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Filed under: Motion Graphics •Production •Visual Effects •

Form vs. Content

I sit down this evening to watch Professional Wrestling—erm, the first 2008 Presidential Debate. I’ve got KQED-HD tuned in, the local PBS channel on 9.1. Ray Suarez in the News Hour studio, neat and clean and perfect in every respect. Man, I love HD… until they cut to the feed from Mississippi. All of a sudden it’s Ken Burns & “The War” all over again: audio and video out of sync. Dang!

It’s only a couple of frames off, but it still makes the live feed look dubbed; it’s distracting. So I hit the “last channel” button and get 11.1, the NBC feed (left over from watching “Heroes”). They’ve got audio and video in sync, so I settle in to watch the dead-catting and mud-gobbing in progress.

Only… NBC has a fancy, asymmetrical lower-third banner. Nice, seemingly tasteful,… and annoying: the right-hand side is doing a little animation to pimp “Campaign 08” on NBC’s website. The first time, it’s kinda cute. The second time? Yeah, I saw that already. The third time: OMG, don’t tell me they’ve got this on a loop. The fourth time: OMG, they do have this on a loop; this ain’t a lower-third, it’s a snipe. The fifth time: shall there be no surcease? The sixth time: wait, isn’t there someone talking? Some candidate somebody? Why am I paying attention to this dumb snipe?

The trouble is, that dumb snipe was the flashiest, most motion-filled thing on the screen. It had nothing to say,  but it was drowning out the words of the best candidates our two-party system had to offer (with all due and proper respect to Senators McCain and Obama, they’re just a couple of guys in suits, standing still and talking; they can’t compete with flashy graphics designed by seasoned professionals to grab the viewers’ attention).

Boom: type in 2.1 (because it’s easy to remember), KTVU-HD: the same pool feed, but with Fox News banners and framing and tickers plastered all over it. Ack! Run away! Try CBS or ABC? Fine, but I’d have to remember their channel codes and subcodes, which I don’t; and channel-surfing DTV is s-l-o-w. Besides, what’s the chance that either ABC or CBS will restrain themselves from using the debates as a backdrop for their own flashy graphics? Time’s a-wasting; one of these dudes is gonna be the next prez!

Boom: back to PBS, where lips were out of sync, but there was only the static KQED bug in the lower right, and the occasional, subdued PBS tag appearing discreetly and infrequently on the lower left. I could actually focus on what people were saying and give it my full attention. I stayed on PBS through the debate, and through the post-game wrap-up, too.

I know, I know: asking commercial television to respect the content, instead of simply using as a wall on which to scribble promotional graffiti, is so last century. Thank goodness PBS had the guts? taste? discretion? sense? to put the candidates front and center.

Still, I do wish they’d get their A/V sync issues under control.

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Do what I do ... kick the aspect ratio up to cut the bottom off. My HD TV has a 14:9 and 16:9 setting. 14:9 cuts most of the lower third off.

Or there’s always duct tape. Use it to cover the offending graphic. Maybe we need a how-to video about this.

Posted by Rob  on  09/27  at  11:32 AM

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That looping bug sounds like a nightmare! A true case of losing site of what is the content.

I normally blast CNN for their use of lower thirds (takes up waaaay too much of the frame, cropping off things happening in the bottom of the video - gotta get the word out to more cameramen to safe-protect a larger portion of the bottom of the frame), and their HD thirds are a messy combination of the normal SD items plus additional items thrown in for the HD version (really - do I need to see the name of the show repeated twice off to the right?), but for the debate, they at least used the pillarboxes more intelligently: they put additional reaction tracking information off into the side columns. SD viewers didn’t see it (i.e. it didn’t obstruct their view); HD viewers did. An intelligent value-add way to use the space. They kept it up way too long after the event, and like your snipe, we found ourselves watching these mini-dials too often instead of listening to the debate, but it shows some progress in learning how to use the extra space in the HD frame in these very awkward transitional times.

Posted by Chris Meyer  on  09/30  at  08:49 AM

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Our PBS affiliate (OK, I work there) didn’t have any sync issues, but what drove me up the wall was the incredible variation in the 5 cameras.  The one on Lehrer had no chroma and the skin detail was rolled off all the way (remember the “Amazing Melting Plastic Man,” Adam?)  The two shooting the candidates were pretty colorless as well, but the two shooting in from the wings looked incredible.  Who was running video, Stevie Wonder?  (No offense, dude, you rock.)

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  09/30  at  10:47 PM

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