As I mentioned in my previous post, the television industry is currently gearing up for a big change in the way programmes are delivered to broadcasters. For many producers, tape was previously the only way of delivering a TV programme. However, as most productions are now shot and edited digitally, it is clear that programmes need to make the transition to digital delivery too.
The BBC Academy has been preparing useful content around this shift to provide a central resource for producers and technical operators alike. From 29th September to 5th October, the Academy is hosting a file delivery takeover week, to coincide with the new AS-11 DPP standard being rolled out today (‘File Delivery day’ as some are calling it). We will be dedicating our homepages to articles and videos to help those in the television industry with this big transition.
For those new to the subject, our "File delivery demystified" short film gives an overview of what exactly the switch to tapeless delivery means and the sort of changes it spells out. In the words of Andy Quested, head of technology for BBC HD and UHD, the move to file delivery represents “one of the biggest changes we’ve seen in television since colour”.
One of file delivery’s big headlines for producers is a reconfiguring of the ‘quality control’ (QC) process. A final quality control check needs to be carried out before the programme is delivered to make sure it is editorially and technically ready to go to air. As broadcasters will only be carrying out spot checks, the ultimate responsibility for sign-off lies with the producer. This review process is two-fold, and requires both an ‘eyeball QC’ and an automatic quality control (AQC) check. The former involves watching back the final version of the programme, checking the overall quality and consistency by eye and ear, whilst the latter uses software to check for technical issues which would otherwise be hard to spot manually.
For readers eager to try their hand at an eyeball QC test, we have ed a real One Show clip which has had editorial and technical faults deliberately added. You can watch this and test your QC prowess. See how many errors you can pick up on and tweet @TheBBCAcademy to let us know how you get on.
Before, programme tapes were often physically sent off by courier to the broadcaster. Now programmes will be sent from computer to computer, from the edit facility to the broadcaster. The Digital Production Partnership (DPP) has outlined a standard for delivering a programme as a file. This involves wrapping the programme and its corresponding metadata as something called an AS-11 DPP file. When it’s ready to go, the packaged file needs to be sent via a secure link to the broadcaster. This will ideally have a fast speed to cope with the large file sizes. An hour-long AS-11 DPP file could be around 50 gigabytes in size. That’s a bit too large for a domestic broadband connection if you want to send your file quickly.
For more in-depth details about the file-delivery process we have a series of instructional films based on the File Delivery Made Real tour of events that we organised around the country. In these, you can see the particular processes and tools in action. Our ‘5 things you need to know’ overview summarises each of these videos, which include: finishing your edit, performing an eyeball review, wrapping a file, carrying out an AQC check and delivering your file.
You can also read this post on the BBC R&D blog: "Delivering File Based Delivery".
Finally, today the College of Production hosted a live Q&A session on Twitter with post-production consultant Neil Hatton and the DPP’s Production Technology Lead, Rowan de Pomerai. Catch up on tweets here.
Frederick Botham is a researcher at the BBC College of Technology
