Im from UK and have noticed that between many TV commercials on local and cable channels theres a quick black flash between almost every ad which annoys me when watching american ad breaks on youtube for fun. I heard its a signal cue to insert local ads but i saw cable channels that do this between almost every commercial even when both ads are national so whats the true purpose? This does not happen in the UK. Also when a program starts theres usually a black screen for 1-2 seconds.
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This might be something occurring on your end. I can’t recall ever seeing black flashes between commercials when I had cable television, nor have I seen black screens prior to program start time.
I am confident it is related to local ads. Just because the stream you are watching has back to back national ads doesn’t mean everyone’s did.
>Also when a program starts theres usually a black screen for 1-2 seconds.
K. And?
Local ads are a thing here. Every TV market inserts their own ads.
If you’re watching some kind of online stream they often don’t insert any ads and you end up with black screens.
I have never noticed this. I’m thinking it was just the editing on the specific station you were watching.
But I haven’t watched cable TV with commercials in like 20 years, so who knows. I don’t think my kids even know what commercials are, they’d be looking for the “skip ad” prompt on the screen.
Ads change over time. An ad being national means nothing. You also have ads that differ for different content depending on where it is. This could be online streaming, different TV channels, etc.
Though this isn’t odd and is done in plenty of countries. It’s specifically to show a break for ads, not just American ads, but ads when it’s distributed to other countries.
This isn’t really something I notice since so many countries media does this. I also watch UK media and they do it too, so not sure why this is an issue.
I’m not sure what you’re talking about and I watch a LOT of television. You said this is on Youtube, though, so I’m guessing it’s the way the video was edited by the person posting the collection of ads. I guess a moment of black screen would be a simple way to show stop/start points of each commercial during a compilation, but I’m just guessing.
It’s actually nice as you can use this for commercial flagging and auto skip the ads with the right software.
I don’t remember the technical reason why the television industry does this.
Somebody out there is an engineer who works for a TV station. Somebody out there.
Fun fact –
One of the early DVRs used the black flashes to automatically skip commercials. It worked amazingly well.
I used to work in media.
IIRC, its serves as sort of a buffer. Spots are given a certain amount of time but sometimes when they’re delivered (meaning received from the company handling the ad), they’re not _exactly_ the length needed (which is funny, because its like _you had one job!_). So, they’re given a sort of “container” of say, 15 seconds. If they’re not exactly 15 seconds, you’ll see the “container” which is just a black screen. It’s like extra space in a shipping container.
It’s been a long time and that wasn’t my specialty so someone might have a better answer but I’m pretty sure that’s what you’re referring to.
As for why they don’t happen in the UK, no idea. If they pay for a 30 second spot and only send 28 seconds, it is what it is. I personally think they work pretty well because they can also serve as a partition between the ads. Not that I would even want to see ads though haha.
The creators of Arrested Development noticed this too, so they purposely made their screen flash white, rather than black, just to be different!
Cable and satellite systems use SCTE-35 tones (or some newer alternative) to let the series of broadcast equipment know when shows start, when shows go to break, or when to cut to station ID. Those tones are embedded in the video signal and when a piece of equipment encounters a tone it needs to act on (like a local ad insertion) it kicks into action and begins playing the local ad instead of whatever national ad is being broadcast. Sometimes there is a delay when the triggering happens and you’ll see black, or see another ad begin before the local ad takes over.
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[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCTE-35](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCTE-35)
TV worker here. Those black frames are most likely down to the way the automation runs. A TV channel’s automation system is a lot like a Spotify playlist; a continuous stream of elements in a queue (in fact we *call* the automation queue a playlist). Automation systems can be set to use different transitions between elements, but usually there isn’t one. There may be a quirk where there’s a black frame as the playout goes from the program server to the server where the commercials are stored. Or possibly spots that start on a frame of black rather than “first video.” The black you see at the start of a program is most likely either in the show itself, or part of a switch from local to network if a station’s clock is off.
YouTube content is delivered in a similar but different way, and there may be a pause as something on its end decides which targeted ad to serve you.
The cue to insert local ads is different, and I explain that below in a reply to someone else.
Never noticed before, now it is all I notice. Thanks.
No clue what you are talking about.