Surround for TV Spots (Lowest Common Denominator)

[admix]

Been mixing TV spots in New York for 20+ years, but I'm new to the surround for TV commercial biz. Been doing it about a year. Here's the rub... When I started, I followed cinema spec, with Narration and Dialog mixed dead center. It seemed fine, and watching at home seemed fine while watching an HD feed, but listening only to what I'm assuming, is a foldown. Until "the complaint" came. Seems a large credit card company had it's commercial, my commercial, air without VO.

This perked me up.

Phone calls were made, yelling ensued, heads rolled, dubs were recalled and found to be in spec.

So I got to thinking (always dangerous.)

Do I want to allow the networks even the ability to screw with my livelihood in this way? The answer was no.

My first solution, was to spread the VO & Dial across the 3 front speakers. This was a tragic error on my part and I do apologize. In many cases, when folded down, this method of mixing caused all sorts of phasing and otherwise unsavory audio results. If you were subjected to this and thought "who the f*&$ did that?", it was me.

Then last thursday, while watching "The Office" reruns in HD folddown mode, I sat dumbfounded in front of my TV, as I listened to an awesomely clean M&E for a solid episode and a half. All the HD commercials that aired during this block were affected in much the same way as I described earlier. No VO or Dialog. Except for the SD spots, which aired lovely Stereo mixes with no problem, and one of my (VO on L,C,R) HD spots, which gave dialog audible, but not especially distinguished sound quality.

This event led to my third and probably final way of mixing TV spots for HD 5.1. NO CENTER CHANNEL. I know it's anathema to you cinema guys and girls, but seriously, what are my options?

So a couple of questions...

When watching HD programming at home without the 5.1 system running, where does the folddown happen? I'm assuming it happens at the network, because when someone realized "The Office" was running like that, they switched to the SD feed, and restored a standard stereo mix, but please correct me if I'm wrong. Also, Is my solution, of not using the center channel at all, a viable one? Beyond going back to VO & Dial down the middle and opening up the opportunity for someone to mess with my mix, as I asked earlier, what are my options?

Ruining lives, thirty seconds at a time,
-Stephen

[mbauer1]

Hi Stephen, it sounds to me like there was a broadcast problem at the station, and you mix wasn't the cause of the problem.


I've only supplied a few programs for HD broadcast, but from my understanding, a HD master that contains a 5.1 mix is encoded into Dolby E. It encodes your 6 stems into a digital stream onto the HD master tape, and that digital stream is what gets broadcast.

Any 5.1 (Dolby E) mix MUST be accompanied by an LtRt mix also (Dolby Pro-Logic / Encoded Stereo)
The Pro-Logic mix is the bare minimum required to supply.

So to my knowledge there is no "folddown". the station is transmitting both your Dolby E data stream, and your Pro-Logic analogue mix.

Again, I've only had to supply a few HD masters for broadcast, so there hopefully is someone out there who can elaborate in further detail for you, but from my memory, this is what was required.


In terms of altering the way you mix to eleminate the centre channel, I personally wouldn't do that. I'd continue to put almost everything you see on the screen into your centre channel. Left & Right is mostly for offscreen events (car going by, door knock etc) and when you want to add width to an effect (ie explosion, car crash) oh, and of course music is mostly there too.

I was always taught to think of it in terms of cinema playback, the left and right speakers are about 40 feet apart (sometimes more) and everything you see on screen goes in the centre channel. Not to mention some cinema projectionists are idiots, and leave the curtains in too far during the commercials, covering (and dulling down considerably) the left/right speakers. (happens a lot in Australia anyway) So for surround mixing, the centre is your most important channel. In a Dolby Pro-Logic mix (stereo encoded/matrixed), the decoder in people's home theatre systems will automatically take anything common to both left and right and place it in the centre channel. So you cannot avoid the centre channel in this form of mixing. This is why panned effects sometimes do not pan properly in pro-logic playback.
for example, a series of footsteps panning from left to right, you may get the first footstep in the left, then 80% of them in the centre, then one footstep in the right. cause it's sucking most of them into the centre. it can be challenging, but still fantastic when you can master it.

hope i've helped a little, and not confused you further.
Good luck, feel free to email me if i can help you further.
Kind Regards, Matt.

