Quality control (QC) is a neccessary process step for making your video suitable for broadcast on televsion channels.
Defects that can be seen or heard by the end viewer such as poor picture or sound quality can affect the brand and impact on marketing performance of the TVC.
In the United Kingdom, the Digital Production Partnership (DPP) is an organization that has published a set of common delivery specifications that are mandatory for all content delivered since October 1, 2014.
The DPP specs not only include mandatory technical and editorial metadata in your video file, but also compliance to several quality standards, such as EBU R128 for audio loudness and Ofcom 2009 guidelines for photosensitive epilepsy (PSE). There are limits set on the range of colour brightness to make sure that the picture quality on older televsion sets do not bleed or buzz on screen.
These rules are called making your video Broadcast Safe.
The BCAP code are a set of mandatory rules that have to be adhered to when airing a TVC in the UK. There are many good reasons for these rules including protecting the consumer from false advertising claims, preventing children from emulating dangerous actions they see in a TVC, or preventing innappropriate commercials being viewed before the watershed air times. There are a number of specific rules for every business sector.
Legibility and read time of onscreen text is crucial to support statements or actions in your TVC that maybe misinterpreted and these will need to follow strict guidelines. For example financial offers will need to be heavily supported in the supers, products that are on offer have to list any conditions.
All supers have to have enough time on screen to read them. This can become particularly tricky to manage in shorter druation TVCs such as bumpers that run at only 10 seconds. As seen below, the guidelines from Clearcast (the body that will review your TVC for clearance for broadcast) are very exacting:
“All text on screen at any one time must be held for a duration calculated at 0.2 seconds per word. An additional recognition period of 2 seconds (up to and including 9 words) or 3 seconds (10 words or greater) is also added.
Superimposed text that is on 2 full lines or more will be calculated at 0.25 seconds per word, plus 3 seconds recognition time.”
Often we find TVC's end with a text-heavy call to action, and recalling that there is a duration of hold implication for every word, the end frame of your TVC will need to be carefully considered to not unduly cut into the overall length of the video.
TVCs also require a full 12 frames of silence at both the beginning and end of the runtime, this may not sound a lot but again is considerable when working with shorter duration TVCs.
All TVCs are tested using the Harding’s algorithm to protect viewers suffering from photosensitive epilepsy (PSE). It will have to pass this test to be given a valid flashing certificate, uploaded as substantiation, to prove the actual broadcast file meets Ofcom regulations.
What this means in design terms, is to be cautious of over use of fast cuts and flashing colours in the TVC. Often we receive a storyboard idea with too much content for the duration of the commercial and its tempting for the client to request faster edit jumps to cram all the content in, risking not only producing a confusing TVC but one that fails a flash test.