Special Commercial and Spot Specifics

 

Beta SP is preferred. DVD’s are acceptable if they are DVD-player-ready.  Menu’s are fine but not required.

DO NOT send data discs of Quicktime files.  DO NOT send WMV files of any size, nor AVI, MP2, MP4 or MPEG.

 

Sending spots on tape?
Please roll 20 seconds of color bars, an 8 second slate, with two seconds of black before the spot starts.  Your slate should include:
 
Client
Title
Date produced
ISCI code if applicable
Duration
Production Facility and phone number

 

Sending spots digitally?
Spots are generally too big to email.  Anything you can email us is not broadcast size.

Export a Quicktime MOV file with H.264 compression with one frame of black at the head.  Please Fade To Black.  Sequence settings should be set at 720x486 for SD, 1440x860 for 16:9 SD, and 1920x1080 for HD in 16:9 format.  Audio requirements are 48Khz, 16-bit, with levels peaking at –12.   We use Final Cut Pro on Macintosh systems.

You may email (jthomas@kolr10.com) and ask us to download commercials from an FTP site, or email a link where we can download a ZIP or MOV file with Quicktime.  YouSendIt.com is useful for this, and free up to 100MB.  A typical spot is anywhere from 15-300MB.  However you choose to send it to us, we will charge $15 to convert it for playback.  Files must be looked at by trained eyes to get various codecs, sizes and formats loaded correctly into our cart server.  Beta dubs used to cost $35 and shipping was around $8--this new way is a bargain.  Please include your billing address in an email with the spot link. 

 

About Letterbox: 
Say your spot is letterboxed, where the top and bottom have black bars.  How it looks on different TVs depends on how the viewer is plugged in--Mediacom stretches, actually zooms in on, our SD digital signal, and the edges of pictures look cropped.  The headroom looks too tight on some shots.  Over The Air viewers (ATSC tuners, not a converter box) will see more black on the left and right edges because of the 720x480 field they're getting.  HD viewers will see spots this way too.  Letterboxed spots may only take up the middle third of the screen.  Flat screen TV's that are widescreen might stretch the edges to fill the sides, or they might put black bars on the edges.  Those with converter boxes will see it however they have their box setup.  And of course, everything gets even weirder during Primetime when we air actual HD video, until we go to commercials and drop back into the 720x480 world.  And even though our news product fills the 16x9 screen, it's only SD for now...