[admix]

Thanks for the reply Matt.

I'm fully aware that my mix wasn't the cause of the problem. My dilemma lies in deciding to not give the networks even the opportunity to screw things up on this level. I don't know what the dub houses or stations do with my discrete 8 ch. audio D5's when they get it, and I'm not asked to ever supply an LtRt, only a standard stereo mix along with the 5.1.

I also completely understand the value of doing things the cinema way, in terms of anchoring VO & Dial. to the center channel. When I do spots for Cinematic release, I follow those guidelines all the time, trusting that the dolby process will eliminate many chances for screwups during theater screenings. However, Dolby isn't involved in 5.1 mixing for spot tv, leaving us and the networks to do as they please. Having watched commercials and even high dollar network TV shows broadcast without dialog had a sobering effect on me, and I'm leaning towards finishing my 5.1 spots in the "No Center Channel" mode until I see some improvement on the networks part in airing what was mixed, properly.

Regards
-Stephen

[TheHenchman]

Personnally, I wouldn't lower your standards to meet the incompetence of a broadcaster.

If THEY keep screwing it up, maybe they'll hire somebody who knows what they're doing. Instead of hiring some execs kid. who is completely clueless.

[Magnetic]

Ruining lives, thirty seconds at a time

As a fellow spot mixer, I love this!


John Fippin
Magnetic Studios Inc
Columbus

[admix]

All well and good Mark, particularly when dealing with peers and others who understand the incompetence certain broadcasters have shown. Try explaining all this to a non-technical ad agency person, and frankly, they don't care. They want the spot they've spent bags of money on to air properly every time. And I can tell them until I'm blue in the face the technicalities regarding what happens once the spot walks out the door, but ultimately, I could possibly lose a client over this. And without clients sadly, I'm toast.

-Stephen

[philper]

I don't see how you can win by breaking the spec. In that case it will end up being wrong somewhere for sure and it WILL be your fault. With multichannel delivery there are greater potentials for screwups, absolutely. Do you actually HAVE to give them discrete surround, could you give them an LtRt instead? A Dolby E encoded 6 channel mix? Anything to keep it simpler on the broadcast end, w/ less choices?

Philip Perkins CAS

[TheHenchman]

I don't see how you can win by breaking the spec. In that case it will end up being wrong somewhere for sure and it WILL be your fault. With multichannel delivery there are greater potentials for screwups, absolutely. Do you actually HAVE to give them discrete surround, could you give them an LtRt instead? A Dolby E encoded 6 channel mix? Anything to keep it simpler on the broadcast end, w/ less choices?

Philip Perkins CAS

I agree. The minute YOU do something out of spec. and the S*^t hits the fan, YOU'LL be the one blamed.
It's one of the reasons I refuse to fudge things, or work around a problem that's trying to be dumped in my lap.

So, I strongly suggest, you deliver things by the book and to proper specs.
Unless specifically told otherwise by someone else. And get it in writing/email, so you have a trail if things go sideways.

[admix]

You guys present valid arguments, but the sad fact is, there is no "spec". Beyond the track layout on the D5, there's no spec for what goes on what channel. So by "protecting" the mix in not using the center channel, I'm still in "spec", as it were. Further, no I can't send LtRt or Dolby E. That would be out of spec.

-Steve

[EarHole]

I feel your pain. I'm an Ad mixer as well and it doesn't mattter if you are technically correct if the end result is a screw up.
The best thing to do would be to explain ahead of time to any clients that want to do jobs like this what your experience has been.
Let them know that in your opinion that events down the line haven't proven reliable and that you can garuntee nthat when the mix leaves your hands that it's to spec but that the lowest common end result is out of your hands.
I'm sure they will respect the honestly and then maybe they'll start pressuring the networks to come up with an industry wide
standard. Wouldn't that be great