Discovery Deliverables: Undipped?

[jahtao]

Hello.

I don't do any discovery stuff but someone was saying to me the other day that discovery require undipped music, fx, and dialog (separate stems)...

But.

That by 'undipped' they mean no dips at all, not just dips for VO! This means the music (or fx) can't dip for dialogue when making stems.

It was taking him weeks to do a show as a result!!

Is this true? Or did he interpret the spec wrong or something?! Sounds a bit expensive to me.......

Matt

[quadraphonics]

Both Discovery and Nat Geo require this. What is meant by Undipped is that the MFX tracks (Stems) cannot be dipped for VO. The idea is that when the show gets sent to foreign territories, the native VO will be removed and a new one will be added. Having the track undipped accomidates for the different lengths that the new VO lines will have. Or atleast that is what I have been told.

Randall

Originally Posted by jahtao

Hello.

I don't do any discovery stuff but someone was saying to me the other day that discovery require undipped music, fx, and dialog (separate stems)...

But.

That by 'undipped' they mean no dips at all, not just dips for VO! This means the music (or fx) can't dip for dialogue when making stems.

It was taking him weeks to do a show as a result!!

Is this true? Or did he interpret the spec wrong or something?! Sounds a bit expensive to me.......

Matt

[Fajita]

Originally Posted by quadraphonics

Both Discovery and Nat Geo require this. What is meant by Undipped is that the MFX tracks (Stems) cannot be dipped for VO. The idea is that when the show gets sent to foreign territories, the native VO will be removed and a new one will be added. Having the track undipped accomidates for the different lengths that the new VO lines will have. Or atleast that is what I have been told.

Randall

You are correct sir!

[philper]

My recent jobs for those networks (and etc) required that the there be versions w/o dips for the narrator and stems where the "b" roll nat sound track not dip for VO by characters in the film (from interview footage) as well (all of which were subject to network dialnorm specs). It's all possible with some planning but it's still a time-consuming pain in the ass.

Philip Perkins

[jahtao]

Yes that's how I usually encounter requests for undipped stems, but (just to be clear... and at the risk of reiterating my point) this guy lead me to believe that Discovery requires you to supply, for example, a music stem that is not dipped at all: IE not even dipped under for dialogue! Not just for VO. The same would go for the FX stem... IE it wouldn't contain dips for music or dialogue or VO.

Sounded bonkers to me.

The guy spent days mixing each stem separately - he'd bounce out one stem before working on the next. And then set about combining them into a finished mix?!?!?!?

Or at least that's how I understood him... and I don't think I got the wrong end of the stick!

Sounds completely mad right?!

[jahtao]

Sorry Philip just seen your post......

[jahtao]

Originally Posted by philper

My recent jobs for those networks (and etc) required that the there be versions w/o dips for the narrator and stems where the "b" roll nat sound track not dip for VO by characters in the film (from interview footage) as well (all of which were subject to network dialnorm specs). It's all possible with some planning but it's still a time-consuming pain in the ass.

Philip Perkins

So interviews 'in vision' were allowed dips?

But the second the interviewee was off screen, the music/fx stem had to be undipped at that moment?

Correct?

[Rick Sanchez]

Music I can understand and I have had to send "undipped" music, but "undipped" effects does not make much sense to me.

Unless you are dealing with orchestral score, most music tracks are premixed and you have no or very little control over individual elements in that mix.

Effects however are a different story. They are almost always made up of multiple elements that are mixed to fit around dialog/narration. You might leave ambiance and backgrounds up but dip a close bus by or explosion to make a hole for narration/dialog.

Are there that many people who use an FX master to ride the overall FX stem?

99.9% of the time I ride individual effects to create that space.

Does anyone else find this a bizarre request?

[jahtao]

Originally Posted by Rick Sanchez

Does anyone else find this a bizarre request?

My point exactly. Pls bare in mind that this might not be an actual request but rather someone misinterpreting Discovery's spec

[philper]

Bizarre, yes. Good from their bureaucratic point of view, yes again. We send undipped music in the sense that the music stays at whatever the "normal" level is for the show and doesn't get out of the way of any dialog. Basically the rule seems to be that the stems have to be completely "unconscious" of each other, and play as though they were the whole soundtrack on their own. The B roll stuff has to play like a verite doc, the music like a music only show, etc.. (This was for some shows for Disco Health.)

