Prosound News - April 2008 - (Page 48)

[48] specialreport Management (continued from page 47) automatic 5.1 level control solution at the conference. Seidel takes a hands-off approach with content creators. “We, the broadcaster, should be as transparent as possible to their production and their mix,” he says. He believes the larger problem lies elsewhere: “While the programs have been mixed very well, the guys producing the commercials have been pushing the envelope. We are now saying, unless you meet our loudness requirements for our commercials, we will do some loudness controls.” That control occurs during ingest at the network, employing TC Electronic’s DB4 broadcast processor. “As we ingest commercials into the playback servers, we do our usual quality-control analysis and look at audio and video levels. If necessary, we give the advertiser a choice; they can either remix the commercial to meet the requirements or we will apply loudness control as the spot is ingested,” explains Seidel. “We rolled that out at the network. The local stations that have not had a groundswell of HD commercials have not completed that install. As soon as we see more commercials come in at a local level we’ll make that addition to the stations,” he adds. Seidel has a reason for eschewing dialnorm as a solution, he explains. “I have yet to receive a single show, commercial or promo with dialnorm information, not a single one at the stations, at either of the networks [CBS and The CW], or in syndication. For that reason, I’m saying this isn’t working from an operational standpoint, let alone a practical engineering standpoint.” There are inherent problems with dialog normalization, Seidel argues: “Dialnorm, I think, was originally intended for DVDs and motion pictures that play uninterrupted. Television isn’t like that; the short-term dialnorm concept doesn’t work. Dialnorm is a long-term loudness evaluation, evaluated over an hour or a half hour, and is not representative of what is happening instantaneously within the program.” Further, not all content even has dialog on which to base a measurement. “We’ve had a lot of commercials that have just music. We even had some commercials with announcements coming out of four speakers. Should I change that? No. I should be faithful to what they gave me.” How do you get around the ATSC’s mandate for dialnorm use? “You could change the standard from a ‘shall’ to a ‘should’ and that would solve the problem,” says Seidel. “I think using some of the traditional methods that we’ve had throughout the history of broadcasting will work better for controlling loudness than dialnorm will.” Carroll vehemently disagrees with the approach, and believes Seidel’s research is flawed. “There are some major technical inaccuracies about how the AC3 system works. And it’s not a great idea at this late date to abandon the ATSC system. By abandoning ATSC he’s opening the door to people putting in NTSC-style processing, and that’s when we start to talk about other companies making processors that irreparably change the original content.” As Riedmiller also notes, “Dialnorm was mainly meant to address inter-program level differences. The moment-tomoment, intra-program level differences are addressed by a portion of the AC3 system people forget about, the dynamic range control subsystem.” Simply passing content from program producers unprocessed is not a problem for 5.1 listeners, notes Carroll. “But the re- ality is that more than 80 percent of viewers still listen in stereo. The audio is getting pummeled because there’s a non-defeatable thing in the background that protects that downmix, combining five channels into two. You can undo a lot of things, but there’s no going back from clipping in somebody’s living room.” Orban is also behind the ATSC standard, even if it is taking a while for dialnorm practices to be fully implemented: “In principle it’s a wonderful idea, and I support it. It may be that in the next few years broadcasters are finally going to get it together, particularly with the analog shutoff.” Unfortunately, there is a need for processing, says Orban. “If content providers were doing their job, there would be no need for transmission audio processing. But the fact is there are problems. I would like to see something like the 8585 used only for program material that doesn’t need dynamic range anyway, which is a large portion of what is on television. All you can say about the style of processing that the 8585 provides is that it will correct a lot of these problems at the expense of long-term dynamic range.” That processing would ideally be implemented at ingest: “Put one in the sports truck, one in the newsroom. We already have [Optimod] 6300s in several newsrooms that I know of, to make sure that everything is evened out before it goes on the air. I think if it is put in the air chain it should be remote-controlled so that it can be bypassed for program material that has already passed quality standards.” Broadcast audio problems currently are not limited to loudness, he observes. “I’m still hearing weird things. FOX seems to have just introduced some sort of a blind upmix that spreads people’s heads over half the living room. It’s odd what otherwise sane people are permitting to go out over the air.” Carroll, who previously worked for Dol- by, acknowledges that, with hindsight, it was a lot to ask the industry to embrace the metadata concept initially. “Here’s how you can protect your content—by the way, you not only have to mix the program, you have to set metadata parameters, and unless you’re using Dolby E, there’s no way to carry those values. It seems like it’s selfserving and a way to push Dolby E, rather than protect programming.” But metadata is the way forward, he believes, not least because it is mandated in the ATSC standard. He has also been able to expand on Dolby’s original five living-room-friendly metadata presets with more aggressive broadcast-appropriate settings in his Linear Acoustic products. “While we do sell a processor that allows you to do as much or as little dynamics processing that’s permanent as you want to do, we’ve always had that metadata connection,” says Carroll. “The station can decide how much they trust what they’re getting. If the network is sending relatively consistent audio, they can rely on metadata to handle the rest. What that means is that when CSI: Miami gets broadcast to the home, you can get the original dynamic range back, if that’s what you want.” Carroll, who is in the trenches selling his processors, is able to report on the current state of progress firsthand. “Most stations do not have any processing. That’s going to change, and hopefully they’re going to be smart about this and put in processors that do a good job of managing metadata first and step in with traditional processing if they have to. If you’re going to put something in, at least put something in that gives you the choice. The more work that gets done upstream, whether it’s with the DP600 or people using LM100s or just being more careful with audio production, the less we have to do downstream. That is the beauty of the system.” The networks are relatively consistent, says Carroll. “We measure across them all the time to see where things are sitting, and things are getting better. Most of the problems come from local insertions. There are ways to automate that so it doesn’t take any effort at all, and the network content is left alone. That makes for a less expensive processor for a local station. We find people are purchasing our processors because it allows them to keep hands-free operation.” In summary, he says, “Where people have paid attention, they’ve done a good job. If they were early on the air, they were paying attention to the best knowledge that the industry had in 1998, which was that you don’t need any processing. The best knowledge we have today is you absolutely do.” CBS Broadcasting www.cbs.com Dolby Laboratories www.dolby.com Linear Acoustic www.linearacoustic.com Orban/CRL www.orban.com psn April 2008 http://cableup.com http://www.cbs.com http://www.dolby.com http://www.linearacoustic.com http://www.orban.com http://cableup.com

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Prosound News - April 2008 Sound Business Contents Sound Retail Mojo’s Working at NY Noise Studio Showcase: Jungle Room Studios Software Tech Tracks Sessions Nomad Takes Root TCB at NYC’s JSM SoundScreen White Space Turning Gray Audio for Video and Broadcast Field Reports:Sony PCM-D50 Linear PCM Recorder; Holophone H4 SuperMINI Surround Microphone Sound Innovations: Earthworks Audio PianoMic System Frozen Liquid Live Sound Showcase: Jill Scott Centerstage Soundcheck Sound People View From the Top Product Spotlight Advertiser Index Company Index Classifieds Music, Etc.

Prosound News - April 2008

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