Inconsistent Broadcast Levels

[EarHole]

So, I mix TV ads primarily. I always mix to -10 on a digital meter and hover around -1 ~ +2 on Analog VUs. Most of the time my spots translate great, but every once in a while one will be soft in comparison. Not Like station compressor slammed soft... just a little lower than than the rest. Well, the other night I saw two different spots I mixed pretty much back to back.
The first sounded great. It was right where it needed to be in comparison with the show and the other ads. The second was soft.

I transfered the audio from my TiVo and analized the volume.
The show and almost all ads including my first one were -10digital and max +3 analog VU.

My second spot was at -14 digital and around -2 ~ 0 Analog VU.

The only thing I can think of is maybe it was dubbed to analog Beta SP
an dthe dub house dropped the levels?

Any thoughts?

[Eric Seaberg]

I'd have to ask who takes your audio? Is it transferred to DigiBETA or some other tape format or does is stay file based, put with picture at a post house?

What are you using for metering? It may be worth spending the money for some Dorrough 12C meters setup for -20dB ref to work with TV. These will show you EXACTLY what's going to your final mix!

Other than that, there is no consistency on TV and it's worse with 5.1 material. It's changing for the better, but ONLY after a lot of audio people kick and scream about it. There are standards, i.e. Dolby dialnorm, etc., but no one is looking at it on the other end.

[EarHole]

IN this case I didn't do the layback. A reputable Video house did and I spoke to them and the claim they just loaded the file into the flame and did the layback.

As for meters... I use a combination of PhaseScope, The digital meter bridge on my Board and an old set of VU meters taken from my old Otari MX55 machine. I also have a VU Plug-In that seems pretty acurate compared to my analog meters.

This why I always prefer to do the layback but sometimes it's just not feasible.

When loaded the on air file and compared it to my mix file, the dynamic range was similar, just reduced. That's why I was thinking an analog Beta SP dub where the level was lowered to compensate for the reduced headroom.