Technical Specifications

Technical Specifications For Content Submission

General Requirements

• Program material must be produced using professional broadcast equipment and formats. Facilities used for production and post-production must have viewing and sound monitoring conditions that comply with industry standards
• Program shall be free of commercial blacks or publicity breaks
• Program must be in English with name supers and titles
• The lower left hand corner of the screen must be free of captions, logos, watermarks or any graphic images
• Unless otherwise permitted in writing, duration shall be a maximum of 24:30 for a half-hour program and a maximum of 56:30 for a one-hour program, with no commercial or publicity breaks. There are no duration restrictions for programs with run times greater than 60 minutes
• Files shall be labeled clearly with the following information:
  1. Version (master, protection, dub, clone, etc).
  2. Production Company
  3. Program title.
  4. Program length.
  5. Type of audio, channel assignments, Dolby if applicable
  6. Type of time code
  7. Presence of closed captioning
  8. Descriptive video audio track (if relevant)
  9. Day, month and year of delivery

Video Quality

• Luminance values must not be excessively clipped or crushed.
• Colour rendition - especially skin tones - must be a realistic representation of the scene portrayed unless artistic considerations require otherwise.
• Video processing (e.g. effects plug-ins) must not introduce unintentional changes to luminance and chrominance levels.
• There must be no visible artifacts caused by multiple conversions or compression.
• Quantization noise shall not be apparent.
• Use of standard definition footage or content is acceptable only in special cases (such as archival material).
• Footage converted from other aspect ratios (such as SD 4:3 archival material) must not be non-uniformly stretched. Full width letterbox or full height pillarbox is acceptable. Cropping to fill the 16:9 frame is also acceptable, depending on the content/framing.
• If frame rate conversion has been used, it must only be from the original source rate directly to 29.97 (not multiple stages of conversion). Frame rate conversions must be free of excessive judder or other artifacts.
• Video footage must be of professional quality. Consumer or low quality footage is only acceptable under special circumstances where higher quality is not possible (such as archival footage or restrictive environments).

Audio Quality

• The audio shall be free of extraneous signals such as noise, hum, and cross-talk.
• Sibilance and distortion shall not be apparent.
• The audio shall not show dynamic and frequency response artifacts as a result of the use of noise reduction or low bit rate coding systems.
• Dynamic range shall not be excessive.
• Care shall be taken when incorporating background music and effects with dialogue, otherwise viewers with a hearing impairment and/or poor listening conditions can find the dialogue difficult to hear. Final mix assessment should be made using typical consumer equipment and viewing environment.
• Sound loudness levels should be consistent throughout the program such that it is not necessary for the viewer to adjust the sound during the program or between parts.
• The relative timing of the sound to video synchronization should not exhibit any perceptible error. Sound should not lead or lag the picture content.
• Music and effects levels must be sufficiently below dialog to ensure that a wide variety of viewers can understand the dialog upon first viewing in home conditions.
• Audio channels must be in phase (not inverted phase).

Specifications

Audio Channels

Audio channels must follow one of the mappings listed below. Audio stem tracks (music+effects and dialog) must also be delivered as separate audio files (in addition to including in the video file tracks listed below).

Standard Stereo

Stereo with Described Video

Video Slates

Slates must have a duration of at least 10 seconds, follow reference signals, and include the following:

• Series and episode title and number.
• Total program length including frames.
• Audio track assignments.
• Type of time code.
• Presence of closed captioning.
• SAP or descriptive video track.
• Dialog normalization value.