Proms last night.

On Fri, 4 Sep 2015 10:49:15 +0100, "_Unknown_Freelancer_" /dev/null
wrote:

Its like 17 years back when we were moving from 4:3 to 16:9.
You'd go round someones house who's boasted they've got a 28" wide screen
telly.
Only to find theyre watching a 4:3 programme.... spread full width!!!

It was either:
-"Didnt notice" (Yes, genuinely)
-"Don't know how to stop it doing that"
-"Fiddled with it, cant get it back"
-"Cant be arsed"

Still the same with many other settings now.

Even more years further back, I recall some people with new VHF/MW
radio sets listening to MW because they preferred the sound of it, and
some with stereo setups who would put one of the loudspeakers in
another room as an extension. Human nature doesn't really change.

Rod.

On Fri, 4 Sep 2015 00:37:17 +0100, "_Unknown_Freelancer_" /dev/null
wrote:

Jamaica Inn is not the only programme I've seen that had this problem,
just one of the worst examples I can recall. When I find myself
reaching for the remote control to switch on the subtitles, yet again,
when a particular actor starts talking, I don't suspect the
technology. Logic says it's something to do with that actor.

Viewers logic that is.

Look, no matter how inconceivable you find it that this was a technical cock
up caused by humans, it was.
The BBC transmitted FL + FR components of a 5.1 soundscape.
Without the presence of the (minimum) other three components, it WILL sound
dreaful.
End of.

End of what? How can the poor diction of an actor, but not other
actors in the same production, be blamed on anything other than the
poor diction of that actor? How can this selective unintelligbility be
explained any other way?

I've listened to enough stuff over the years to know the difference
between something I can't hear properly because the sound quality is
bad, and something I can't understand properly because the words are
not spoken clearly even though I can hear them perfectly well. If a
technical issue of some sort really can apply to only some actors and
not others, making some of them sound as if they're mumbling their
words, but leaving others perfectly understandable, then please
explain how you think this happens.

Rod.

On Fri, 4 Sep 2015 10:57:04 +0100
"_Unknown_Freelancer_" /dev/null wrote:
Hope everyone else takes note:
ALL items posted to this newsgroup should have no spelling mistakes, at all.
For added benefit, please ensure your spell checker is set to UK English.

The sort of people who pick up on typos and spelling mistakes are the usually
the ones who have really nothing to add to a debate but and are so deperate to
score some points over someone else due to an oversized ego, that they'll pick
up on anything remotely incorrect. They're best just ignored.

--
Spud

In article , Roderick Stewart
wrote:
On Fri, 4 Sep 2015 00:37:17 +0100, "_Unknown_Freelancer_" /dev/null
wrote:

Jamaica Inn is not the only programme I've seen that had this problem,
just one of the worst examples I can recall. When I find myself
reaching for the remote control to switch on the subtitles, yet again,
when a particular actor starts talking, I don't suspect the
technology. Logic says it's something to do with that actor.

Viewers logic that is.

Look, no matter how inconceivable you find it that this was a technical
cock up caused by humans, it was. The BBC transmitted FL + FR
components of a 5.1 soundscape. Without the presence of the (minimum)
other three components, it WILL sound dreaful. End of.

End of what? How can the poor diction of an actor, but not other actors
in the same production, be blamed on anything other than the poor diction
of that actor? How can this selective unintelligbility be explained any
other way?

I've listened to enough stuff over the years to know the difference
between something I can't hear properly because the sound quality is bad,
and something I can't understand properly because the words are not
spoken clearly even though I can hear them perfectly well. If a technical
issue of some sort really can apply to only some actors and not others,
making some of them sound as if they're mumbling their words, but leaving
others perfectly understandable, then please explain how you think this
happens.

The explanation given would mean that on parts of the sound stage voices
became unintelligible.

On 04/09/2015 10:49, _Unknown_Freelancer_ wrote:

Its like 17 years back when we were moving from 4:3 to 16:9.
You'd go round someones house who's boasted they've got a 28" wide screen
telly.
Only to find theyre watching a 4:3 programme.... spread full width!!!

