Loud commercials!
DonBeppino
watching something at a "comfortable level" when suddenly I'm blown
out of my easy chair by some lame ass, loudmouthed huckster selling
some typical crap and blasting it many decibles louder than the show I
was just watching. Switching channels to one that is louder or softer
is bad enough, but this is ridiculous! How the hell does this happen?
Can we complain to anyone? I have an "attenuator" feature on my TV
which is supposed to balance out the sound, but it doesn't seem to be
doing its job. Or the ADVERTISING POWERS have found a way around it.
Phil Kane
<IlDonP...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Switching channels to one that is louder or softer
>is bad enough, but this is ridiculous! How the hell does this happen?
On purpose.
>Can we complain to anyone?
No. "Meters" will show that the actual modulation level is within
legal limits. "Excessive loudness" or "annoyance" are psychological
things that can't be measured by "meters"..
I have an "attenuator" feature on my TV
>which is supposed to balance out the sound, but it doesn't seem to be
>doing its job. Or the ADVERTISING POWERS have found a way around it.
You understand.
--
Phil Kane
Beaverton, OR
Bhairitu
And we just won't buy those products then. And that goes for annoying
jingles too. I'll never have anything to do with "Kars4Kids."
That said there for DTV there is a Dolby feature which is supposed to
keep levels within a certain range. Problem is the stations don't use
it or don't know how to use it. Last I checked KTVU still has about 5-6
DB higher level when they go to the news from regular programming. They
told me that would be corrected when the new control center was
finished. Must not be finished yet.
And digital audio is also effected by compression bitrates used. I
need to scan some TS files to see how much those change. I often get
the feeling a lot of engineers are still locked in the analog age and
have not caught up to the digital age. I certainly saw that resistance
when videography moved from analog to digital.
Ciccio
WRITE YOUR REPRESENTATIVES IN D.C.!!!
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:H.R.6209:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:S3156:
The acronym is CALM...Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act
[SUMMARY]
Directs the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to prescribe a
regulation prohibiting advertisements accompanying video programming
from: (1) being excessively noisy or strident; (2) having modulation
levels substantially higher than the accompanying program; and (3)
having an average maximum loudness substantially higher than that of
the accompanying program.
Man, and talk about bi-partisan support...From staunch left wingers
like Barbara Lee to staunch right wingers like the Mississippi
senators, and everything in between. The House version was introduced
by the BA's Anna Eschew
A great idea, but a weakness I see is that would require commercials
not to be "SUBSTANTIALLY" louder than the average volume level for the
program, which seems too vague allowing for too much wiggle room. How
about a stated percentage or a dB reference?
Paging Phil Kane!
Ciccio
Phil Kane
<franc...@comcast.net> wrote:
>A great idea, but a weakness I see is that would require commercials
>not to be "SUBSTANTIALLY" louder than the average volume level for the
>program, which seems too vague allowing for too much wiggle room. How
>about a stated percentage or a dB reference?
Having run several FCC surveys on "excessive commercial loudness" over
the years, I can state that the measurements will show nothing,
because the problem is not loudness per se but "perceived excessive
loudness" which, like "strident" or "pushy" or "annoying" or
"substantial" are subjective psychological terms that cannot be
measured with instruments.
In the three surveys that I coordinated we found that in general
there was no overmodulation, and the informal standard of no more than
3 dB contrast was being met - but they sure sounded louder!
I respect Anna very much, having had lots of contact with her over the
years when I was in California, but I see it as an exercise in
futility.
Elgin P. Feccles
try poking a pencil through all that earwax, or better still, suck
muffler! haw
QN
sound feature.
HDGoose
> I have seen audio level problems that seemed to be caused by a TV's surround
> sound feature.
No such case here. It even happens on my small kitchen TV. Why just
the other night I'm sitting there watching the History Channel and
BOOM, some loud-ass pain-in-the-ass commercial comes blaring out. Even
made my dog jump. BASTARDS!
Jiggle the handle
Yeah there is, go to their Wikipedia page and piss all over it like I
do on Mr. Opportunity every time I hear him bang on my window:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Opportunity
-BdN-
Robert Orban
Phil...@nov.shmovz.ka.pop says...