Philip Perkins

[Peter Morrison]

The latest CAS quarterly had an article on exactly this (Winter 2009, page 12)

Perhaps one of the more dense broadcast television deliverables call for "undipped" versions of all stems... "Undipped" basically translates into "at a constant level," meaning that there are no volume adjustments, up or down, regardless of what the other stems may be doing.

It goes on to basically say that it is something to be very aware of before you start the work, and after some practice it can become a regular part of your work flow

Good luck!
Peter

[hef]

its a little bit of a pain but not as much as your friend is describing. I've mixed about 12 shows for discovery in the past year that have all passed QC. They want an undipped Mix Minus Narr. so no dips under Narrator only.
They also want an undipped Music Stem.

So you just copy your music tracks twice and send the 2 copies out 2 different busses - 1 feeding the Mix Minus and 1 feeding the Mus.Stem

For the Mix Minus Narr you need to flatten out the automation when ever Narr speaks. This takes me about 20 minutes after a mix.

For the Music Stem just flatten everything. They just need this if they want to re-edit/remix the show later or use pieces for promo, etc.

Don't worry about flattening an SFX. Should be pretty flat anyways for these type of shows. I've never flattened any fx.

All in all- as long as your template is setup proper- this should cost you no more than a half hour after a mix. But if you're not mixing in the box or on a DAW than it could be more of a pain.

[Rick Sanchez]

Originally Posted by Peter Morrison

The latest CAS quarterly had an article on exactly this (Winter 2009, page 12)


It goes on to basically say that it is something to be very aware of before you start the work, and after some practice it can become a regular part of your work flow

Good luck!
Peter

There should not be volume adjustments on your stems anyway. Isn't by definition a stem designed to be set at unity for print mastering?

It would make a lot more sense to simply send the ProTools session or to require more stems (separate foley, hard fx, BGs) for foreign changes.

[Peter Morrison]

Originally Posted by Rick Sanchez

There should not be volume adjustments on your stems anyway. Isn't by definition a stem designed to be set at unity for print mastering?

It would make a lot more sense to simply send the ProTools session or to require more stems (separate foley, hard fx, BGs) for foreign changes.

Well, that is my understanding of what a stem is... I think what Matt Foglia (the author of the article in the quarterly) meant is that Discovery wants a version of the stem with no volume automation printed to it (ie music swells between VO lines.) As Philip mentioned above

the stems have to be completely "unconscious" of each other, and play as though they were the whole soundtrack on their own.

Best,
Peter

[Rick Sanchez]

Originally Posted by Peter Morrison

Well, that is my understanding of what a stem is... I think what Matt Foglia (the author of the article in the quarterly) meant is that Discovery wants a version of the stem with no volume automation printed to it (ie music swells between VO lines.) As Philip mentioned above



Best,
Peter

Do they want to pay for it?

The only efficient (forgetting about the subjective quality of a mix) way to do that would be to get an overall balance of all of the effects, then ride a master fader for the final mix. That would seem to be extremely limiting in your mix choices.

For music on a dub stage, you normally have a balance of an orchestra or music track where the relationship between the low and high brass would not change, but the overall level of the orchestra may be ridden.

FX are a whole other animal where the individual elements could vary greatly to taste..say the boom of an explosion vs the initial attack and the debri elements. Removing the volume automation on individual elements of effects tracks could completely alter the intent of mix on a stem.

How are people doing this?

[philper]

Well, no, they don't want to pay for the extra work involved. On lower budget shows (which are USUALLY simpler sound wise), I just have to tell the producer that a good chunk of the time allotted for their show will be used for making the deliverables they promised when they signed their contract. On something more complex, with more FX tracks, the situation is trickier if you were diving FX under VO etc.. Then I found I have to come up with some nominal level to print that stem at so it won't overload etc w/ the automation moves. The big issues w/ the networks seem to be not having dips in the music and nat sound, while having anything w/ dialog still meet dialnorm spec. I will say that it has always seemed to me that any reuse of these stems/submixes etc. would require a remix by someone who knew what they were doing and had the requisite metering and monitoring gear anyhow, so if we can get the stems into tweak range we've done the job.

Philip Perkins

[BIGBANGBUZZ]

Originally Posted by Rick Sanchez

How are people doing this?

I don't have to worry about stems for my work, just undipped M+E's.
For my work I just create 2 M+E AUX tracks, one gets bussed to my FULL ENGLISH MIX, the other gets bussed to my International Sound mix.

