Sync on TV Commercials

[Esteban]

Hello, all. It's been a while since I've been up here, but something has me very curious. Over the past year or so, I've been noticing that there are some pretty significant sync issues on some local Dallas/Ft Worth tv commercials. I'm not talking about bad ADR work on prescription drug ads, I'm talking about full on 6-10 frame discrepancies. I think I've seen it on national ads, but I think it's mostly a local ad issue.

So my question is, does anybody else see this happening, and if so do you think the issue stems from an improperly set up mixing for picture setup (and if so why the local affiliate does not kick it back) or could it be something that's happening at the station. Surely any decent mix engineer could see this offset.

Thanks for any input into this matter. Like I said, I'm just curious.

Peace!
Evan.

[EarHole]

Probably looks in synch to the engineer that's the problem. With all the latency issues with plasma & lcd's they might me nudging things around to synch where they are working without knowing what latency they're actually working at.

[Esteban]

So, is anybody else seeing this phenom where you live?

e.

[Dallas Taylor]

Yeah, I see it occasionally. It's a multitude of problems I'm sure. From Editors mixing their own stuff to local broadcasters.

I see you're in FtW? Do we know each other? Ping me through my website

[colinato]

I see this quite a bit on local spots. Thing is, I see the same local spots in sync some of the time and out of sync the rest of the time. For that reason, I always assumed it was a broadcast thing.

[Sonny Keyes]

I see bad sync all the time when I'm watching HD channels, but I don't think it has anything to do with what's being broadcast; I think it happens later in the Satellite feed because the same channel in SD is in sync at the same time if I flip back and forth. Are you watching HD?

Sonny Keyes
Ricochet Audio
Toronto

[HD2]

Originally Posted by Sonny Keyes

I think it happens later in the Satellite feed

Yeah it's because light travels faster than sound

[garnoil]

Originally Posted by HD2

Yeah it's because light travels faster than sound

Now I get it, so If I am watching the Olympics form Japan, I see the picture as it happens (because it is light of course and light travels very fast), but since sound travels very slow (approximately 750 miles per hour) my rough calculations indicate that:

Since Japan is about 7800 miles from LA the sound from the Olympics will get here in 10 hours!

[Frank Kruse]

Originally Posted by garnoil

Since Japan is about 7800 miles from LA the sound from the Olympics will get here in 10 hours!

Better have the special international version of Syncheck ready. It´s scale ranges from 0.25 Frames to 10 hours.

[froyo]

Hello. I spend quite a good part of my year in the DFW area and I have noticed this also. I usually notice it also on HD channels on Dish Network. Mostly on shows actually and not so much in commercials. And as someone mentioned before me, when I switch from the standard channel to the HD channel the sync is always OK on the standard channels. I always attributed it to the way the channel is being broadcast and the way the receiver is decoding. It has to be some combination of those variables. If the channel is broadcast Dolby E and the receiver is decoding Dolby Digital, etc. I see it mostly on ESPN, CNN, etc.

Oddly enough, in 2011 this whole 'broadcasting' thing is nowhere near an exact science. Very much hit and miss in my experience, and not just in the DFW area.