I recently sent the following letter to Rep. Echoo, who happens to be my
representative. Other than an automated reply, I have heard nothing from
her office about this:
=====
It has come to my attention that you have introduced H.R. 6209,
otherwise known as the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act.
According to the press material I saw, the bill would require the
Federal Communications Commission to "prescribe a standard to preclude
commercials from being broadcast at louder volumes than the program they
accompany."
I am Vice President and Chief Engineer of Orban/CRL a company that
manufactures automatic loudness controllers for television. Although the
company is based in Arizona, our main R&D facility is here in the Bay
Area, in San Leandro.
While I would ordinarily be delighted to see any government action that
would help us sell our products, the fact is that your proposed bill,
like any other attempting to proscribe loud commercials, must have a
clear, provable technical metric that determines whether a given
broadcaster is in violation. Absent this, one has a nightmare scenario
like that currently surrounding "obscenity" and "indecency" regulations
-is a broadcaster guilty or not guilty? Whether one is talking about
porn or loud commercials, claims of "knowing when one sees it or hears
it" are insufficient to make good law.
"Loudness" is not simple. Loudness is subjective: it is the intensity of
sound as perceived by the ear/brain system. No simple meter provides a
reading that correlates well to perceived loudness. A meter that
purports to measure loudness must agree with a panel of human listeners.
Moreover, listening tests have established that different listeners
perceive loudness differently.
The literature on loudness measurement stretches back to at least the
1920s, with work first done at Bell Laboratories by Fletcher, Munson,
and Snow. There are many different techniques that attempt to measure
loudness with electronic hardware, three of which have become
international standards. None of these three standards fully agrees when
they are used to measure the loudness of material commonly broadcast.
To illustrate the complexity and difficulty of the question, I have
enclosed a fairly recent research paper (from 2004) addressing the
issue: Esben Skovenborg & S�ren H. Nielsen, "Evaluation of Different
Loudness Models with Music and Speech Material." This paper is technical
and understanding it requires a background in electrical engineering and
statistics. However, any intelligent nonprofessional reading it should
get a sense of how difficult it would be to determine objectively if a
broadcaster is in fact in violation of the proposed limits in H.R. 6209.
(The 101 references at the end of the paper are the best collection I
know of for those interested in fully understanding the subject.)
The broadcast industry, both in North America and Europe, is well aware
of the problem of loudness consistency in broadcasts. There are many
competing products and techniques that purport to deal with it. All of
the major U.S. television networks have studied the problem and are in
the process of implementing measures to mitigate it. The International
Telecommunications Union (ITU-R WP6P SRG3) is also working on the
problem.
There are two main approaches to the problem. The first, promulgated by
Dolby Laboratories, includes "metadata" in digital audio streams. This
"data about the data" indicates the level of normal speech in the
program and provides means for the listener to reduce the dynamic range
(the range between quiet and loud material) at the receiver if she
wishes. However, the fully dynamic range of the original sound mix can
be enjoyed by a different listener if she desires.
While the Dolby method is elegant and would appear to offer all things
to all people, implementing it through the entire broadcast chain has
proven to be very challenging. Ideally, the program originator should
create the metadata and this should be passed, unchanged, through the
entire broadcast chain to the listener's receiver. In practice, there
are three main limitations. First, the broadcast chain is very long and
complex, so it is not easy to retain the Dolby metadata all the way from
a Hollywood mixing studio to a TV listener in the Midwest. Second, a
considerable amount of material in a typical broadcast was never
authored with Dolby metadata (such as reruns of TV shows from the '70s).
Third, there is a temptation for commercial producers to game the system
by authoring metadata that makes their commercial just a little bit
louder than everyone else's. This makes it essential for broadcasters to
review all material before it is broadcast to make sure that the
metadata is "honest" and reauthor it as necessary. Dolby Labs
manufactures equipment to do this automatically for a TV station's
library (usually located on computer hard drives these days), but even
if broadcasters purchase this equipment, it cannot be used with live
news and sports and the broadcaster is at the mercy of Dolby's
philosophy of loudness measurement (all normal spoken dialog should be
equally loud), which does not take into account material like loud sound
effects or music.
