ProSound News - December 2008 - (Page 40)

[40] specialreport Beyond 5.1 (continued from page 1) gearing up to do this project. They said it’s on their horizon but it’s not imminent; it won’t happen with the release of Version 8.” The DTS encoding software for BD supports seven different speaker configurations. BD post producers have opted for two extra side speakers, at 90 degrees to the viewer, while the game industry is adopting THX’s recommendation for four surround speakers. “I’m not thrilled with either,” says Smith, who would prefer more flexibility. “It’s nice to have the side speakers in order to allow for a bit smoother of a panning sensation, but it’s not a night-and-day difference. It’s not like when we first got surround channels or even stereo surround channels.” Post Haste’s TV project, remixing the first season of CSI for BD 7.1 release, could have benefited from one of the other supported configurations, he believes, in particular a dedicated height or overhead channel. “This has lots of helicopters and things in the background, which would have been able to take advantage of that.” Not that home adoption of the format has reached critical mass yet. “I have a 5.1 system at home, and I have no idea where I would be able to put two more speakers,” admits Smith. The 7.1 format is still very much in its infancy, he continues. “The last time I checked, there were less than 30 titles released in 7.1, and only one television show: Weeds.” As a result, 5.1 and stereo compatibility is crucial. “We keep the original 5.1 in the session so that we can refer back to it. We also have meters on it constantly, and try and make sure that our 7.1 levels for the surrounds combined aren’t going to be significantly higher. When I’m mixing music, I’m trying to keep it at least 3 dB down per channel so that when it sums, it doesn’t build up with a huge amount of rear energy.” On the subject of metering, he adds, “The only person I know of doing anything with 7.1 metering is Paul Neyrinck. It’s great software, but a lot of the other stuff that goes along with it we don’t need at the moment.” As for other processing, he says, “There are no real 7.1 reverbs.” In addition to using Pro Logic II and Circle Surround decoders to derive as much spatial information as possible from the material when remastering, says Smith, “I’m also using a lot of the TC Unwrap, but in a different way. I’m given a 5.1 comp and since someone spent some time making that, I want to keep as close to that as I possibly can. I’m trying to unwrap the surrounds as much as I can and then flip it around so that the left surround and right surround are driving the left side surround and right side surround. It doesn’t always work, but I’m using it mostly for music to get a bit more of an enveloping sound, and something that will fold down.” Not that anyone has worked out exactly how everything should fold down, he says. “We’re just trying to figure it out as we go.” But that’s OK with him: “That’s kind of exciting, because it’s like when the first older movies were being remastered for 5.1 from mono and stereo elements.” HD Post (continued from page 39) says Randall Smith, senior audio engineer at Post Haste Sound in Santa Monica. The studio performs a lot of standard def work as well as HD, says cofounder Allan Falk, who notes that Post Haste has been remastering film and television series for optical disc release for some time, including a good number of 7.1 Blu-ray releases. But while the workload might increase, the retail history of the DVD format means that the content producers are not prepared, or able, to increase their budgets. “We’re doing a lot of the original Bond features in 5.1 for Blu-ray, and the budgets are ridiculous,” shares Falk. “They’re really squeezing us tight. In a lot of cases we need to remaster from 2-channel stereo or mono to 5.1 for the additional languages and there’s no budget, but they still want 5.1.” Budgets have been shrinking for some time, apparently, as even several years ago some of the larger studios dropped Dolby Digital EX, the 6.1 format, in favor of standard 5.1, recalls Falk. Further, he observes, “It used to be quality, quality, quality, and now it’s budget, budget, budget. The clients used to say, ‘Just make it perfect.’ Now they say, ‘Just make it passable.’” The big studios are only now putting a toe in the water to see how Bluray works and to see if people get really excited about it, Smith says. “It all comes down to budget. It costs more to do a 5.1 mix, then a 6.1 or 7.1, and they aren’t realizing the profit on DVDs or Blu-rays. When DVDs first came out they were high-end luxury items, and they were $30 a shot. Studios would spend money to do proper documentary-style bonus features that looked really professional and polished. Now that DVDs are $10 there’s no market to do that. People have become accustomed to paying $10 a shot for video on disc and they see Blu-ray and get irritated they have to pay $30.” As the budgets tighten, the hours to do the same work shrink, notes Smith. “When I started doing this we used to get two or three weeks for the pre-dub for a 5.1 upmix, then a couple of days to actually mix it with the clients. Now you get two days.” The saving grace, at least, is that the audio tracks are sounding better than ever in the new HD formats. For the most part, says Smith, the primary language tracks on Blu-ray releases are being delivered 90 percent of the time in a lossless format such as DTS-HD Master Audio. “Occasionally, we’ll go down to a fixed bit rate but it’ll generally be a higher one, higher than what we would have done as a standarddefinition DTS track. The secondary and tertiary languages are limited to make up the space.” With the new delivery medium, film and TV disc releases are catching up with music, he points out. But the trumping of quality by convenience is still a factor: “Music has been able to put DVDs out at 24/96 for a while, thanks to DTS. We’re technically catching up with them, because we’re still working at 24/48. But the fact that convenience at the moment has won out over quality is really telling in that, as much as we sit here and gripe about the tonal quality of the stuff we’re working on, trying to make it perfect, there’s someone at home listening to this on iPod speakers on a 2 1/4-inch screen.” prosoundnews.com December 2008 http://www.nbmedia.com http://www.nbmedia.com http://www.prosoundnews.com http://www.nbmedia.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of ProSound News - December 2008

ProSound News - December 2008 Sound Business Contents Hank’s Best Yet Sound Recording Studio Showcase: Great City Productions Software Tech Tracks Sessions Anticipating Post’s Future Post Showcase: Eargasm HD Audio Post The Business of Being Creative Sound Innovations: VRsonics VibeStudio Spatial Design Suites Field Reports: Product Profiles Yes We Can Hear Obama Live Sound Showcase: Stone Temple Pilots Centerstage Soundcheck Sound People View From the Top Product Spotlight Classifieds Advertiser Index Company Index Music, etc

ProSound News - December 2008

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