Our Post Production team supported the science series Oceans, made in HD with 5.1 sound. The eight 60 minute programmes transmitted on BBC TWO in October 2008. There were also deliverables for BBC Worldwide and Discovery.

Oceans was the first major project to go through BBC Studios and Post Production's new Dub 4 sound suite and Steve Hudson and Chris Graver carried out the 5.1 audio mix, creating many deliverables.

In Oceans, an international team of underwater explorers braved the dangers of the deep to tell the most exciting stories from the world of underwater archaeology, geology, marine biology and anthropology. The team ventured into some of the planet’s most challenging environments. They descended beneath frozen Arctic ice-sheets and into mysterious black holes of the Bahamas . They dived the tannin-stained waters of the Southern Ocean in search of rarely-seen deep sea creatures and into hazardous sea caves to reveal our oceans’ uncharted history.

RTS Craft Award nominated Post Production Editor Ged Murphy edited one of the first programmes to be post produced and helped set the style of the series. As with the critically acclaimed Planet Earth and Galapagos programmes, the intention was to deliver high quality HD images and our Post Production team worked closely with production to find the most appropriate and cost effective route to achieve the best results.

The material was logged and ingested to removable storage by the production on location and then our Post Production team transferred the media on to its X-San server. There are around 105 hours of footage per episode and all the media needs to be available throughout the 18 months edit schedule. Ingesting at DV will keep storage costs down, but the production required around 15TB of shared X-San storage, so BBC Studios and Post Production expanded its storage system to meet the project’s requirements.

The series was edited on Final Cut Pro at DV resolution and then conformed to HD. The grades were completed by Colourists Chris Packman and Geoff Hockney using FCP Color. HD FCP Finishing was carried out by John Payazidis in BBC Studios and Post Production's newly launched HD FCP and Grading suite. A tapeless workflow for the final post was provided by the Post Production team at its White City Facility, giving greater flexibility to producer and saving time and money as the need for expensive HD playouts was drastically reduced.

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