Managing Multichannel Audio on the Digital Frontier

  • Speakers:
  • Mike Babbitt, Broadcast Field Service Engineer, Dolby Laboratories
  • Ethan Bush, Senior Project Director, National TeleConsultants
  • Date & time: Tuesday, 18 May 2004
  • Meeting hosts:
  • The KQED Staff
  • National TeleConsultants is hosting our refreshments.

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  • Meeting organizer: Gary Youngs, SMPTEsf Manager

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    Program

    Years ago, at a SMPTE Advanced TV Winter Conference in San Francisco, a speaker during a Q&A session had the temerity to suggest that "analog audio was sufficient" for the coming HDTV broadcast standard, in those days still presumed by at least a few to be analog. To the credit of the audience and unusual for the normally staid SMPTE engineering crowd, the speaker was booed! Digital audio for DTV and HDTV has made great strides in the past 15 years, but still faces "challenges", to put it politely, including something as seemingly straightforward as keeping audio and video in sync.

    KQED has traditionally been a leader in Bay Area television engineering, and their digital work is no exception. This SMPTE event offers us a good opportunity to take a look at their amazing digital plant. Tours will be available after the formal meeting.

    The event will feature two presentations, both focusing on the audio side of DTV plant design and operation, issues that will interest not only engineers, but program producers, as well. Dolby's Mike Babbitt will discuss "Managing Multichannel Audio". Two of the most difficult issues to manage within a local broadcast infrastructure are switching between multichannel network content and stereo local content, while controlling program loudness. Mike will discuss the pitfalls of incorrectly setting the Audio Coding Mode (ACMod), and will give practical and effective suggestions on how to give viewers the appropriate number of audio channels, while matching loudness levels among program segments.

    Ethan Bush of NTC will then provide us with some of the specifics of implementing multi-channel audio at KQED.

    After the Q&A session, the KQED engineering staff will take us on a tour of the plant.

    Please join us for this special evening.

    Welcome: SMPTEsf welcomes members and friends to attend without charge.

    Location:

    KQED-TV Studios
    2601 Mariposa St.
    San Francisco, CA 94110-1426
     
     

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