AES Section Meeting Reports

British - January 12, 2010

Meeting Topic: 'Who's the bad guy now? Maintaining audio/video sync in today's broadcast environment'

Moderator Name: Section chair

Speaker Name: Andy Quested, Head of Technology, BBC R&D

Meeting Location: Royal Academy of Engineering. London

Summary

To complain that "the audio is out of sync" was, in the past, doing audio an injustice. The use of visual effects units, time base correctors and other digital processing in the video chain, while the audio continued to pass through an analogue signal path, meant that it was, in fact, the video which was usually out of sync. However, the move to digital audio processing, and in particular surround sound broadcasting — which often requires six channels to be passed through a two-channel infrastructure — has significantly moved the goalposts. The advent of HD, with its more clearly defined imaging, has exacerbated the problem. Andy Quested will highlight some of the audio/video synchronisation issues that the BBC HD channel has had to deal with, and will outline the measures it is taking to put audio back into its rightful place.

Andy's BBC blog provides some more background: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2009/12/the_hitchhikers_guide_to_encod.html

Additional Information

Maintaining audio-video sync in today's broadcast environment (MP3 Audio - Length: 1:19:37)

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