That was me

-"Cant be arsed"


That was also me.
The TV had various settings - widwscreen, letterbox, and about 4 others.
There was a button on the remote which cycled through them one at a
time. I just selected widescreen and left it.


Jim

wrote in message ...
On Fri, 4 Sep 2015 10:57:04 +0100
"_Unknown_Freelancer_" /dev/null wrote:
Hope everyone else takes note:
ALL items posted to this newsgroup should have no spelling mistakes, at all.
For added benefit, please ensure your spell checker is set to UK English.

The sort of people who pick up on typos and spelling mistakes are the usually
the ones who have really nothing to add to a debate but and are so deperate to
score some points over someone else due to an oversized ego, that they'll pick
up on anything remotely incorrect. They're best just ignored.

"are the usually the ones", "deperate"?

What on earth are you on about?

On Fri, 04 Sep 2015 11:13:12 +0000, spuddy wrote:

On Fri, 4 Sep 2015 10:57:04 +0100 "_Unknown_Freelancer_" /dev/null
wrote:
Hope everyone else takes note:
ALL items posted to this newsgroup should have no spelling mistakes, at
all.
For added benefit, please ensure your spell checker is set to UK
English.

The sort of people who pick up on typos and spelling mistakes are the
usually the ones who have really nothing to add to a debate but and are
so deperate to score some points over someone else due to an oversized
ego, that they'll pick up on anything remotely incorrect. They're best
just ignored.

There may be an element of truth in that statement but, tbh, I think
it's more down to our being used to seeing such 'errors' in a typed
'publication' as an indication of either slapdash preparation or English
not being the author's first language.

The nature of such textual communication forms as usenet, bear a more
than passing resemblance to what we see in the pages of a book where such
errors would normally be virtually non existent, courtesy of the usual
editing and proof reading work involved in publishing such works. The
result being that such errors leap out at the reader, especially when
consistently repeated. However, I think the complaint should have been
presented in a less aggressive manner, possibly with a 'smiley' thrown in
for good measure. :-)

--
Johnny B Good

"Roderick Stewart" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 4 Sep 2015 00:37:17 +0100, "_Unknown_Freelancer_" /dev/null
wrote:

Jamaica Inn is not the only programme I've seen that had this problem,
just one of the worst examples I can recall. When I find myself
reaching for the remote control to switch on the subtitles, yet again,
when a particular actor starts talking, I don't suspect the
technology. Logic says it's something to do with that actor.

Viewers logic that is.

Look, no matter how inconceivable you find it that this was a technical
cock
up caused by humans, it was.
The BBC transmitted FL + FR components of a 5.1 soundscape.
Without the presence of the (minimum) other three components, it WILL
sound
dreaful.
End of.

End of what?

'Jamaica Inn discussion', I hoped.
Because, since I raised J.I. as an example of why 4.0 is a good thing, no
matter how many times I say its because you only got part of the 5.1 mix,
you appear to find it inconceivable this is was what happened, and that it
definately, must be, was, the actors.




How can the poor diction of an actor, but not other
actors in the same production, be blamed on anything other than the
poor diction of that actor? How can this selective

unintelligbility

Oh look! There's that word!


be explained any other way?

"Soundscape"


I've listened to enough stuff over the years to know the difference
between something I can't hear properly because the sound quality is
bad, and something I can't understand properly because the words are
not spoken clearly even though I can hear them perfectly well. If a
technical issue of some sort really can apply to only some actors and
not others, making some of them sound as if they're mumbling their
words, but leaving others perfectly understandable, then please
explain how you think this happens.

head in hands
Just finished another twelve hour day, seven hours till I set off for work
again.
/head in hands


Ok, in the 1970s, we were (mostly) capable of recording good sound, but the
finished product only had one audio track.
In any fancy drama, all the editor had to do was mix all the dialogue
together, and balance it against any effects or incidental music.


