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Last Meeting
The June 8th meeting on Television Audio Loudness was held at WPGH
television. It was a very interesting meeting and it answered many
questions about "dialnorm" or dialogue normalization.
Dialogue is the reference loudness of a TV program or commercial, since
we all know the loudness of someone speaking, we set the volume to that
level. Normalization is the process of the decoder automatically
changing the volume (through dialnorm metadata, usually at 24).
This is not the same thing as compression or limiting, that's a separate
dynamic range process. Tagging the correct dialnorm values starts with
the program supplier and must be maintained all the way to the home TV
decoder.
Thanks to Dan Carpenter at Sinclair Broadcast Group and Kerry Check, Roy
Humphrey and Dave Dumas at WPGH for hosting the meeting.
The Pittsburgh SBE/SMPTE especially thanks Ken Hunold from Dolby and
Karl Kuhn from Tektronix for the detailed, thought provoking
presentation.
When the CALM act becomes law and the FCC starts enforcing it, we will
need to revisit this subject.
The next two meetings topics (not necessarily in this order) will cover :
Mobile/Handheld
DVB-H and ATSC M/H are new technologies for broadcast delivery to handheld devices (similar to cell phones). It is another potential "revenue stream" for TV stations. The OMC Open Mobile Coalition is the alliance of public and commercial TV stations and electronics manufacturers. TV stations in Atlanta and Seattle are already testing the M/H systems. Time is of the essence establishing M/H delivery before others do.
Digital File Delivery standards
Digital File Format delivery standards for program and commercials are either lacking or there are too many, depending on your viewpoint. With new compression schemes and technologies the problem is getting worse, not better. What can be done to handle the "format du jour"? Is there always a better/newer file format? Is it due to program supplier's proprietary file formats? This meeting is intended to engage both the Production, Cable and Broadcast communities. What can be done to limit the number of file delivery formats and establish interchange standards and/or recommended practices.
The exact meeting dates and presenters are still TBD, so stay tuned to Yahoo Groups and/or the SBE20.org web site.
If you have input and opinions regarding the topics to be presented by the SBE/SMPTE please e-mail me at: john.humphrey@digitaltelevisionsolutions.com
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Meeting Info