General Guidelines and Requirements

CONTENT

For a finished show, besides the main content of the show, it should have an opening title sequence and closing credits. That does not need to be highly produced but should give the basic information that a viewer would want to know. The open typically includes the name of the series and/or name of the event or presentation, possibly a list of speaker(s) and the sponsoring organization. The end credits usually has the same information, plus may have a "for more information" screen including URL, a disclaimer and copyright. The open should fade up from black, and the program should fade down to black at the end. Music underneath both the open and close is highly desirable.

When possible, edit out comments that are only relevant to the audience in the room (remove all announcements and housekeeping that are not pertinent after the fact) and limit the introductions of the speaker(s) so that the audience quickly accesses the content in the title of the program.

QUALITY

The show should be well-lit, camera work smooth, audio quality good. The audio must from a clean feed or captured using a good microphone - the built in camera microphone will not be adequate. The video levels should be "broadcast safe" (whites below 100IRE), and the audio levels between -12 and -20 db, regularly tapping -12 is fine. Any text should be in the "title safe" zone. This includes both the lower third speaker IDs, which we would like to see several times in a presentations, and text contained within graphics such as a PowerPoint slide. Often a PowerPoint slide will need to be scaled down a bit to meet this requirement, if the text is too close to the edge of the frame.

LENGTH

For full-length shows intended for television broadcast, our time slots are 30, 60 and 90 minutes, though we occasionally have 120 minute programs. Target lengths are 28:30, 58:30 and 88:30, though we are somewhat flexible on that. We know that with performance/event programming, it's hard to cut to an exact time. The lengths can be shorter, but not too much longer... we need 30 seconds for station identification, so 29:30/58:30/89:30 are the maximum lengths for each time slot. Shows intended only for online distribution have no time requirements.

Shows for special audiences (such as medical professionals) may be shorter and will be scheduled together in a designated time slot.

SUBMISSION FILE FORMAT

Our preference is an MP4 file or QuickTime movie. It should be of a high quality, as we will use the movie as a master file, from which we make the assorted MPEGs for broadcast, iTunes, Podcast, YouTube, etc.

If the show is HD, ideally it is 1920x1080, though we can accept 1280x720.

If the file is an H.264 MP4, a good target bitrate is 8Mbps or higher, though higher rate is fine, and lower is acceptable if the quality holds up.

If the file is a QuickTime movie, the most common file formats are ProRes (Pro Res LT, etc.), DVCPro or HDV.

SUBMISSION DATA

Along with the files we will need the following data:

• Program Title
• Series Title (if applicable)
• Name of speaker(s)
• Speaker(s)’ affiliation
• Date of recording
• Description of the program content – a short paragraph
• Length of the program

COSTS

The cost to distribute a finished programs through UCTV is $300 for each program irrespective of length. Please provide us with:

• Financial contact
• Chartstring information for the intercampus recharge

RIGHTS

You are responsible for securing all rights for television and online distribution. By submitting finished programs you acknowledge that the speakers have agreed.

---

< back to Program Contributors