From my Perspective - Sound and Competitions

As a filmmaking group we may not always get our filmic storyline right but we make great efforts to set our production values as high as we can. Surround sound for music, good quality XLR microphones for clear dialogue, balanced main and effect lighting for clear pictures and digital semi pro cameras for capturing the best quality image we can. Pre and post-production is done wholly in digital format with the end result being burned on DVD’s.

You can imagine our consternation when one of our films shown at the finals of a nationwide contest appeared on the screen looking like a third generation VHS tape copy. The sound was tinny and parts of the sound track missing.

During the break I questioned the projectionist as to why our film had projected so badly. It appears that for convenience all films had been transferred to tape irrespective of the original media used.

Following this revelation I set out to find if this was common practice in other competitions. On making enquiries it would seem this was not an isolated incident.

It appears that many in amateur film makers are totally unaware of the technology that goes into the DVD wonder we take for granted.

To aid understanding let me shed a little insight into DVD production by asking two questions and supplying what I hope are easily understood answers. The purist who reads this may blanch at the general nature of the answers but this article is not for their edification.

Question

How do you get up to 2 hours of film content that contains around 22GB of data on to a DVD disk that holds just over 4GB of data?

Answer

By compressing the data using a CODEC thus throwing away up to 80% of the quality.

Question

What is a CODEC?

Answer

Technical shorthand for CODer and DECcoder. By the use of clever algorithms (mathematical calculations) they discard most of the data whilst retaining enough information for a DVD player to reconstruct the result into a viewable (and listenable) film From this over simple explanation you will see that a DVD player is an essential element in maintaining the quality of a film. Take away this element and you end up with the result mentioned at the start of this article. I have not even touched on the disastrous effect of transferring 5.1 surround sound to a stereo tape track.

My plea to all organisers of all competitions is to stop the copying of DVD’s to tape.

If you cannot play back media on its preferred equipment say so by excluding them from your competitions.

Final note

With the imminent prospect of High Definition television and BLU-RAY going mainstream the situation can only get worse.

Jeff Friend