I then just dip the M+E that is routed to the Full English Mix, I often just draw in the dips pulling the M+E down around 8 or 9db under the VO then return the automation to 0db when VO is finished.

[Dallas Taylor]

I was a full time Mixer at Discovery until a few weeks ago (opened up my own place). I've probably mixed around 600+ hours of programming for Discovery's Networks.

It's a piece of cake to set all of this up in your template. Unfortunately, I don't have time to write it all out. Shoot me an email & I'd be happy to help anyone over the phone (you can contact me here)

[Frank S.]

I deal with this every day as my biggest clients are Nat Geo Channel, Nat Geo Television and Discovery.

All require splits/stems that are undipped completely and an MDE that is undipped for narration/translations. Since the MDE contains dialogue you are still dipping around it if necessary.

I'm doing a large project for NGT right now and this is what I'm doing:

Main bus (5.1) - Full Mix
Sub 1 (5.1) - MDE, undipped
Sub 2 (Stereo) - Full Mix
Sub 3 (Stereo) - MDE, undipped
Sub 4 (Mono) - VO/Translations
Sub 5 (Mono) - Dialogue/Sync, undipped
Sub 6 (5.1) - FX, undipped
Sub 7 (Stereo) - FX, undipped
Sub 8 (Stereo) - Music, undipped
Auxes for verbs.

I feed the undipped busses to the Main which is then "reduced" to make subs 1-3. That way when the sub bus faders are at nominal I have my "undipped" stems that I have to deliver. After completing the mix I can "undip" subs 1 and 3 for the deliverable requirements.

Adding the 5.1 FX stem is not something I'm doing all the time, since usually there isn't much "dipping" in the FX. However this show contains war scenes and car chases that will require elements to be dipped. I'm starting the mix tomorrow after making 3 pages of picture changes!

It's overkill really, but you don't have much choice since the budgets are low, the time is short, and they still expect top notch work. It gives them the flexibility to make changes as they need, when they need...without having to come back to you to do it.

Unfortunately it also gives some people the ability to change you work when they shouldn't touch it.

[Fajita]

I work at Discovery in Miami... we get the un-dipped mixes and send them to the regions for language customization. The studios in South America do the re-mixing and we just bat clean up if we have to. They usually don't do a bad job. But there are times that they don't really re- mix anything at all, they just set the faders and let it run. No dynamics and it sounds like poo. Either way, your producer should have a copy of the Discovery Channel Global Delivery Specifications. It's given as part of the contracts.

Good luck. If you add the parts into your workflow, as Dallas said, it's really a piece of cake.

[BIGBANGBUZZ]

Originally Posted by Frank S.

Main bus (5.1) - Full Mix
Sub 1 (5.1) - MDE, undipped
Sub 2 (Stereo) - Full Mix
Sub 3 (Stereo) - MDE, undipped
Sub 4 (Mono) - VO/Translations
Sub 5 (Mono) - Dialogue/Sync, undipped
Sub 6 (5.1) - FX, undipped
Sub 7 (Stereo) - FX, undipped
Sub 8 (Stereo) - Music, undipped
Auxes for verbs.

Slightly off topic, but I'm setting up a new undipped template after reading this, How many dbfs do you reduce when going from 5.1 down to stereo?

Cheers

Mark

[Frank S.]

Originally Posted by BIGBANGBUZZ

Slightly off topic, but I'm setting up a new undipped template after reading this, How many dbfs do you reduce when going from 5.1 down to stereo?

Cheers

Mark

I usually just take a listen to the reduction bus and make slight overall changes as needed. I don't have the reduction busses set at a certain level lower. The Fairlight's reduction has been great so far and I haven't run into any issues. Sometimes I just need to bring down the music or FX slightly, but that's about it. It's nice being able to tweak individual tracks if necessary.

[conntk]

While it can be painful to print undipped stems it can be a lot more painful to undo those dips when mixing languages (when in most cases the lines are longer in duration). It makes the job of the person mixing language versions easier and if you have session template setup right it's all about feeding the right buses as Frank mentioned.


Cheers
con

[Dallas Taylor]

Originally Posted by conntk

While it can be painful to print undipped stems it can be a lot more painful to undo those dips when mixing languages (when in most cases the lines are longer in duration). It makes the job of the person mixing language versions easier and if you have session template setup right it's all about feeding the right buses as Frank mentioned.

Cheers
con

[slipdiskdave]

Listen to Dallas and Frank! They know of what they speak!

