dub. If our assistant editor notices a problem with the QuickTime movie file we will call the client to discuss the issue and their options. Our client’s love the fact that we take an interest in their shows and that they don’t get rejected by the broadcaster for something which could have easily been fixed when the show was output to tape.

If you require video capture from DVCPRO-HD, HDCAM or HDCAM-SR or output to any of those formats PPD has the experience and talent to deliver.

Utilizing DOLBY® E To Reduce Show Delivery Costs

Typically the broadcasters will specify multiple audio tracks that need to be delivered like a stereo mix, 5.1 surround mix, descriptive video (DV), music and sound effects tracks (M&E). Naturally, in order to provide all this audio, the tape format of choice is HDCAM-SR which has up to 12 available audio tracks. However, if the broadcaster and producer decide to utilize DOLBY E, they can squeeze all of the required audio tracks on to the cheaper HDCAM (non-SR) format with only 4 audio available tracks.

DOLBY E is an audio encoding/decoding technology that allows up to 8 channels of discrete audio to be compressed on to only 2 audio tracks. Typically it's used to embed a 5.1 surround and a stereo mix on to a tape master.

Lately we've been working with various audio post houses to take their final show mixes and an add a descriptive video (DV) recording done by us. At PPD we encode to DOLBY E and deliver HDCAM broadcast masters with the surround and DV stereo mix. We put this on tracks 3 & 4 of the tape and then the standard non-encoded stereo mix on tracks 1 & 2. 

Producers who are confused by all the HD delivery specifications sent to them by Broadcasters or Distributors can call us to help them cut through the techno-babble and do things faster and cheaper.