The second approach to solving the problem is to reduce the dynamic
range of program material by capping subjective short-term loudness to a
preset level. This is the philosophy behind my company's products. While
this removes the large dynamic range that some home theater aficionados
love, the upside is that this guarantees a consistent, smooth, and easy
-on-the-ears presentation with no extra work on the part of
broadcasters.
There is another, more subtle limitation to this approach: subjective
loudness is limited to a preset threshold. Therefore, if the program
material preceding a given commercial is very quiet (rustling leaves for
example), then the commercial might still seem too loud. One might first
think that the commercial should be turned down to a loudness lower than
the threshold. But what of the succeeding commercials in the cluster?
And what if the program material following the cluster in substantially
louder than the cluster's final commercial? For these reasons, we
believe that it is best to not attempt to understand context because
there is usually no practical way to know the context at the end of the
commercial break.
In my opinion, combining subtle dynamic range compression with capping
loudness to a preset threshold works well.
My point is this: an issue that might seem simple to the layperson is
not simple at all. Your perception of loudness may not be identical to
your neighbor's perception. Moreover, loudness and annoyance are not
identical perceptual constructs. (Annoyance has been studied since at
least the mid 1960s, mostly in the context jet aircraft noise around
airports.)
The broadcast industry is well aware that it has a problem and is
working on solutions, some of which have already been implemented. This
is an ideal example of "let the marketplace work" because TV
broadcasters do not want to lose viewers who are irritated by excessive
loudness. I believe that this legislation is unnecessary and that it
will ultimately do nothing more than transfer more of the nation's
wealth into the pockets of attorneys. So I urge you to let the industry
sort the problem out.
Phil Kane
<IlDonP...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>No such case here. It even happens on my small kitchen TV. Why just
>the other night I'm sitting there watching the History Channel and
>BOOM, some loud-ass pain-in-the-ass commercial comes blaring out. Even
>made my dog jump. BASTARDS!
You do know that modulation levels for cable channels do not fall
under FCC rules.
Phil Kane
<donot...@spamblock.com> wrote:
>I recently sent the following letter to Rep. Echoo, who happens to be my
>representative. Other than an automated reply, I have heard nothing from
>her office about this:
Thank you for posting your letter, Bob. It was very informative and
brought me up to data on what's happening in the field.
leansto...@democrat.com
> In article <659f751utu244i6jsaje7p4q9duguko...@4ax.com>,
> Phil.K...@nov.shmovz.ka.pop says...
Seems to me you can compute the energy in the audio. A heavily
compressed signal will have more energy than normal dynamics. This is
relatively easy with a sampled data system.
Mike Ward
Which means, since he sent it to a Congressional office, he'll get
nothing more than the automated reply he already received.
The information is sufficiently thorough, and technical, that a
lawmaker's staff is likely to just throw up their hands...instead of
reaching out to Mr. Orban, one of the foremost experts on the topic at
hand.
"Hawkeye Joe" Scott
<warped_frustrated_cranky_old_...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> try poking a pencil through all that earwax, or better still, suck
> muffler! haw
LOL!! :)
Bhairitu
That's the problem with our current legislators. They are legislating
on things they haven't got a clue about. They are obsolete and need to
be deleted.
leansto...@democrat.com
When I was designing modems, the red book would use energy limits, not
a peak to peak value. Energy is quite simple to measure. Pick a limit
and problem solved. No diatribe needed here.
John Higdon
<dd6c58b8-7768-44f7...@y28g2000prd.googlegroups.com>,
"leansto...@democrat.com" <leansto...@democrat.com> wrote:
> When I was designing modems, the red book would use energy limits, not
> a peak to peak value. Energy is quite simple to measure. Pick a limit
> and problem solved. No diatribe needed here.
Too bad the human ear and brain do not function in that manner.
--
John Higdon
+1 408 ANdrews 6-4400
AT&T-Free At Last
HankVC
leansto...@democrat.com <leansto...@democrat.com> wrote:
>On Aug 5, 4:11�pm, Robert Orban <donotre...@spamblock.com> wrote:
>>
>> I recently sent the following letter to Rep. Echoo, who happens to be my
>> representative. Other than an automated reply, I have heard nothing from
>> her office about this:
>>
>> =====
>>
>> sound as perceived by the ear/brain system. No simple meter provides a
>> reading that correlates well to perceived loudness. A meter that
>> purports to measure loudness must agree with a panel of human listeners.
