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Audio Levels for Broadcast Using FCP
Long time reader of Creative Cow (lots of problems solved thanks to these forums), first time poster.
I am just wrapping up a television ad, it’s my first one, and I want to make sure that my audio levels are set properly. I understand these may vary depending on broadcaster, but I’d love to have a good base. The commercial (which can be seen here for reference using the password “sja”: https://vimeo.com/7636971) is just a music track and then we go to some street ambience at the end. I have my levels peeking at -12.
So far I’m doing everything by ear, are there standards I should abide by? Should I lay bars and tone? If so, just what the heck do I even do with bars and tone? I appreciate the help and, as this is my first ad that I am delivering to a client that is also fairly green in commercials, if anyone has suggestions as to how to present the final product (i.e. slate for 5 secs, bars and tone for however many seconds) that’d be a good bonus.
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2 Replies
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-6db is the minimum we use for audio levels.
But you need to get the tech specs from the broadcaster to ensure you pass QC. This question has been answered multiple times in this forum and a Search would pull up many more responses.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
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I make music videos for broadcast and have made several hundred which we have broadcast in the past. These are mpg2 files where the audio is set to peak at -3db on the standard FC timeline.
The new broadcaster we are moving to has a technical spec of -18dbfs and we sent over two files to test – one he rejected because it was -100dbfs(some classical music) and the other was -80dbfs both had the peak audio set to -3db
Now we are setting up a classical music channel and dynamic range cannot be messed with – so what do we do?
Any assistance appreciated
regards
Nick
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