Why is "broadcast safe" still a thing?

In this day in age I would think all of the issues of "broadcast safe" levels would be a thing of the past. Broadcast is now digital. Can digital broadcast not handle whites above a certain level? Did they not advance this when broadcast went digital? Why are we still obeying old NTSC laws? I'm sure some of you can answer this question for me, at least I hope you can.

Broadcast safe is still relevant for anything that is broadcasted. Not so much anymore because of the problems caused by illegal levels in the analog world (illegal blacks causing rolling images and illegal whites causing distorted audio), but to avoid ruining your picture quality due to automatic clipping of illegal blacks and whites.

Colors and levels that exceed bandwidth restrictions are clipped "hard" when they pass through a digital broadcast system. This means your picture quality will suffer a lot if your levels are too high or too low. You can compare this with over-exposed or under-exposed video from a handicam, not a very pleasant sight. Whites and blacks lose every detail. Furthermore text may become illegible and crushed blacks and whites may cause compression artifacts when your signal is converted to MPEG-2 TS for broadcasting.

So even if theoretically there is no real restriction anymore to work in broadcast safe, there still is a very valid practical reason for doing so: the quality of your video. That's why broadcasters will always reject programs that are not within broadcast safe limits.

The same retrictions apply to web delivery. Super whites and super blacks are the first things that cause artifacts when compressing for the web. If you only produce for the web and you don't care how your video looks on different screens you probably should not care about keeping your levels within normal boundaries. But if you do care about your picture quality, working within reasonable color and video levels will also make your video look much better. Again, that's purely a practical choice.

- Ronny

cool. I've wondered the same thing before.

Similar for title safe. If you're web broadcasting, no technical need for it, but it can still make your presentation much nicer visually. Many technical restrictions end up simply being good design choices.

I've been teaching for a decade in Color classes, as per how Alexis Van Hurkman originally taught me, broadcast or film safe aren't only technical restrictions of the media format, but they also give you visually more appealing images regardless. Better contrast, more detail in the extremes, etc.

Smiley face stamp for Ronny

He nails it.

Bottom line is, the Network QC also like to see that you know what you are doing and that your content is within accepted industry norms... without them having to waste time in trying to make generic video material broadcast safe.

Great information Ronny, thanks. Very helpful to my current work, as I'm required to heavily compress video for streaming.

Is it good/acceptable practice to crush the blacks to achieve stylistic results with a Broadcast Safe filter applied? Will this help keep image quality as good as can be when being compressed due to there, technically, not being super black and super white?

You can certainly crush blacks etc for a look aesthetic.

But be careful, as most broadcast safe filters crop items that fall outside those ranges. In most cases that should be ok. Certainly I find the blacks hold up better than blown out highlights - at least in my experience.

Whilst it's primarily photography related - I still think it's handy to become acquainted with the attached Ansel Adams zone system. Helps to reaffirm where various items should sit in terms of exposure.



I was taught early on that subtlety in terms of grading is usually the first and best way to go. I often get frustrated with some I work with when they take a beautiful HD or even 4k image, and then crush like mad, blow the highlights and add massive vignettes. It takes time for the human brain to decipher complex images. Let the full clarity sink in. IMHO.

Thanks Deano,

I've encountered the Zones System before, but only in passing. I'll have to take a deeper look into it and how to employ it. I would agree with you about subtlety - I come from an audio background and personally try to work with subtle rather than extreme processing in that field also.

Great question! I've been wondering this recently too.

I'm so glad this question has been asked. recently my new business partner and I were awarded a contract to produce some actual television commercials. So... It's a first for me and I'm wondering. Is it simply a matter of placing the broadcast filter over everything and presto like magicwe're ok? Or I'm thinking probably some tweaking here and there.

Broadcast Safe filters "cut" things out. They can degrade your image seriously. It can get looking artificial.

Do proper color grading first. This keeps your images looking more natural, organic, realistic. You can pull more details from highlights and shadows, while pushing the envelope "appropreaetly".

Use the Broadcast Safe filter ONLY to clean up stray highlight data over 100 percent that you may have missed in the proper color grading pass.

Period.

BenB is correct.

With 10.2 now - Yes, its a simple filter application - but I would ensure the filters are applied at the end of the image processing pipeline.

In FCP X - I would also ensure that you apply both CHROMA and LUMA filters as attached.

Only if necessary....

Deano wrote: BenB is correct.

With 10.2 now - Yes, its a simple filter application - but I would ensure the filters are applied at the end of the image processing pipeline.

In FCP X - I would also ensure that you apply both CHROMA and LUMA filters as attached.

And on that last point, in 10.2 you could now create a custom effects preset with two instances of the Broadcast Safe filter already set to luma and chroma for a 'full' broadcast safe filter.

I've been reading more about the Zone system. Came across this handy approximate conversion chart:



Original site

BenB wrote: Only if necessary....

If there is nothing to be corrected (i.e. clamped), then the filter has zero effect, so "necessity" is technically irrelevant.

Don Rumsey wrote: I'm so glad this question has been asked. recently my new business partner and I were awarded a contract to produce some actual television commercials. So... It's a first for me and I'm wondering. Is it simply a matter of placing the broadcast filter over everything and presto like magicwe're ok? Or I'm thinking probably some tweaking here and there.

Your first question to the people commissioning your work is what actual Broadcast Specs you are delivering to. The broadcast specs will also include specs for the delivery of the audio too.

Check out the BBC technical delivery requirements here, dpp-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/u...veryStandardsBBC.pdf

e.g.
RGB components must be between -5 % and 105% (-35 and 735mV) and
 Luminance (Y) must be between -1% and 103% (-7mV and 721mV)

Stations and networks all have their own idea of what exactly their 'broadcast legal' levels are so it's not as easy as throwing those broadcast filters on and hoping for the best. Those filters can also make a mess of your image especially in the highly vibrant parts of the image which will get your work rejected on aesthetic grounds.

I have colleagues that do TV work periodically and they use an intermediary to quality check their work before delivery to the network to avoid embarrassing last minute compliance failures.

Deano wrote: …Whilst it's primarily photography related - I still think it's handy to become acquainted with the attached Ansel Adams zone system. Helps to reaffirm where various items should sit in terms of exposure.
….

… but - making this thread instantly go ballistic :woohoo: - from that chart it is a small step to s-log, flat, curves, LUTs etc .. or, those - sorry, amateur speaking here - those pixelpeeper discussions about how diff. codecs handles diff. data (e.g. h264 cares less for shadows than midtones… yaddayadda … )

back2topic:
as many mentioned before, my simple translation is:
A Broadcast Safe is the visual equivilant to an audio-limiter.

When I was a kid, balancing plumbicon studio cameras and mounting 2" quad tapes, we had waveforms and we had vectorscopes. Broadcast safe was a technical goal but it was also a legal concept. I learned how to use a light meter along with my scopes to achieve the best possible picture that was within legal restrictions.

My best tools remain the scopes.