>> Moreover, listening tests have established that different listeners
>> perceive loudness differently.
>>
>> The literature on loudness measurement stretches back to at least the
>> 1920s, with work first done at Bell Laboratories by Fletcher, Munson,
>> and Snow. There are many different techniques that attempt to measure
>> loudness with electronic hardware, three of which have become
>> international standards. None of these three standards fully agrees when
>> they are used to measure the loudness of material commonly broadcast.
>>
>>
>> My point is this: an issue that might seem simple to the layperson is
>> not simple at all. Your perception of loudness may not be identical to
>> your neighbor's perception. Moreover, loudness and annoyance are not
>> identical perceptual constructs. (Annoyance has been studied since at
>> least the mid 1960s, mostly in the context jet aircraft noise around
>> airports.)
>>
>
>compressed signal will have more energy than normal dynamics. This is
>relatively easy with a sampled data system.
While Bob Orban chokes on your "suggestion," I'll suggest that you
reread some of the salient points in his letter, which I retained in
my snipping. And then go out and study the field, as Bob and a few
others of us have done.
It's not a question of measuring acoustic energy. "white noise"
energy in the range of 100 hz to 5 khz is not going to be perceived
"the same" as white noise at the same energy level in the range 10 khz
to 15 khz. That is obvious from a ten-minute review of the
Fletcher-Munson curve. And that curve is only a rough average; a
young woman's hearing may be (and probably is) very different from an
older man's, and that curve may not match either one's perceptions at
all well.
There are a boatload of other variables. A woman's voice and a man's
voice, against the same background levels, and at the same energy, are
very likely to be perceived quite differently. A rock group and a
symphony orchestra are not only likely to be perceived differently,
but listeners---even groups of them---are likely to expect very
different sound levels for listening. To say nothing of issues of
dynamic range, particularly with large sympnony orchestras.
The late Harry Olson carried through the mid-twenties Bell work, much
of which led to Victor "Orthophonic Sound" in the mid-1920's, into
word with RCA through the thirties and forties. His "Audio
Engineering" is a classic work on the distances between technological
measure and listener perception.
I don't doubt that Bob can cite a lengthy list of workers and works
over the past 80-90 years that he's quite familiar with. That's about
"where you start" in dealing with listener complaints about "louder"
and "softer."
Hank
Robert Orban
450dce...@d4g2000prc.googlegroups.com>,
leansto...@democrat.com says...
>> issue: Esben Skovenborg & S�ren H. Nielsen, "Evaluation of
Different
>> Loudness Models with Music and Speech Material."
>
>Seems to me you can compute the energy in the audio. A heavily
>compressed signal will have more energy than normal dynamics.
>This is
>relatively easy with a sampled data system.
Instead of replying to your points in detail, I suggest that you read
the paper referenced above, which is available for free download. Just
Google it.
In fact, one of the three international standards (ITU-R BS.1770) is an
energy measurement, but it adds a frequency-weighting filter ahead
of the energy detector.
The other two standards (Stevens and Zwicker), which are older, use
more complex psychoacoustical models incorporting psychoacoustic
critical band theory. There is evidence (see the Skovenborg &
Nielsen paper) that these standards, designed to measure stationary
signals, are not particularly accurate when used with dynamic
program material.
HDGoose
"Sucking mufflers" (among other things) is your specialty, Joey-boy.
(That IS what the call you in the joint, isn't it...Joey-boy)?
leansto...@democrat.com
> In article
> <dd6c58b8-7768-44f7-a40f-09b3c7434...@y28g2000prd.googlegroups.com>,
>
> "leanstothel...@democrat.com" <leanstothel...@democrat.com> wrote:
> > When I was designing modems, the red book would use energy limits, not
> > a peak to peak value. Energy is quite simple to measure. Pick a limit
> > and problem solved. No diatribe needed here.
>
> Too bad the human ear and brain do not function in that manner.
