Shipping HD footage

[Chris McBee]

Sorry if there's already a thread about this, I didn't find one if there was.

When shipping HD footage to the media, what format is generally used?
DVCPro? HD Mini DV tapes?

Also, is it possible to upload HD footage in .m2t format?
I'm not sure if that would be accessible for HD broadcast.

Thanks for any help anyone can provide.

 

[Randy Denzer]

I am NO expert but one option I have use is to load it onto an external hard drive and ship it to the buyer. Have them pay for the hard drive or have them return it to you. This was pretty simple and allowed me to send quite a bit of footage.

Hope this helps.

 

[Chris McBee]

I am NO expert but one option I have use is to load it onto an external hard drive and ship it to the buyer. Have them pay for the hard drive or have them return it to you. This was pretty simple and allowed me to send quite a bit of footage.

Hope this helps.

I've heard that too but what file format was the footage in on the external hard drive?

 

[Ryan McGinnis]

Sorry if there's already a thread about this, I didn't find one if there was.

When shipping HD footage to the media, what format is generally used?
DVCPro? HD Mini DV tapes?

Also, is it possible to upload HD footage in .m2t format?
I'm not sure if that would be accessible for HD broadcast.

Thanks for any help anyone can provide.

You might just ask the client that you're selling to -- I don't do video, and there may be some overarching standard, but it doesn't hurt to ask the client. With photography, most clients want JPGs, but occasionally I come across one who wants an uncompressed TIFF -- so I usually ask, just to make sure.

 

[Skip Talbot]

I've heard that too but what file format was the footage in on the external hard drive?

Chris, from the research I've done on HD camcorders, it seems that the AVCHD format has become dominant.

 

[MJ Poore]

Most broadcasters will only accept HD footage on HDCAM tape (Sony) or D5 tape (Panasonic). You can try sending M2t files as HDV on DV tape. But remember HDV is technically a consumer product and many broadcasters dont actually own a machine to transfer this to an HD broadcast format, which M2t is not.

Probably the best idea is to transfer your M2t footage to a data DVD as one of the more common HD editing formats, like DVCPRO HD or Apple Pro Res 422 HD, or JPEG 2000. And then send in like this. Most broadcasters can deal with these formats in their edit suites.

 

[cdcollura]

Good day,

I have sent video up in SD (Standard Definition) format by taking it off the DV tape as a DV AVI file (DV Codec), editing it, and encoding it as MPG (MPEG2) at 720x480 and sending it in. This takes roughly 1/8 to 1/12 of the original DV AVI size, which amounts to about 1 MB per each second of video.

HDV (or HD video) is very similar, where it is "captured" off the device, via fire-wire as with SD video, and edited, and encoded (to the M2T format) to save space. The difference is that about 6 times the bandwith is required, which is about 5-6 MB per second of video.

Sending a seemingly small SD video (say, about 1 minute or 60 MB) as an MPG via FTP may take a half hour on a high-speed connection.

The same video, but in HD as M2T may be well over 320 MB, and take 3 hours to upload on that same connection.

The bad news is is that if you are not stuck with a 1.5 MBs T1 (office) or even worse, DSL with an upload of 256 KBs, an HD upload may not be reasonable.

The good news is that cable modems are becoming faster and faster. Mine (Comcast) can download at 25 MBs and upload at over 8 MBs. The upload alone is 6 times the speed of office T1. A 350 MB file can be uploaded this way in about 20 minutes.