By the 1990s, we'd got NICAM.
Now it was possible to add a little left or right bias to any actors. Any
effects could be in stereo, as could music.
Stereo effects meant a scene could actually have believable ambience, when
in actual fact, at the time of recording, it was dead, no echoes, slap or
reverberation. Cars could drive from left to right, AND sound like it too.
BUT, against all of this, they still had to produce a mono mix, also for
transmission.
You couldnt just produce that mono mix by adding L and R.
Levels would be way too high for a start, and any stereo music could eat
itself.
So already, even by then, things had begun to get complex.



Boom! Post milenium you can have as many speakers as you desire for your own
aural pleasure.
Most popular acceptable system being 5.1, although 5.0 will still suffice.

5.0 gives the producer the ability to put a sound anywhere within a two
dimensional plane within the bounds of the speakers (if they're placed
correctly).

Supposing you have actor A, whose dialogue (for some odd reason) you want to
appear somewhere just over the left shoulder of the viewer.
In the process of producing that 5.0 mix, you would not simply just send
100% of actor A's microphone straight to the rear left speaker.
Nor would you send it mostly to the rear left, with a bit to the front left,
and a tiny fracion to the centre.

To achieve this properly you need a surround sound processor. Inside it is
filled with smoke and mirrors. When it goes wrong some of the smoke leaks
out.

You give the processor information like the ambience of the scene youre
setting (big concrete room, cliff top, country road, etc), and you need to
tell it where abouts that audio source will appear.
It then runs some clever processing over the source and produces six
outputs.

It may then be the case that listening to just Ls the actor will sound
muffled. FL will sound like someone is there, but imperceivable. Centre
might be same again, but 112 degrees out of phase with a 2ms delay.
Apart, they all sound utter rubbish, yet when combined, the picture is
complete and the human ear puts it all together.

For 5.0 to work properly, you MUST have all of the components, otherwise,
like colour telly, it just doesnt work.

Building a soundscape is just like creating 'the look' of a show.
e.g. The theme for The Apprentice is blue. Blue is picked out more in
certain scenes, but not in a manner which is equivalent to just turning up
the blue gain. The edit compositor picks out certain colours in certain
areas of the image, and selectively amplifies them.
i.e. a bit of clever processing

Now imagine that with one colour component missing.
Im sure you'll agree, it just would not work.


You give your surround processor all the info it needs for the scene you are
building.
The environment, any effects, where abouts in 2D the effects are, dialogue,
where abouts the dialogue is, any eq to that dialogue (e.g making an actors
voice deeper), any music, where should the music be.
It chews all this over and renders six discrete audio tracks.
Voila, your completed 5.1 soundscape.

But you cant understand why with the most sensative speakers on the planet,
powered by the best ever valve amp, it may be possible to understand actor
A, but not ator B.
Clever surround processing.
The computer running the numbers knows/expects the end user to have all
speakers present, and so works to that end point.
It knows that a hint of something down Ls with just the high frequencies of
it down FL might result in the end user thinking they're hearing something
perfectly. Yet listen to the two channels separately sound nothing like it.


Then you have to do the your mix again, to produce a stereo fold down.
Except no 2D stuff this time.
All dialogue has to be equally present on L and R, with maybe a small amount
of bias depending which side of the screen an actor may be on.
But not too much though. Viewers just do not like it when you put too much
bias in!

Make no mistake, this stereo mix _can not_ be derived from the 5.1
soundscape produced earlier.
It is a separate process.
......which is why they couldnt fix it completely in time for the next
transmission.

When Ive had spare time (and interest) on 5.1 jobs Ive grabbed a pair of
cans and sat fiddling with a 5.1 decoder, flicking through all the discrete
tracks.
Indiviually, genuinely, they make little sense. Only when heard as a comlete
set, do they make sense to the ear.
Whilst listening to Lt and Rt..... perfectly coherent immediately.


J.I. was produced with a 5.1 soundscape. Great. Sounds f.awesome. .....if
you transmit that to the viewers, AND they all have a suitable system to
reproduce it.

