A replacement copy of your submitted disc may be requested:

• if submitted footage for classification clearly contains material that is not intended to be released or where there is clearly material missing unless this is noted as intentional on accompanying paperwork
• DVD’s must be authored in such a way that they display counter timings and title & chapter information when placed in a DVD player.    If a significant number of elements on a DVD do not display accurate timing information (i.e. anything more than a logo or intro sting + DVD menus) a replacement DVD copy may be requested. This is because we are required to calculate an accurate runtime for each submitted work. This enables us to effectively schedule viewing time, accurately invoice the submitting company and to easily check for material differences between different versions of the same feature and to note where contentious moments may occur in a work. Please see “missing timing data on front panel display” in the troubleshooting section for further details.
• To ensure DVD’s are easy to examine, functions should not be ‘user disabled’ where possible.  A disc may be rejected if it contains any significant portions which will not allow the user to pause, fast forward and rewind or chapter search. This can make the work extremely difficult to examine should any possibly contentious material need to be checked.
• There should not be gaps in the footage unless this is actually part of the work (this can often occur where master tapes have been misaligned)
• Where possible it would be extremely useful if submitted discs were not encrypted with either CSS or Macrovision copy protection. This is in order to allow us to easily maintain our archive as required by the Video Recordings act 1984.
• There should not be textless material on submitted discs
• The work should not contain large anti-piracy logos or captions on screen e.g. “Property of…” that exceed the criteria set out in the Digital On screen Graphics policy.

Use of Digital on-screen Graphics (DOGs) on submissions to the BBFC

The work should not contain large anti-piracy logos or captions on screen e.g. “Property of…” that exceed the criteria set out in the Digital On screen Graphics policy below.

The graphic must:

• be static, not scrolling, flashing or otherwise dynamic.
• normally be comprised of no more than 10 characters.
• be white or another pale colour and have a transparency of 50%.
• be located along the top or bottom edge of the picture, not in the middle.

The graphic must not:

• obstruct the visibility of any significant material (including subtitles) to the extent that it would compromise accurate classification.

Acceptable Examples

Unacceptable Examples

Any submission which fails any of the above quality control checks will be stopped until a suitable resubmission is received. This will inevitably cause delays to the classification of your work.

Please note that submission parameters are subject to change. If in doubt about your submission or any other technical queries, please contact the technical department @: technical@bbfc.co.uk