American Cinematographer - September 1992 - 52

ency between the
and the viewer."

producer's tapes

different time

Tony Ciesniewski, the vicepresident of engineering for Fox
Tape, discussed Fox's current broad¬
casting distribution system and a
system which will be on line this

we are

gen¬
the program across

will be broadcast there.
"Prior to every transmis¬
will send out a test signal.
The individual in master control at
sion

any

we

of our affiliates can then adjust
facility, based on scopes, levels

their

September.

company for Fox Broadcasting, Fox
Television Stations, Twentieth Tele¬
vision and Twentieth Century-Fox, is
in

a
unique position to discuss, in
general terms, where we are going.
"I can speak a bit more globally than
people at most other companies,"

Setos concedes. "Therefore I am able
to rationalize the entire process. The

company produces shows, like L.A.
Law and In Living Color, not to men¬

currently happens is
that Fox receives a pair of 1-inch ed¬

and v.u. meters, to match their trans¬

ited masters, a master

Television's distribution of

tion copy.

actually begin the program they an¬
ticipate that the program will look

the

much like the color bars

have the network and
television stations.

What

and

a

protec¬

They technically evaluate
master and protection. "We'll

time it,

make sure that all the techni¬

cal specs are
100%

correct and then do a
viewing of it to make sure that

it's

good, clean recording,"

a

says

Ciesniewski. "Once we get to the air
date, we will integrate the program
and all of the other materials (com¬

mercials, etc.) to a Beta SP dub. That
copy, and the protection
copy, are once again screened 100%.

completed

So we are now one generation

down

from the copy we've received.
"The 1-inch type 'C' master
is analog/composite.

In the dub pro¬
will pass it through a decoder
that will turn it into a Beta SP signal,
which is analog/component. Every¬
cess we

thing we do inside the plant is com¬
ponent. For the screening, we have
an on-air coordinator looking at con¬
tent and a technician looking at tech
specs. Later, that copy will be put
into a tape machine, still at the com¬
ponent level, and just prior to our
sending it to satellite we will put it
through an encoder to bring it back
to NTSC composite.
"In any transfer or trans¬
mission process there will be some
degradation in the truest sense of the
word," Ciesniewski notes. "Satellites

basically transparent. The signal
is going 50,000 miles up, through
some hardware floating around out
in space, and coming back, and it is
then being received by some hard¬
ware back on earth. The possibility of
something going wrong in that loop
is not tremendous, but it's always a
possibility. Is it perceptable degrada¬
are

tion? No.
"We then transmit it to the
affiliate group. There are one hun¬
dred forty-some affiliates, and the

mission

standard,

so

that when

we

we

sent to

them.

They can then time it and color
phase it to their plant, so that when
they switch back and forth between
the network and their local operation
it is transparent; you won't see any
difference.
"In

tion

and

movies,

original
product like like A Current Affair. We

facility we're
building a system to transmit six dif¬
ferent transmission paths to the same
satellite on different channels or tran¬

sponders," he says. "The Fox net¬
work is originated from here [Los
Angeles]. In each time zone, we
could provide up to six different
feeds of the same program material
with different commercials and

promos. Specific groups, or sections,
will be identified and they will be

given the information about which
transponder to receive the signal
from. That signal will include all of
the national commercials and pro¬

gram material specific to that section.
The program master will remain on

piece of tape. That piece of tape
played back through a com¬
puter system and other sources.
"For example, the program
material being transmitted to the six
different transponders would come
from the same videotape. The com¬
one

will be

mercial material could come from six
different videotapes. They will be all

integrated in our transmission facil¬
ity by computer and sent directly to
satellite. Under this system, the pro¬
gram provider will be requested to
deliver two Beta SP masters of the
show. We will save a generation in
the process."

we

also have

"In any

distribution envi¬
physical process
you have to go through to get a show
ronment there is

on

the air in

a

a

reliable fashion. You

can't take what the
our new

Twentieth

producer hands

you and voila, it's in ninety million
households. It is problematic. You

easily fall into the trap of bowing
inordinately to the god of reliability
and smoothness and bureaucracy
and turn your back on issues of qual¬
ity. In each era you are dealing with
tools of today as opposed to some¬
thing you can dream about or some¬
thing you think is current but is five
years old. At FBC we take the same
basic approach: we want to maintain
the highest possible quality, which
implies the fewest number of genera¬
tions. It's as simple as that.
"I think that eventually we
will be all digital. Right now, today,
it's still very expensive. I tend to get
less hung up on hardware than pro¬
cess and the end
product. I prefer not
to cloak myself in 'If I don't have this
machine, it's not going to look right.'
It's foolish to say that quality
can

doesn't make

a

difference. It is

equally foolish to say that a minimal
difference in image quality between
stations is going to make a difference.
A great script and a great perfor¬
mance

make the real difference. But

quality does play a role. There is al¬
ways a cost consideration. You don't
ever hear
anybody say, 'Let's shoot
this TV show

on

65mm, like Far and

Away.'
'There has been too much

The Future

written about HDTV. In

fact, it isn't

Each of the networks is in¬

HDTV anymore at all, it's

'Advanced

Television.' Lines of resolution

majority of them have their own

vesting heavily to update broadcast
technology. The future looks bright

downlink facilities. Some affiliates

for both

tape the transmission for broadcast at

raphers. Andrew G. Setos, senior
vice-president for Fox Inc., the parent

sue, thankfully, is no longer the num¬
ber of lines, which is just a horse¬

a

50

So

zones.

erally providing
the country in real time, the time it

Satellite of Love?

new

signal, in fact the same videotape, to

later time. We transmit the

American

Cinematographer

same

consumers

September 1992

and

cinematog¬

are

only one measure of quality. The is¬
power race.

There

was a

challenge,
American Cinematographer - September 1992

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