But viewers (incorrectly) only got two of the five components required to
recreate 5.1. No wonder it sounded like someone with a sock in their mouth.

Again, a human faux pas somewhere left the BBC _without_ their requested
_stereo mix_.

The result was _the wrong audio pair_ was sent to air instead.


Just what on earth were they supposed to do?



Rod.

On Sat, 5 Sep 2015 01:11:08 +0100, "_Unknown_Freelancer_" /dev/null
wrote:

[snip long technical explanation]

But viewers (incorrectly) only got two of the five components required to
recreate 5.1. No wonder it sounded like someone with a sock in their mouth.

It didn't sound sock-in-mouth to me. Even if it had, how could a
technical issue make it sound thus only when some actors were
speaking?

Again, a human faux pas somewhere left the BBC _without_ their requested
_stereo mix_.

The result was _the wrong audio pair_ was sent to air instead.

If you say so, but I never would have guessed. Everything sounded very
clear to me, except that when some of the actors were speaking, only
some of them and one bloke in particular who affected a very strong
accent, I had to spool back and switch on the subtitles to make out
what they were supposed to be saying. This had nothing to do with
where they were in the soundstage. It only depended on who was
speaking. I'm truly baffled that you think this could have a technical
cause.

There may very well have been a mixup with the tracks *as well* as
poor diction from a few of the actors, but the only effect I was aware
of was the poor diction. Perhaps the mixup with the tracks only
affected the multitudes who listened through the speakers in their TV
sets. I guess it might affect mono listeners differently from stereo
ones for instance, but whatever it was, it didn't stop me *hearing*
the actors in perfect audio clarity, just *understanding* what some of
them were trying to say.

Rod.

"Roderick Stewart" wrote in message
news
On Sat, 5 Sep 2015 01:11:08 +0100, "_Unknown_Freelancer_" /dev/null
wrote:

[snip long technical explanation]

But viewers (incorrectly) only got two of the five components required to
recreate 5.1. No wonder it sounded like someone with a sock in their
mouth.

It didn't sound sock-in-mouth to me. Even if it had, how could a
technical issue make it sound thus only when some actors were
speaking?

Again, a human faux pas somewhere left the BBC _without_ their requested
_stereo mix_.

The result was _the wrong audio pair_ was sent to air instead.

If you say so, but I never would have guessed. Everything sounded very
clear to me, except that when some of the actors were speaking, only
some of them and one bloke in particular who affected a very strong
accent, I had to spool back and switch on the subtitles to make out
what they were supposed to be saying. This had nothing to do with
where they were in the soundstage. It only depended on who was
speaking. I'm truly baffled that you think this could have a technical
cause.

There may very well have been a mixup with the tracks *as well* as
poor diction from a few of the actors, but the only effect I was aware
of was the poor diction. Perhaps the mixup with the tracks only
affected the multitudes who listened through the speakers in their TV
sets. I guess it might affect mono listeners differently from stereo
ones for instance, but whatever it was, it didn't stop me *hearing*
the actors in perfect audio clarity, just *understanding* what some of
them were trying to say.


Yes, from what I heard, I'd say that the problem was first and foremost with
the diction of a certain actor (I'm sure he knows who he is!), which may
have been exacerbated by a strange sound mix. He had a similar mumbling
diction to Lester Piggot or Jack Ashley, MP (the latter was deaf).

When they sorted out the problem for the subsequent episodes, was it simply
providing the correct 5.1 - stereo conversion or was it a case of going
back to the original dialogue and music/effects tracks and remixing from
scratch to increase the level of one relative to the other (or at least
centralising the dialogue more in the sound stage)?

I got the impression that "there was a technical problem" was a euphemism
for "some of the actors have poor diction" to avoid embarrassing those
actors.


As a matter of interest, is it generally the production company or the
broadcaster who is responsible for the 5.1 - stereo conversion? What about
HD - SD conversion - is the broadcaster provided with an HD and an SD
master or do they do HD-SD conversion (and 5.1- stereo) on the fly?