At the currently ongoing AES Convention in Munich, EBU Members shared with the audience recent achievements and work-in-progress. A good example was this morning’s Tutorial on Loudness which drew almost more interest than the room could cater for. People had to stand or sit on the ground to follow the presentations.
| Loudness
The chairman of the EBU Loudness Group, Florian Camerer (ORF), explained which Loudness aspects are currently being worked on. Together with other P/LOUD participants he sketched the picture of a bright light at the end of the Loudness-tunnel. The basic ingredients of the solution are already known: ITU-R BS.1770 based metering and Loudness normalisation instead of using PPM as the reference. There also is progress on the evaluation of choices for some of the other ‘parameters’: integration period, gating method, LFE inclusion, etc. Recent testing in P/LOUD has provided valuable information on the way forward, which will also be of use to other organisations. |
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The ITU for example in its last week meetings expressed a clear eagerness to profit from the EBU testing work. This Monday and Tuesday P/LOUD will hold its next meeting at the German broadcaster BR, also in Munich. The enormous enthusiasm and energy expressed at the AES Tutorial will for sure be echoed there again.
Lip-sync
Loudness may be the biggest, but it is not the only ‘annoyance’ for the broadcasters’ audience. Another problem is a lack of lip-sync. In another session today, Friedrich Gierlinger (IRT) explained where lip-sync errors originate and how they accumulate before reaching the viewer. He also gave an overview of past and current products to help prevent lip-sync errors arriving in the home. Unfortunately there are not many of such products and prices tend to be high.
A work in progress in this area is the development of sophisticated synchronisation test signals. A commonly used one is the UK-originated ‘BLITS’. At the EBU P/AGA meeting next Monday the possible integration of BLITS in the EBU Sync signal specified in EBU Tech 3304 will be one of the agenda points.
These are just two examples of audio work from EBU Members discussed at the AES Convention. For more information, visit the AES website, see the EBU Groups section or contact: Roger Miles (EBU).