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Originally Posted by dbbubba You guys are right in your assumption that DVD audio has a HUGE amount of data compression applied to make the audio fit on the DVD in the first place.
I don't know the specs, but it's pretty much an .mp3 type data stream.
I have a few books on audio for film and TV and they pretty much stress how historically audio has been thought of as a "special effect" in film. It definitely is considered as "support" to the picture, so it will always get less consideration.
Truthfully, in film production the only "hi-fi" portion of the audio is the music score which was recorded in a pro studio or soundstage.
The dialog is almost 99% mono, up the center and if you've ever been on a film set you'll quickly see that the sound recordist and his boom man are about as important as the union truck drivers! They'll almost never do another take for sound reasons and besides, they can always do ADR. It's almost like the thought is that it's great if the sound recordist gets the dialog during the take, but all audio can be re-done, so it doesn't really matter.
The SFX and ambience are added in post and since everything has to happen really quickly they don't have the luxury of taking their time. Also, since picture has precidence any editorial changes mean that the audio mix people have to quickly adapt to the new edited verson. All this adds to a "hurry up.. yeah, that's good enough" attitude.
The whole mind set in film production is that since audio supports the picture it is inherently secondary. This is why if you listen to the soundtrack without picture the edits seem sudden and jarring. They have developed techniques that are totally different than music editing. A large part of film editing wouldn't "work" without the picture to "explain" the edits.
So... don't expect too much!
As an interesting note:
I used to install and service EXTREMELY high dollar home theatres for millionaire types who had nothing but money to spend. I was always amused that they'd spend thousands of dollars on audio gear only to playback crappy DVD audio!
Ever look at the pixelation on DVDs?
The picture is just as data compressed and lossy!
Ahhhhh.. It's just a remake of a TV show from the '60s or a remake of another movie anyways! Most music is "consumed" by people wearing iPod headphones, so why shouldn't the DVDs and video suck, too!
Danny Brown |
Yeah, I know - I've done more than a couple of location sound gigs - what a job. Low ranking is the word, tho sometimes the food is great, but more often than not it's a bear of a job, and the bread is getting worse (at least this side of the fence)
As for DVD sound quality issues: I thought it was supposed to be a step up in terms of fidelity, not only for picture. I don't think it's setting the bar too high in expecting better audio than our current 44.1/16 as the 'standard' for CD. Why is it with a format more than 10X the capacity, we can only get at best bit rate, 448 kbs, and more often, way way less (for audio anyways...)
Shame again - let's hope blu-ray takes the edge in audio delivery...
regards,