>
> --
> John Higdon
> +1 408 ANdrews 6-4400
> AT&T-Free At Last
The energy measurement will catch the compressed audio since it has
more energy. (doh!) Always try the simplest solution before
complicating matters.
leansto...@democrat.com
> In article <6d4a54a0-50d2-4160-9192-
> 450dce961...@d4g2000prc.googlegroups.com>,
> leanstothel...@democrat.com says...
>
>
>
> >> issue: Esben Skovenborg & Søren H. Nielsen, "Evaluation of
> Different
> >> Loudness Models with Music and Speech Material."
>
> >Seems to me you can compute the energy in the audio. A heavily
> >compressed signal will have more energy than normal dynamics.
> >This is
> >relatively easy with a sampled data system.
>
> Instead of replying to your points in detail, I suggest that you read
> the paper referenced above, which is available for free download. Just
> Google it.
>
> In fact, one of the three international standards (ITU-R BS.1770) is an
> energy measurement, but it adds a frequency-weighting filter ahead
> of the energy detector.
>
> The other two standards (Stevens and Zwicker), which are older, use
> more complex psychoacoustical models incorporting psychoacoustic
> critical band theory. There is evidence (see the Skovenborg &
> Nielsen paper) that these standards, designed to measure stationary
> signals, are not particularly accurate when used with dynamic
> program material.
I have no objection to weighting the signal before measuring energy,
though now the problem is slightly more complicated. (A convolution to
simulate the weighting before computing the energy.)
Who knows, perhaps the ads will drop music to get louder voice since
the energy detection won't differentiate between voice and music.
I was in socal last week and the cable company was really cranking the
volume on the commercials they were inserting into CNN. Not just
compression but volume. Brutal! I started out riding the volume
control, then just hitting mute, then turning the damn TV off.
John Higdon
<07c5daec-7c42-46bd...@y4g2000prf.googlegroups.com>,
"leansto...@democrat.com" <leansto...@democrat.com> wrote:
> The energy measurement will catch the compressed audio since it has
> more energy. (doh!) Always try the simplest solution before
> complicating matters.
You should run for Congress. That's an organization who believes that
everything is as simple as they want to believe it is.
Obviously, you never have actually experimented with signal processing
and loudness issues in the real world.
But don't let that stop you from pontificating.
HankVC
leansto...@democrat.com <leansto...@democrat.com> wrote:
Yeah, sure thing here. Just level the energy content and shovel it
out over the air and everything's going to be peachy super neatsie
keen. Too bad it just doesn't work that way because there are people
and their perceptions in the signal-processing loop.
Transmitting, receiving, and transducers that would do a fine job of
capturing the sound, transmitting it, and reconverting it to
acoustical energy over the spectrum of fundamental frequencies
generated by a pipe organ, piano, or symphony orchestra----that
technology was all available off-the-shelf by 1930. Call that
"WQXR," which was maybe the most visible early station to take
advantage of those abilities. And if you want to quibble about what a
1930's console radio would/would not do in someone's living room, then
you can look to Walt Disney's 1939 "Fantasia," which pushed movie
theaters to install high fidelity reproducing systems.
To take all this off "electronics" turf, just talk to a group of pipe
organ builders about the disastrous effects of installing a carpet on
the floor of a church.
And, quite frankly, I think a day with pro recording people and
top-notch equipment spent trying to capture anything resembling the
sound of a good pipe organ onto any recording medium, much less
getting that onto a playback system that will sound even acceptable to
a listener who knows what the real thing sounds like might englighten
you a bit---if you kept your mouth shut and listened. Try something
like an Arp Schnitger or a Cavaill�-Coll instrument in Europe (two
very different sets of problems) or the Methuen Music Hall organ in
Mass.
Modem design is like solving the problems of designing a flashlight to
look into the case of a 9-foot Steinway grand piano. Around here
we're talking about recording that same piano with a good performer
playing something like Schumann's "Kreisleriana." Not quite the same
thing.
