I actually contacted the owner of the Satellite truck. He has never heard of such a problem and knows for certain that the DA in question never enquired about it. It seems that she just doesn't like skip-field effects. If you're ever planning to use any Australia crew, get in touch and I will let you know her name so that you can steer well clear of her.

Hey, the way the stock market has been lately, investing hard earned $$$ isn't working. I SHOULD have SOLD GE at $40............. whimper moan sob......

[quote="Mike Cumbo"]I just want to win the big lottery, get my money and then go hide. I might even call the crewers and tell them "see ya"....[/quote] At least you're keeping your goals reasonable and achievable.

[quote="Voltron"]This is a funny business. It seems that very often the technology takes one step forward and the functionality takes one step back.[/quote] In another thread there is a question about the 3k and 4k frame store, on the 3k you can use the "Key Store" to grab full bandwidth video if you set things up correctly but on the slightly newer 4k, you can't. I just want to win the big lottery, get my money and then go hide. I might even call the crewers and tell them "see ya"....

We were working in SD. The show was for an Italian network, SAT2000, that is SD PAL, 4:3. This is a funny business. It seems that very often the technology takes one step forward and the functionality takes one step back. We are just going through the fun of getting our "Replay Transition Devices" to do lovely HD animations without delaying the replay while the machine thinks about it or tying up Terabytes of disk space. Do you think that our audience will appreciate the hair-pulling that went in to giving them a 5.1 surround sound, Full HD transition? I'm not even sure that I do. Ah well, it keeps us off the streets. Happy programming ! - Craig.

I've seen this kind of thing, too. The first time that I really took notice of it was on an HDNet show back in 2001 or so ... they put a moratorium on the "white flash", since their encoders and decoders had a hard time processing it. Since then, I've noticed in a number of other applications (SD and HD) that some transitions and effects just don't translate well into the digital world. Like Mike mentioned, if the bandwidth is too narrow, or if the compression is too high, then something as simple as a slow dissolve, or a diamond-dust wipe will get a ton of artifacting in it. Then we have to ask ourselves if it is our cable, DSS, or off-air feed that is overly compressed, or if it is really in the transmission chain? That doesn't fix the problem with Voltron's overly anxious DA, though. It'll all be better in the next iteration of HD, right? ;-) Matt

[quote="Voltron"]Gathering by the lack of response, I am guessing that this is not a common problem. .[/quote] Actually, many TD's aren't into transmission issues/quirks. If there was a forum like this for TX folks or tech managers you might have had more responses.

Gathering by the lack of response, I am guessing that this is not a common problem. I might add that shortly after this drama, we rolled a package of EVS which contained an almost identical effect. The DA had either decided that this effect passed her standards test or, more likely, hadn't bothered to preview the VT inserts. I might also add, that this is the type of DA who considers herself to be a music specialist but tried to do all of the performances, choirs and all, using a stopwatch. Hence my reluctance to accept her opinion.

I wasn't talking about cutting a show looking at transmission, I was thinking more about testing things before the show. Might be too late to rebuild effects when the transmission window opens, but at least you know what you can't use. Ideally though, I was thinking about a feed from transmission post-encoder, but before it makes the round trip to orbit. Assuming the signal doesn't go through any (major) re-encoding on its way to the viewer it should be a close enough, and you can preview things before the transmission window.

Problem with getting a return feed is that by the time you see it, it is too late to fix. Also, I wouldn't want to be cutting a show while looking up at a return feed.

If you can get a return feed from transmission in your monitor wall, that might be the way to go to figure out what will work and what won't.

My thoughts, aspect ratio and video format shouldn't have anything to do with the "problem". I think your client may have been cheap and booked a reduced bandwidth path. Maybe they were highly compressing the signal and the encoder wouldn't like that type of effect. Years back I dealt with some 1st generation digital Ku transmission stuff that was terrible.