UK facilities body to launch unified delivery specification

The Chief Engineers of Facilities Forum (ChEFF), the UK facilities trade body, are to launch a unified broadcast delivery specification at this year’s Production Show.
Each UK broadcaster publishes their own delivery specification resulting in subtle but important differences between them. With the proliferation of broadcast channels, facility companies have to take extra care to deliver programmes that meet the broadcasters’ individual requirements.
The ChEFF document will be the first result from a yearlong initiative to harmonise these various specifications. Initiative coordinator for ChEFF, Jeff Booth of Soho Images said: “Many of the existing specs hark back to some fairly arbitrary engineering decisions made long ago, in a time of open-reel tape formats and in-house post-production. These decisions have become enshrined in custom and practice and need a fresh look in the light of modern-day requirements such as widescreen and server based transmission systems.”
While many UK broadcasters have been going through the process of reviewing their own delivery specs, there has been broad support amongst them for a unified document.
Whereas most broadcasters’ documents run to several tens of pages, the ChEFF document is concise and to the point. Booth added: “We’ve concentrated on post-production and stripped out all the stuff about acquisition, OBs and live studios, since by the time you get into editing all this is a fait-à-complit. Recommendations for acquisition practices will be the subject of a further document but for now we want the ChEFF spec to be an essential and workable source of daily reference for those in the front-line. What editors, telecine colourists and tape ops really need to know are line-up levels, clock details, safe areas and what tolerances are acceptable.”
Equally as important as the technical delivery specification are the requirements for production compliance. Each channel quite understandably has different credit style and branding requirements. The ChEFF spec tackles this by providing a directory of Internet links to the broadcaster’s own documents, however this information is often difficult to find.
The ChEFF specification will be released at a special seminar about Broadcast Delivery Standards to be held in The Engineering Technology Centre at The Production Show in Olympia on Wednesday May 22 at 11am and further details about it will be available from the ChEFF stand, number 679, on the ground floor of the main hall.
ChEFF, www.cheff.org.uk
(GB)