RWC HD coverage - TV3 switching to upscaled SD during half time comments?

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#534241 17-Oct-2011 12:12

sbiddle:
mattwnz: TV3s HD coverage certainly isn't up to the quality of TVNZs. Just a pity about the commentators. Some who I hadn't seen for decades on TV.

I'm interested you say that because IMHO TV1's picture quality was absolutely terrible, it had obviously been artificially sharpened with a filter which was clearly obvious and ruined the viewing experience. TV3's image was vastly superior.

The only thing good about TV1 was their audio, TV3 had problems on Saturday night with their 5.1 being way too loud in the ear channels, and last night had issues with their centre channel commentary feed.

5.1 for the RWC has been stunning. Crank it up and disable the centre channel commentary and it's just like being there!

A couple of points.

I hardly watched TVNZ coverage because of the commentary team plus I found their DD levels quite low. The PQ seemed okay but I didn't stay there long enough to really notice.

Having been used to TV3 DD 5.1 presentations for a while it was up to their usual high standard apart from last nights. I did also note that the centre channel commentary had a bit of static at times and the rear channels were quite hot. In fact I kept wondering if I had left the fan exhaust above the stove or the microwave on when I was watching parts of the game.

Also on the audio front I always found Mehrtens was mixed too low.

While I watched mainly on my 56" TV I also watched a little bit on my 100" projector. Now that was an outstanding experience.

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alvin

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#534242 17-Oct-2011 12:13

when you were talking about sound problems with TV3, was it the rumbling sound everytime the cameras pan out? I found it annoying and just turned the home theater speakers off.

Jaxson

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#534249 17-Oct-2011 12:32

alvin: when you were talking about sound problems with TV3, was it the rumbling sound everytime the cameras pan out?

No for me it was the distortion on the commentary centre channel. It was really bad and they lost us for the first half because of it. TV3 have had big problems in this area all the way through. It's usually sorted by the 2nd half but a while back they had hissing etc when the commentators weren't talking too.

TV1 is probably mixed more formally, but a lot of us like the more aggressive use of the surround channels etc that TV3 do. Overall I thought TV1 was bland (but had the audio clear), bland in picture colour and audio mix. But yeah, we watched TV1 first half until TV3 got their act together 2nd half. Keith Quinn is where it's at I think, but he's on Maori in stereo only and in SD.

old3eyes

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#534251 17-Oct-2011 12:35

alvin: when you were talking about sound problems with TV3, was it the rumbling sound everytime the cameras pan out? ?I found it annoying and just turned the home theater speakers off. ?

You can blame the host broadcaster for that..

Regards,

Old3eyes

alvin

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#534267 17-Oct-2011 12:58

old3eyes:
alvin: when you were talking about sound problems with TV3, was it the rumbling sound everytime the cameras pan out? ?I found it annoying and just turned the home theater speakers off. ?

You can blame the host broadcaster for that..

no, i'm not blaming anyone. I was just curious as to what the rumbling sound was and seeing that other people here also noticed the sound problem.

I noticed that it occurred everytime the camera pans out or the scene/camera view changed.

old3eyes

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#534297 17-Oct-2011 14:36

alvin:
old3eyes:
alvin: when you were talking about sound problems with TV3, was it the rumbling sound everytime the cameras pan out? ?I found it annoying and just turned the home theater speakers off. ?

You can blame the host broadcaster for that..

no, i'm not blaming anyone. ?I was just curious as to what the rumbling sound was and seeing that other people here also noticed the sound problem. ?

I noticed that it?occurred?everytime the camera pans out or the scene/camera view changed. ?

It seems to be a transition sound effect added by sky when the scene changes with the rugby ball transition.. Transition sound effects can be OK but I did find it a bit of an overkill after the first 15 minutes..

Regards,

Old3eyes

hdinsider

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#534304 17-Oct-2011 14:47

Just replayed the recording of tv3 last night and the centre channel went loud & distorted for a few minutes about 3 mins after Kickoff. The rest of the game seemed fine. I guess that's live tv for you!

