September 2009

HARDING'S TESTING
You probably have heard of this and you probably know something about it. But if you don’t, in a nut shell what is it? At Pogo Films, we are able to look at your film, at any point in the edit, and analyse it with our Harding Machine to check for broadcaster failing conditions.

These are where your material may contain bright flashes or variations in brightness that occur in a stroboscopic fashion and also where patterns of parallel lines in the material exist of sufficient difference and spacing. When either or both of these occur over sufficient timescales, the analyser detects them and reports to us a ‘fail’. Luckily, this is not the end of the world, as with our experience and equipment, we can fix the footage, with judicious and creative adjustment, to make a ‘pass’. Thus, your film can be broadcast and we can all go home happily.

To go into a little more detail, the analyser looks at: Luminance flashes (brightness flashes such as photographers flash guns), Red flashes (perhaps graphic content or gun fire etc.) and Patterns (in particular the presence of parallel lines with sufficient contrast and proximity to each other). All are tested for their duration in the footage and the rate of change.

The picture shows what we see after the test and enables us to make our adjustments to fix the footage. It is a frame by frame analysis which means that we can make the minimum of changes to your film to achieve the ‘pass’ result you need. In many cases, you would barely notice the change to that part of your film, and even better than that, it can get broadcast!

Broadcasters are becoming increasingly determined to safe-guard themselves from possible prosecution and PSE (photosensitive epilepsy) sufferers do form a significant portion of any society. Hence corporations such as ITV, Channel 4, Sky and industry bodies such as OFCOM, ISO and ITU are determined to make sure that broadcast material complies – Hence, you need to, too!

Cambridge Research