Frank nailed it with his layout. When I'm doing a show for Discovery, I'll have a music bus, an FX bus, and a dialog bus, all routed to an MDE bus, which is where I make the dips for the narrator. Then with a bit of clever routing, you can print the full mix, along with an automation free/pre fader pass of your MDE bus, so you essentially have an undipped MDE stem.

Like Dallas said, wrack your brain for an hour to build a monster template, and you'll never have to do it again...until they change the specs.

And there is nothing more frustrating than having to re-version a show with someone's stems, and having those stems dipped for ANY reason. Its not just about adding the new narrator. There's no way to tell how long the new VO's read will be, or how long that translator will take to read his part. You'd amazed how much time dipped stems will add to a reversion. As asinine as the Discovery spec may seem on paper, it does make sense to the guys who have to touch it after you! Thanks!

[evanb]

Originally Posted by Rick Sanchez

Do they want to pay for it?


How are people doing this?

I have done alot of these for A&E, who request undipped music, undipped archival, undipped production, undipped everything basically, and then an undipped M&E.

If you work at it, you can make a template that does it all in one pass. It gets pretty complicated, but sure saves alot of time. For undipped music, I just send my music tracks to an undipped music aux, where I set an initial level for the length of the track. This would be my final undipped music.

But then, I route this undipped music to another aux, and thats my actual mixed music. I just use the undipped music aux as my source for the dipped music. Am I explaining this right? Then I end up with music mixed the way I want it, but theres also a track that has a basic level that doesn't move-and that's the undipped music stem.

-Evan Benjamin

[UnderTow]

Interesting thread. I have never done anything for Discovery or NatGeo but I mix every single TV show I do with undipped stems. It doesn't take any longer and for me it is even easier to do than dipped.

My basic post template has busses for diag, FX, ambiences, music etc. I start by just mixing the diag clean with no music. (Although I do have the music playing along but set very low so that I can keep that into account. The Music bus will probably be set to -18 or so while I mix diag). After that I mix the music with the diag bus muted. In other words, I create an undipped music mix. Then I mix in the music with the diag by riding the Music bus. This is very quick. Depending how much music/diag there is, it will take shorter than the duration of the show or at worst as long as the show is.

This way I build up a mix layer by layer and have all undipped stems immediately available by using pre-fader sends on the various busses. The very last thing I do is "wrap" the whole mix around the VO by riding the DM&E bus fader.

Final QC is done by recording all the buses (Pre or post fader depending on what is needed) to separate tracks while watching the show. All stems are then ready for export (CTRL-SHIFT-K). If I detect any issues during this last QC I can just fix it, rewind a bit and punch in record the rest.

This is not a pain, this is not slower. IMO this is faster, easier AND cleaner than any other method. As I never trust on masking or anything else to make any of the stems or the diag work, I end up with very clean stems that make for very clean final mixes.

Alistair

[philper]

Dipped stems DO have their place--most of the docs I work on end up being either cut down from a "director's/festival" cut to a "TV" or etc cut, as well as getting repurposed into shorter bits (ed. market, web etc). It is very helpful for the editor of the later versions to have the dipped stems w/ all the dynamics control etc in them, it allows them to recut and make good audio transitions etc without having to do a full remix, at least for their temp versions.

Philip Perkins

[Dallas Taylor]

Originally Posted by philper

Dipped stems DO have their place--most of the docs I work on end up being either cut down from a "director's/festival" cut to a "TV" or etc cut, as well as getting repurposed into shorter bits (ed. market, web etc). It is very helpful for the editor of the later versions to have the dipped stems w/ all the dynamics control etc in them, it allows them to recut and make good audio transitions etc without having to do a full remix, at least for their temp versions.

Philip Perkins

I totally agree.. I usually have "dipped/sum to final mix" & "undipped" splits of everything built into my template.

[Neil Whippey]

Hey guys,

First post here, so hi to all......

I do a lot of work that requires un-dipped stems, and as a couple of you mentioned earlier it can all be set up in your template and incorporated into your work flow.

I have all my stems set up having already premixed each one individually, although sfx are to suit whatever's going on on screen. I can then use pre-fader sends which go out of both my 192 and onto DPE tracks (one of my favourite things about PT at the moment!), so that I can supply files and a DA-98 at the same time. I find it works very well, especially with the tight deadlines we have these days, and the sales team itching for the next project to start....

neil