Hank
Curtis A. Jones
Have you by any chance read Greg Milner's "Perfecting Sound Forever:
An Aural History of Recorded Music"? The overall topic of the book
seems to be to ask "What is a recording is supposed to be a record
of?" and describes at some length (and often frustratingly incomplete
technical detail) how modern records present performances that never
actually occurred.* There's a chapter titled "Loudness Wars" that
seems to fit here. Curtis
*Twitterized summary: "bye bye hi fi"
leansto...@democrat.com
>
> "leanstothel...@democrat.com" <leanstothel...@democrat.com> wrote:
> > The energy measurement will catch the compressed audio since it has
> > more energy. (doh!) Always try the simplest solution before
> > complicating matters.
>
> You should run for Congress. That's an organization who believes that
> everything is as simple as they want to believe it is.
>
> Obviously, you never have actually experimented with signal processing
> and loudness issues in the real world.
>
> But don't let that stop you from pontificating.
>
> --
> John Higdon
> +1 408 ANdrews 6-4400
> AT&T-Free At Last
I've designed DSP hardware, and have done signal analysis via C
programming, though never real time. Nowadays eveything is matlab. I
really liked DSP in college and took about 18 credit hours.
Once DSP based spectrum analyzers hit the market (mid 80's), things
like energy measurements were trivial. The grand daddy of them all (HP
3562) computed energy with a push of a button, even for spread
spectrum signals.
I've seen more projects messed up by mission creep (complicating
things beyond necessity).
HankVC
Thanks for the reference. I haven't read literature in the field for
some years, but your summary of what is in that book is about what I
would expect.
I'm probably a bit more sensitive to issues with people's hearing than
most, because I grew up in a family that suffers from congenital
deafness. Fortunately, I didn't inherit those genes. But my mother
always had deficient hearing, even as a young woman, and my younger
sister, now in her late sixties, and a conservatory-trained musician,
now needs amplification just to get by.
What I don't think is well-recognized is that amplification, through
hearing aids or other devices, doesn't compensate for a lot of what
normal hearing does as "signal processing."
Hank
John Higdon
<57862bcf-57b7-48b2...@12g2000pri.googlegroups.com>,
"leansto...@democrat.com" <leansto...@democrat.com> wrote:
> I've designed DSP hardware, and have done signal analysis via C
> programming, though never real time. Nowadays eveything is matlab. I
> really liked DSP in college and took about 18 credit hours.
>
> Once DSP based spectrum analyzers hit the market (mid 80's), things
> like energy measurements were trivial. The grand daddy of them all (HP
> 3562) computed energy with a push of a button, even for spread
> spectrum signals.
>
> I've seen more projects messed up by mission creep (complicating
> things beyond necessity).
I'm not sure what you just said, but it still doesn't sound as though
there were any human ears factored into the equation. That IS what we're
talking about: the way the human ear perceives loudness under myriad
conditions.
In this case, I don't think you need to worry about complicating things,
but rather over-simplifying things to uselessness. Of course, you
wouldn't be the first hot shot to think that you can ignore how the
human hearing system works when designing processing.
Bob's substantial credibility in this industry (I think I'll still buy
his processors over yours) comes from the exhaustive listening tests
that he and his company perform for every product that reaches the
streets. What counts is not what you or even your theorists believe, but
how people perceive the product when they listen to it.
HDGoose
wrote:
Why are you such a self-loathing hater? Is that a requisite for being
a wanna-be motorcycle gang member? Bwaahahahaha!
leansto...@democrat.com
The goal is to go/no-go a spot, not adjust loudness. I don't know how
I can make that any clearer. The idea is not to make the damn thing
loud in the first place.
Less is more. Trust me.
John Higdon
<514071bb-ef37-4d36...@u38g2000pro.googlegroups.com>,
"leansto...@democrat.com" <leansto...@democrat.com> wrote:
> The goal is to go/no-go a spot, not adjust loudness. I don't know how
> I can make that any clearer. The idea is not to make the damn thing
> loud in the first place.
The problem is that it is much more practical to effect a solution to
real world problems than to insist that the real world conform to your.
Taking it to extrema (a good first-check): if we just eliminated spots
(or any other switched-in programming), the problem would go away.
Done.
> Less is more. Trust me.
