by Steve Harvey.
A spot check of post houses in New York, Atlanta and Los Angeles reveals a number of interesting trends in the industry, particularly in the commercial world: Production of TV spots in HD with 5.1 sound is not as commonplace as might be expected given the approaching DTV switchover; travel expenses are driving remote participation in mix sessions; and the laptop is the new Auratone.
With the DTV switchover fast approaching it might be expected that post houses would be reporting an increase in HD commercial production with 5.1 audio. "As we get closer [to the switchover], more and more people are pulling away from doing surround mixing on their spots. We've seen growth in 5.1 business over the last few years, but at the same time we're seeing people balk a little bit," observes Greg Crawford, senior sound designer at Crawford Post Production in Atlanta.
"Rather than use Dolby Digital and the dialnorm settings the way Dolby had intended--in that anybody could mix any way they wanted and the dialnorm would take care of the level problems--the networks decided they wanted to prescribe a dialnorm setting," explains Crawford. "The toughest thing is getting the deliverables from the network. We have a giant menu book of all the specs."
He continues, "It would have been nice if everybody could have gotten on the same page. For every dub that we do, we have to do an audio session and a re-edit session with new slates. It gets to be very costly for the advertiser."
Nathan Dubin, mixer/sound designer at Margarita Mix de Santa Monica in California, also points out differing video deliverables, although the situation seems to be settling, he says. "It seems as though the D5 is going to be the tape format of choice for commercials. In the HD projects that I'm doing I see less of the format madness than a year ago. More and more I do less and less of the different versionings."
In fact, he says, "The national broadcast spots that I do are almost exclusively in HD and 5.1 at this point, like the big car spots." In order to meet any variations in the spec, he adds, "I'm able to do a mix then convert my system to whatever layback I need to do."
As for dialnorm, he continues, "It provides the home viewer with a uniform listening environment." But, he notes, "As of now, it's not enforced in the commercial world. I don't know how it's going to get in line."
Deliverables can also be a moving target, as Crawford reports. "Last year we were delivering stuff to a network in August. They kicked it back and said it wasn't their spec. Then they sent us the spec for September!"
To avoid any hassle, he says, "We have clients who are perfectly happy to send a Digibeta standard def spot to a network. The network upconverts it, runs it through a box and it's in surround. It's the path of least resistance. Nobody cares how the blue light goes on; as long as it goes on, every network is totally happy."