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Michael Suggs: Milagro Post, Part 3
Getting the content out of the facility and into TV stations
By Charlie White
Missed Part 2? Here it is. How about Part 1? Find that here.
In part 3 of our three-part series of interviews with Milagro Post President Michael Suggs, he talks about the workflow involved with moving the spots through the facility and out to the distribution plant. Suggs also talks about the types of spots his facility is doing, the archiving of footage and the challenges he's faced in the three-and-a-half year life of his bustling postproduction company.
DMN: Tell us more about your workflow. What happens to the production after it leaves the "hives?"
Suggs: After it leaves the hives, we take those spots as digital files and encode them for broadcast. After we encode them for broadcast, we have a high-speed data line that we upload to a satellite distribution facility. We dual-stream the spots in real time to that facility. In the old days the traditional tape based broadcast dubs were shipped to a broadcast or distribution facility. .
DMN: Most of the distribution is now done that way, and not with the tapes that are bicycled all over the place any more, right?
Suggs: There's still a lot of that that goes on.
DMN: What's the big format for you? Is it Betacam SP?
Suggs: We don?t see much Betacam SP at all. We have HD D5 and DigiBeta for tape formats. The bigger markets seem to prefer those formats. We send broadcast media files to the distribution facilities, rather than a piece of tape any more. It goes to tape really for archival and historical purposes more than anything.
DMN: So these distribution centers that use the digital files, they're the ones who decide whether they're going to distribute digitally or via Betacam or DigiBeta?
Suggs: That's correct. They have a laundry list of television stations, and the acceptable formats that they can use for their broadcast facilities. So they take care of all that.
DMN: Which distribution facility to you send them to normally, or are there a number of them?
Suggs: DG Systems, and they're headquartered in Dallas. They've got a distribution facility here in Southfield, Michigan as well.
DMN: You must have a hell of a digital data line going to them.
Suggs: We have a 45-megabit data pipe, which is an AC3 line. I think it is the equivalent of about 28 T1 lines. Those files are about 80MB [for a 30-second spot]. So yeah, they move pretty quickly. If we are doing a couple of hundred spots a day, we need to get them out of here as expeditiously as possible. We have several encoding systems, where once the spot is finished and approved for air we take it and encode it for broadcast. We make DVDs, we encode for FTP site distribution as well. Typically, for the approval process, once the spot is done, we create a version that works for an FTP site. We'll FTP it, make DVDs that go back to the agency, for instance, and then at the same time we create the broadcast encoded file -- all with one ingest. So when it's ready to go, we'll drag and drop into the next folder and it gets pushed out to DG Systems for distribution.
DMN: What is this broadcast format? What sort of compression are you using?
Suggs: It's MPEG2. What's interesting is, these files are about 80MB, and by the time it actually goes to some of the stations, they're down to around 9MB. It just keeps getting squashed every step of the way.
DMN: That will be a quite a bit different once HD really takes hold, won't it?
Suggs: Absolutely correct. The file sizes will be bigger for sure. For reference, a single frame of uncompressed SD is about 1MB. A single frame of HD is about 8MB. A single frame of 2K is about 12.5MB. And a single frame of 4K is about 50MB. So you can see how the higher resolutions grow exponentially.
DMN: So at first, you saw HD coming. You saw that a lot of the spots were starting to use letterbox, that might have been the first indication. And now, people are starting to do spots in HD. Now tell me, what has held this up? There's a lot of programming in HD, why not spots in HD?
Suggs: I think it's a reluctance, a misperception that HD is more expensive. I know that some telecine bays do charge a premium for HD transfer. At Milagro Post, whether you do your project at film resolution or SD resolution, we don't charge a different rate. The difference for us is that most of our workstations are geared to work at HD resolution. So, we really are trying to encourage and embrace HD, certainly.
DMN: So is it just a perception of expense, and not really an expense itself? I guess people are slowly learning about that now.
Suggs: Right. Now, from a production standpoint, it is little different. For HD finish, the director of photography is framing for 16x9 but has to protect for the 4x3 aspect ratio because there's a lot of dual-purpose work that's shot for HD and SD release. We can pan and scan, and manipulate here -- virtually in real time if it's necessary -- or we can letterbox. So there are many options that we have here to output a project. We offer content integration services for theatrical releases, as well. We work with people from Dolby Labs, EFILM, Deluxe Film Labs and Deluxe Media Management.
DMN: Where do most of your clients come from, Michael? Are they from the Detroit area, is that your biggest market?
Suggs: Yes, predominantly, right now the agencies that we work with are from the Detroit market.
DMN: So there are a whole lot of car spots you're doing -- you probably work for GM, all the Big Three, don't you?
Suggs: Oh yes, all the advertising agencies that we work with represent General Motors, Ford, DaimlerChrysler -- yes.
DMN: Those are your bread-and-butter clients, they keep you busy because they're trying to satisfy all their local dealerships as well.
Suggs: Yes, there seems to be two basic categories of work our clients produce: national brand or image spots, and the retail incentive spots. Spot for spot the national work has a much higher production budget than the retail work. But the retail work seems to have a higher media buy budget.
DMN: The image spots, those are the arty spots, aren't they?
Suggs: It's the branding spots that you see on primetime television for instance. Like what you see for the Super Bowl, that's all image. The spots that the agencies put together to represent the image of the carmakers. There's that perspective, but then the other perspective is, "OK, we have merchandise that we've got to sell."
DMN: Some of it as art, like the image spot, and then the others are, "Buy this car, $1000 cash back," that kind of thing?
Suggs: Right. It's kind of nuts and bolts work, but at the same time, we see the agencies really strive to maintain creative integrity as well. Our focus is on creating spots that are going to sell product, at the same time we want to be able to have fun with it. We want to turn out a good quality product that?s got good creative in it, at a reasonable, fair price.
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