So many stickers . . . Confused?

The media field sure has its jargon.

But having worked on staff at seven media companies, and as a consultant at countless others, I know there is an imporant purpose for the seeming madness.  Such identification can be critical when library-ing or archiving media assets.

Here’s a glossary for some of those terms that often show up on stickers attached to your tapes, disc cases and labels.

ORIGINAL = media on which a particular recording was first made. Often this refers to field tapes or film reels right out of the camera.

SOURCE = any unedited tape/disc from which dubs are made.

EDITED MASTER = the high-quality, first-generation layoff to tape/disc of a final edited program from the editing system.  Often this gets libraried and is not touched again.

PROTECTION MASTER = a second EDITED MASTER that serves as a back-up to the EDITED MASTER.

DUB MASTER = a dub of the EDITED MASTER or PROTECTION MASTER that is used for making all subsequent copies.

CC MASTER = a master that has been encoded with closed-captioning information.  Conversely, when pertinent, there are stickers that also say UNCAPTIONED MASTER.

MASTER = a generic term used by a dub house for dubbing a high-quality edited version of a program when it is unclear whether the tape or disc is an EDITED MASTER or DUB MASTER. The tape/disc is given this label to differentiate it from the dubs that will be made from it.

ELEMENTS = refers to a tape or disc that contains at least one of several “building blocks” of a multi-layered final graphic or visual effect.

WORK TAPE = a record tape that can be grabbed to quickly record or transfer items.  Items on it are usally recorded over after the short-term use.

SCRATCH TAPE = a lower quality WORK TAPE, often used for just training purposes, etc.

STEREO = left and right portions of the audio are on Ch. 1 and Ch. 2 respectively.

MONO or sometimes SAME BOTH TRACKS = the same mono audio is on both Ch. 1 and Ch. 2.  In otherwords, the sound is the same on both. 

If your order with me requires custom stickers, we can easily make those. For example, below is one that I have started using recently on one particular client’s media. 

With this sticker, I don’t have to determine whether the media I receive from this client is a master or a source.  And they can tell from the “VLC” that it is just for Video Labs’ internal use, so it won’t cause confusion with the other stickers on the media.  If the client decides to leave the sticker on the tape after we return it, there is the added bonus that they can quickly refer to the Video Labs project number in subsequent communications and orders.

Maybe you’d like to share how such identification stickers have served you well. I invite you to write in the comments below.