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Making my Vegas project conform to broadcaster’s standards
I’m working on a series for a local cable broadcast outlet.
They’ve provided me with standards that include the following:
Digital Video Standards – 0 IRE Black Level – 100 IRE Peak
Digital Audio Standards – 18dB Average. No peaks over -15 or valleys under -25.On the audio side — I’ve spent most of my broadcast career in radio and far too much hobby time mixing and recording music, so I’m comfortable doing a mix that sounds good and doesn’t clip. My concern is whether to adjust my workflow to meet the standards, or work as normally and shoehorn the mix into the standards at the end.
I see some great advice in this previous thread: https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/24/960109
So, ought I mix normally — make it sound good and not clip at 0db, then use a plug-in chain to drop it to the required levels … if so, what would you recommend? Or, mix at every step along the way to peak at -15 and then bring up the bottom side at the end?
My gut tells me to mix as usual, drop the master bus to -15 and use a compressor to bring up the rest, with a brickwall limiter on the end for safety. I confuse myself, though, with what kind of compressor settings I’d use to accomplish that. But my head tells me there’s probably a ‘right’ way.
And lastly, for the video IRE standards…outside of keeping an eye on clip levels via the waveform as I’m producing, is there a Levels setting I should slap on the end before rendering to ensure that 0-100 requirement, or is that going to be taken care of if I’m being reasonable with my levels along the way?
Thanks, as always.
Canadian broadcaster brought up in analog, living in digital. Radio’s my career, audio-video-photography are hobbies that make a buck here and there.
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4 Replies
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[Scott Simpson] “My gut tells me to mix as usual, drop the master bus to -15 and use a compressor to bring up the rest, with a brickwall limiter on the end for safety. I confuse myself, though, with what kind of compressor settings I’d use to accomplish that. But my head tells me there’s probably a ‘right’ way.”
It’s not that simple. Read what the broadcaster asked for. -18dB Average. Right there you can’t measure that with Vegas Pro. The broadcaster is taking about Loudness not Peak. Vegas Pro measures peak. Loudness is measured over time. That’s why they also say or valleys under -25. They don’t mean that you cannot have silence in your program, they mean the average loudness should never dip below -25dB. Also I’m shocked that they want -18dB average. That’s loud for broadcast and the fact that peaks can’t be over -15dB only gives you 3dB of headroom. That’s ridiculously close. I guess they expect to you compress it until sounds dead. You might not be too far off with just mixing as normal and then compressing it down to what they want because what the want isn’t very dynamic to begin with.
[Scott Simpson] “And lastly, for the video IRE standards…outside of keeping an eye on clip levels via the waveform as I’m producing, is there a Levels setting I should slap on the end before rendering to ensure that 0-100 requirement, or is that going to be taken care of if I’m being reasonable with my levels along the way?”
I use the Levels, Color Corrector, and Color Curves (in that order) on all of my video tracks to keep them within range using the Waveform Monitor to check Luminance and Vector Scope to check Color levels. Then place the Broadcast Colors filter with the Conservative – 7.5 Setup preset on the Master Video Bus just to make sure I didn’t miss anything.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
Thanks for the advice, John.
Yeah, I asked the master control guy who sent me the spec sheets if he really meant that there’s only, what, 10dB of dynamic range, and he said yes. He also said they want dual mono, which according to his explanation, was a mono track duplicated to L/R. I’m sure I can figure out how to do that in Vegas. If not, I might render the soundtrack out separately, crush and mono-ize it in a more fully-featured audio app, and lay it back in afterward with Vegas.
The video tips are much appreciated. It’s been 20 years since I learned scopes and what I learned then was never applied in practice…and it was all analog. So I’m re-learning. Going from “looks just great on my screen” to “will broadcast without fault” is a bigger leap than I’d anticipated.
I’ve got two of the six requested hour-long episodes cut, with delivery in early 2014, so I still have some time to tweak and learn before the final renders go out the door. Before it’s time to put the whole thing to bed, I’ll probably ask their tech folks for one more “Are you SURE you want it in mono with no dynamic range?”
Thanks again. Loving the learning.
Canadian broadcaster brought up in analog, living in digital. Radio’s my career, audio-video-photography are hobbies that make a buck here and there.
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[Scott Simpson] “He also said they want dual mono, which according to his explanation, was a mono track duplicated to L/R. I’m sure I can figure out how to do that in Vegas.”
If you convert all of your events to mono in Vegas and render to stereo, Vegas will put the same signal on both tracks and give you “dual mono”. For events that are dialog just Right-click | Channels | Left Only. For events that are stereo you can use Right-click | Channels | Combine and then check for phase cancellation. What the station is doing is putting the burned of checking phase cancellation on you so that they don’t have to deal with it.
Good luck on the project Scott. We’re always here to help.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
I’ll probably not change all the events like that — I want to preserve the flexibility of rendering a good stereo version later for DVD, Blu-Ray or even YouTube later.
If it comes down to needing it, I can always render the soundtrack out to wav and have a go at it in Reaper or Audition with Ozone or other tools for compression and RMS smashing, and use the tools in the DAW to flatten it out to dual mono.
Thanks a bunch, John!
Canadian broadcaster brought up in analog, living in digital. Radio’s my career, audio-video-photography are hobbies that make a buck here and there.
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