I trust in my broadcast experience.
leansto...@democrat.com
>
> "leanstothel...@democrat.com" <leanstothel...@democrat.com> wrote:
> > The goal is to go/no-go a spot, not adjust loudness. I don't know how
> > I can make that any clearer. The idea is not to make the damn thing
> > loud in the first place.
>
> The problem is that it is much more practical to effect a solution to
> real world problems than to insist that the real world conform to your.
> Taking it to extrema (a good first-check): if we just eliminated spots
> (or any other switched-in programming), the problem would go away.
>
> Done.
>
> > Less is more. Trust me.
>
> I trust in my broadcast experience.
>
> --
> John Higdon
> +1 408 ANdrews 6-4400
> AT&T-Free At Last
Which of course adds nothing to the topic, which is to screen loud
commercials, not limit them after the fact. Two totally different
ballgames.
John Higdon
<ec541f52-f241-407e...@i18g2000pro.googlegroups.com>,
"leansto...@democrat.com" <leansto...@democrat.com> wrote:
> Which of course adds nothing to the topic, which is to screen loud
> commercials, not limit them after the fact. Two totally different
> ballgames.
What the hell are you talking about? "Screen loud commercials"? What do
you mean by "screen"? Remove them from the air? Old Chinese proverb say,
station that drop spots lose money.
Sorry to break it to you, but in this world, spots need to be run even
if they are "too loud". About the only thing left is to turn them down
when they're played.
David Kaye
> And we just won't buy those products then. And that goes for annoying
> jingles too. I'll never have anything to do with "Kars4Kids."
I happen to like the Kars4Kids jingle. What I don't like is that it's
"4 kids". Whenever anything is done "for the children" I get
suspicious because it's usually either grandstanding or some
hucksterism masquerading as something helpful.
My ex and his dad once sold fire extinguishers via cold call phone
soliciting. They moved from town to town, engaged a local charity to
sponsor them, and then pitched the poor unfortunates at the other end
of the phone. The pitch went something like, "Hello Mrs. Jones. I'm
calling today about how to PROTECT YOUR KIDS from the dangers of
FIRE. Saint Timothy's CHILDREN'S center AUTHORIZED us to phone you
this evening, because they know that you want to PROTECT YOUR
CHILDREN...." The pitch went on and on and they had about a 75%
success rate selling these overpriced fire extinguishers all over
California.
Thus, anything having to do with "kids" makes me suspicious from the
get-go.
> That said there for DTV there is a Dolby feature which is supposed to
> keep levels within a certain range. Problem is the stations don't use
> it or don't know how to use it. Last I checked KTVU still has about 5-6
> DB higher level when they go to the news from regular programming.
I suppose you have two solutions here:
(1) get an audio expander to try to re-create the original audio
before it was compressed, or (2) get an audio compressor to compress
everything so that the dynamic range won't startle you anymore.
Yeah, sometimes you have to take things into your own hands.
Bhairitu
Another Chinese proverb says "business with annoying spots lose customers."
leansto...@democrat.com
>
> "leanstothel...@democrat.com" <leanstothel...@democrat.com> wrote:
> > Which of course adds nothing to the topic, which is to screen loud
> > commercials, not limit them after the fact. Two totally different
> > ballgames.
>
> What the hell are you talking about? "Screen loud commercials"? What do
> you mean by "screen"? Remove them from the air? Old Chinese proverb say,
> station that drop spots lose money.
>
> Sorry to break it to you, but in this world, spots need to be run even
> if they are "too loud". About the only thing left is to turn them down
> when they're played.
>
> --
> John Higdon
> +1 408 ANdrews 6-4400
> AT&T-Free At Last
By screening, you run the spot through digital analysis, aka one
convolution for weighting and one simple energy computation. Make this
go/no-go. If it is compressed to high heavens, it fails the test and
can't be aired.
To be really clear, you eliminate compression at the source. If you
try to undo this compression down the chain, it will be poorly
enforced at best, and garner complaints about having to buy more gear.
John Higdon
Bhairitu <nooz...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> Another Chinese proverb says "business with annoying spots lose customers."
Actually, I don't think there is any real data to support that. I don't
recall a time when I have ever heard anyone say, "I'm not watching
Channel X anymore because they have loud commercials."
Also, bear in mind: the "customers" are the sponsors.