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Volume on TV HD? Walter???
I thought the booming volume levels that blow you off the couch when TV cuts to commercial were banned years ago??
I have an HD box from Adelphia cable here in SE Florida, and I find that the volume from channel to channel can vary by as much as 20 levels on my volume control on my receiver? Especially noticable during commercials.
Just wondering.
Matt Murray
Lineside Productions
Wellington, FL
https://www.edgesportfishing.com
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Soundtrack Pro 1 -
14 Replies
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Oh God no. I WISH they stop that. I’ll be watching the West Wing, and there will be this intense, quiet conversation…fade to black…CUT TO A MATTRESS SALE THIS LOUD!
WTF?
Who knows. It isn’t HD land…I am running off Direct TV analogue SD and man, it is BAD.
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[Matt Murray] “I have an HD box from Adelphia cable here in SE Florida, and I find that the volume from channel to channel can vary by as much as 20 levels on my volume control on my receiver? Especially noticable during commercials.”
that’s partly adelphia and partly the spots themselves. The channel volume is adelphia not have sufficient audio controls on the head-end. We get the same thing here with charter and it’s completely ridiculous.
on the spots, I don’t think ad agencies will ever stop pushing the limits of audio compression and volume. when it comes to local spots, well, there’s not much I can say about them that should be printed in public.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com“The Rough Cut,” an original short film premiering December 7th in full High Definition in Atlanta.
rsvp@biscardicreative.com to reserve seats.
https://www.theroughcutmovie.comNow editing “Good Eats” in HD for the Food Network
“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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Same problem here with Time Warner Cable and even my DirecTV at home. Whenever the providers drop in “local” spots, their volume levels are often WAY louder than the program levels. As stated above, I believe much of the problem is in inattentive operations at the head end level. With the automation in place for playing spots these days, it seems that no one actually monitors the channels any more…or even cares for that matter. I’ve had spots that I’ve produced running on our local cable channels with bad audio, blown-out video levels, up cutting and down cutting the ends of the spot, and generally making the spot look like crap. A call to the cable provider usually achieves nothing. It’s only when I call my clients and make them aware of the problem with their spots and they, in turn, call their sales reps at the cable office does anything ever get fixed. It’s most often turns out to be a problem at the point of ingestion. No one seems to actually check levels any more. They just run the spot into the server and that’s about it for QC. I’ve seems the same bad spots run for weeks with no one questioning why you cant actually read any of the titles or see detail in the talents faces. It’s a sad commentary on where the industry has gone lately.
As for compressing spot audio, most of out clients still want their spots to sound LOUD when played. It cuts thru the clutter they say. It’s just plain annoying, I say. When I make an analog air dub of their spots, the audio meters usually just point to around Zero db on the meters and just sit their and quiver. No real deflection in the meters…just very high average program levels. Sigh…
Oh well, time to get off of my soapbox now…
Tom -
seeing as most of us editors out there do most of our own sound work, especially on small projects, where does everyone mix there audio tooo???
i try and stay between -3 and 0, make it as loud as I can. usually because most film festivals audio sucks, and I would rather have them turn it down than it be tooo quiet. i havent done much broadcast stuff at all, was just wondering!
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[Tom Matthies] “most of out clients still want their spots to sound LOUD when played. It cuts thru the clutter they say. It’s just plain annoying, I say.”
I think it’s so that you can still hear the commercials while you’re in the kitchen! 😉
Arnie
https://www.arniepix.com -
I think many broadcasters don’t have an audio processing for their digital signals. Most have them for their analog audio, but just pass the digital audio through. Cable is most likely worse.
TC -
I used to dub commercials for the channel I started work for. Originally as everything came in maxed out at +6 we used to have a policy of winding them down a few db to keep the viewers happy.
Now, instead of 6 channels, that broadcaster has 200+ and all commercials are loaded onto profile servers for playout. They are only handled by the transmission department. Everything is now back at max! Unless the broadcasters or regualtors re-define what they call ‘legal’ for commercials you will always have this problem.
Actually, you hit the nail on the other head when you mentioned the West Wing. Most programmes (and especially movies) have far too wide a dynamic range on the audio – suitable for a dubbing suite or a movie theatre, but not for a living room. Again, we were trained to QC movies and reject them for this. but no one ever did anything to fix it. If broadcasters paid more attention to their own programme audio ranges, viewers wouldn’t have to wince every time a commercial came on.
‘Course, over here we have the BBC – that solves the commercial problem at least…
Ben
Editec Broadcast Editing Ltd
EVS and FCP specialists
Current Mac systems All Dual 2.7Ghz with Kona 2 and Digital Voodoo cards, 6Gb Ram, Sapphire, SCSI320 Medea and Huge Arrays.FCP projects include Sky TV coverage of the Ryder Cup and US Open Golf – Live OB specialists. Edit/slomo vehicle.
http://www.editec.co.uk -
My spot clients demand the overdriven distorted audio.
I have tried to show them for years where a proper audio level is. They complain when their spot airs and say “it’s not loud enough”. So I just crank it up and let the TV stations compress it back. So it’s not so much that editors or operators are responsible as much as the pinheads at the ad agency. -
What is also revealing is that most of the high end commercials are also pushing the chroma saturation to the limit. Pretty = high saturation, and they are soooo pretty.
Chris
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I think the problem is that there are max peak levels set by broadcasters for all programming. Lets say their specs say audio levels not to go above +6db. Most people, when mixing a TV show will usually have audio levels hovering in the -10 to 0db range to allow for dramatic increases in the show, say for car chase scenes or explosions etc. If they run the program continually up around 0 to +6 db there would be nowhere to go for the dramatic stuff. On the other hand commercial mixers will push everything to the limit for that 30 sec spot ’cause that’s what the client wants. So after that nice quiet scene of The west Wing that was probably hovering around -10db, an increase of 16db to the mattress guy is double the volume and really obnoxious. Really makes you want to go and by a new mattress doesn’t it? Maybe they should have specs for commercials, say peaks 6db lower than programming.
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