[Technologist]

Continuing in bafflement ... we just need to see what happens at IBC ...
the rumblings may be heard by a wider group!

[Technologist]

I would hope that UKTV see the errors ….
I have pointed a number of experts /suppliers at them !

I think the take home from IBC generally is that there are some cracking good conversions
both on SDI or ST 2110 To progressive and /or increasing frame rate .. so files should also be good …

But in conversation some non conversion people are not aware of the problems of going SD to HD

But if UKTV decide that something is done .. (but it’s their decision)
There is a large number of the imperfect transcodes in the system ….
And there is the cost and time to re ingest/transcode/ part /comply and get metadata correct .
(And I’m sure that some will be missed!)

[Neil Jones]

From today's episode of The Upper Hand (click for bigger):

UKTV airing:
   

Same shot from a YouTube video taken from a Paramount Comedy 2 airing:
   

Can't even see the cake in the Drama version of this episode, at least not on my TV, the "End of Part One" is once again touching the bottom of my TV picture on broadcast as well.

Then there was this:
   

   

I'm half expecting the logo/copyright line (and that lower line beneath the programme title) to completely vanish off my screen at some point, the way this is creeping...

[James2001]

When you're able to see these direct comparisons,it makes you realise just what a complete mess it is, both in terms of how much picture's cut off, and how soft and pixellated it is (admittedly the Paramount captures aren't good with that either, though I imagine that's down to the person who captured and uploaded it rather than how Paramount showed it).

I hope it gets fixed soon now it sounds as if some of the right people may have finally been informed. Though it's still mind blowing it's gone on for so long without people noticing, it really makes you wonder who's working there.

Curious that in every comparison capture I've done and seen, all the zooming is being done from the bottom and sides of the screen- nothing's cut off from the top. When the de-interlacing first started happening, there was a thin black bar at the top of the screen on the affected shows (I think only EastEnders and Some Mothers Do 'Ave Em had this), possibly they actually noticed that one and "fixed" that problem by just zooming into the picture until the black bar had gone (which possibly has something to do with the blurriness and pixellation, bad zooming/scaling algorithms can do that). But of course never fixed the de-interlacing issue.

[James2001]

So you have a picture that's likely already been shifted slightly down the screen (causing the black bar at the top) being zoomed into even further- rather than them actually properly fixing the issue that's caused the picture to shift down the screen- quite possibly that's the cause of the zooming and bluriness?

There was at least one EastEnders episode that had the black bar without the de-interlacing as well,. Possibly the de-interlacing began as part of their attempts to "fix" the black bar issue?

I remember Challenge in the 00s had a period of several months where the picture was similarly shifted down the screen, I seem to remember them saying they were aware of the problem, but it wasn't worth fixing as they were in the process of moving to a new transmission system (IIRC it was the same time they went 16:9)- so at least there was aknowledgement and an explanation. Unlike with UKTV here.

*Sorry for the second post, the edit window closed before I finished re-typing this!

[Neil Jones]

Yeah now I've done a couple of these its very strange how the top of the frame is pretty much unaffected. Normally you'd have expected it to be uniform zoom all the way round, and it isn't (to take the shot above, if it was uniform that door frame behind Honor Blackman would almost certainly have been right at the top right of the frame to match the amount chopped off the bottom).

Unless somebody's got this strange idea that the caption needs to be further "out" and closer to the edge of the screen, not aware that it's where it is for a reason, and done just that...

[James2001]

It's the same on the ones I've done for EastEnders, Casualty and Kingdom as well.

I'm starting to think my suppossition there may be correct- that something went wrong that caused the picture on SD conversions to be shifted slightly lower on the screen than it should be (hence the black bar at the top of the screen on the affected shows for a couple of weeks), to "fix" this problem they just zoomed in until the black bar was gone (hence the loss of picture on the bottom and sides, but not the top) rather than actually bring the picture back to its correct position, and the de-interlacing got introduced into the chain at pretty much the same time.

So for months we've had a zoomed, blurred, de-interlaced picture on all new SD acquisitions as a result.

It's interesting that us on a forum like this can look at what's happened and try to work out what might be the cause (which would help in fixing the issue... if the people in charge actually admitted there was a problem to fix), while UKTV themselves are flatly denying they can see a problem at all.

[James2001]

Writer credit on today's Casualty almost touching the bottom of the screen:

   

Admittedly, we can post as many screenshots as we like, it makes no difference if the people in charge at UKTV are refusing to see there's a problem even when being shown these things.

[Nobby]

Looking at that screenshot, and the others posted, it's easy to miss that there is an issue at first glance. It's readable, you can see the name in full etc.

I wonder what will happen when something does get noticbly cropped. Someone at UKTV will notice then and perhaps do something about it or escalate it. If only that writer had a double-barrelled surname.

[James2001]

Looking at that screenshot, and the others posted, it's easy to miss that there is an issue at first glance. It's readable, you can see the name in full etc.

Though you have the de-interlacing issue on top of that, which very much is noticable even at first glance.

You can't really point that out in screenshots though, unlike the zooming and picture softness/pixellation.