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At which loudness level does a spot get flagged as ‘Low Loudness’ – and what do broadcast stations do with them?
Hi there,
I’m a video tech at a post house, and we deal a lot with delivering to different TV stations, mostly across Europe.
Almost all of the countries in Europe adhere to the R128 audio standard for TV commercials, but I recently encountered a new situation.We had to deliver a commercial for hearing aids, half of which the audio was muted (or, damn near so). The other half was at a proper perceived volume, but as a result the spot came out at about -30LUFS. Too low for R128.
In the accompanying XML we could tag the spot as “Low Loudness”, which indicated to the broadcast stations that this was intentional and that they should not mess with the volume on this spot to crank it up to -23LUFS. Now, my questions are tho:1. At what point can you flag something for Low Loudness? Is that anything under -23,5LUFS, or is there a specific threshold that you need to be under for it to ‘qualify’. I can’t find anything about this in the EBU documents about a specific technical fall off, so I’m thinking this is more of a flag for creatives to tell the station not do do any additional post to their mix?
2. If you don’t tag the Low Loudness in the xml, do broadcast stations just do a flat volume increase? I.e. would (in my example) the second part of my commercial blow completely into the red, or is there any smart volume magic being applied so that only the softer parts (that fall under a certain… dB threshold?) are bumped up to make the spot fall within the -23LUFS±1 ? -
1 Reply
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No major broadcaster will make any major adjustments without telling you.
(Except a few that use software I made, but that is set to only do +/- 3dB changes.)Low level is anything lower than the target level minus the tolerance, otherwise it would be out of spec.
(In Europe that’s lower than -24, since it’s -23 LUFS +/- 1LU)The reason broadcasters won’t touch it is simple.
Commercials are paid, often very expensive.
If something else than delivered is aired, the add agency will refuse to pay and demand a re-run.
(In the tape days most agencies recorded all their bought airtime to look for dropouts etc, then refuse to pay if that happened.)
Then, if your video levels are off, clipping might occur and again, the broadcast won’t match the source.This is why QC is VERY rigid on commercials, and the broadcaster will simply reject the spot if it’s out of spec.
Perhaps a few small / local broadcasters do things manually, I would always include a warning letter along with the spots.
Your work probably can’t reach -23 without a re-mix, I would not worry, if there is a problem, it will simply be rejected and someone has to fight to get it aired, although it is in spec.
Bouke
http://www.videotoolshed.com
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