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lchiu7

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#534325 17-Oct-2011 15:29

old3eyes:

It seems to be a transition sound effect added by sky when the scene changes with the rugby ball transition.. Transition sound effects can be OK but I did find it a bit of an overkill after the first 15 minutes..

Certainly gives your subs a workout

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old3eyes

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#534445 17-Oct-2011 19:25

lchiu7:
old3eyes:

It seems to be a transition sound effect added by sky when the scene changes with the rugby ball transition.. Transition sound effects can be OK but I did find it a bit of an overkill after the first 15 minutes..

Certainly gives your subs a workout

Sure does.. :-)

Regards,

Old3eyes

hdinsider

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#536963 24-Oct-2011 16:58

How awesome was the whole thing... HD on three channels at once, all looking and sounding brilliant. And we win to boot. Big ups NZ.

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rvangelder

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#537001 24-Oct-2011 20:17

started to watch tv1. one of the commentators was breathing into their mic, which was hugely distracting. tv3 was pretty good.

Jaxson

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#537054 24-Oct-2011 22:10

hdinsider: HD on three channels at once

Do you mean a Sky channel? Maori was not HD.

TV3 won out for me for the final. The louder surround suited what we were after. TV1 had the same info but the commentators were mixed quite loud, so were really loud if you turned it up to match the TV3 surround levels.

Good to see Donald get some crowd support, despite nearly missing the easiest kiwi kick of the night. All the same, you only need to have more points on the board at the end of the game to win, and we did. Good stuff, great for the countries vibe. Great coverage really, glad to see it all live and free to air, in HD, ad. free and with surround sound. That's pretty awesome.

hdinsider

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#537073 24-Oct-2011 23:39

Yeah, I meant 1, 3 and sky sport 1. I guess what impresses me is that 3 different channels all thought it was worth the extra spend to do HD 5.1.
Would tv1 be 5.1 now if it wasn't for the deadline of rwc pushing it along?

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lchiu7

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#537195 25-Oct-2011 10:08

hdinsider: Yeah, I meant 1, 3 and sky sport 1. I guess what impresses me is that 3 different channels all thought it was worth the extra spend to do HD 5.1.

Would tv1 be 5.1 now if it wasn't for the deadline of rwc pushing it along?

Probably not. But to do DD 5.1 required a complete replacement of their workflow and production facilities to go from tape to drives. That was not cheap to be sure. The Olympics were easy for them since all production was done in China and all they had to do was pass the feed on.

I didn't watch much of TVNZ coverage but when I flicked over occasionally during the breaks I did notice that their no Sky coverage (talking heads) was also in HD with 5.1 audio. On the hand when TV3 switched to their own cameras (as the point of this thread) the signal went SD and apparently DD 2.0?

This is my supposition...

I was doing my watching on a PS3 Fat with PlayTV. The PS3 is set to ouput all audio as HDMI so all decoding is done in the player, not in the receiver. So no matter what the source audio is, AAC, DD etc., the receiver never shows the audio format since it's been decoded as PCM already.

For the final up to the starting of the game, I could hear nothing from the centre channel which originally had me wondering if PlayTV was decoding and outputting the AAC channel rather than the DD one. But as soon as the game started, I heard commentary from the centre channel and more pronouned rear sound effects. That suggested to me that TV3's production facilities were not able to originate 5.1 audio but once they got the feed from Sky (all the ambient sounds, sound effects etc.), they were able to mix their own commentary into the feed.

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hdinsider

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#537988 26-Oct-2011 22:52

I think TVNZ were sourcing the game and 5.1 from the host (Sky) in their outside broadcast truck at Eden Park. I think the truck is mostly SD but has some HD gear put in to take the game and an HD camera or two. It was probably easier to keep the voice routed to the centre channel in this scenario the whole time.

I think TV3 were taking the feed from the signal gateway at Sky and mixing it in the studios rather than in a truck. The switching from stereo to surround would be happening there like they do between stereo shows/ads and surround shows.

All the postmatch field interviews from the host were front left and right only (not center). Maybe the stereo parts of the TV3 coverage were made stereo to match those interviews?

It must be hard to mix 8 audio channels at once! (Stereo and the 6 dolby channels). You'd need to be like an octopus on the sound desk!!!

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