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The closing scene of your favorite TV drama ends with a quiet emotional moment between the protagonist and the love interest. Fade to black. Cue the pickup truck ad with the blaring soundtrack. Cue the viewers diving frantically for their remotes, trying to turn down the volume. Some sets have automatic volume control, which can help moderate this problem, but apparently not enough. The subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet of the House Energy and Commerce Committee has forwarded House Bill 1084 to the full committee for a vote. H.R. 1084 is titled “Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act“, which makes more sense when you realize that the Congressional love of acronyms turns this into the “CALM Act“. The goal of the legislation is to “require the Federal Communications Commission to prescribe a standard to preclude commercials from being broadcast at louder volumes than the program material they accompany.” If the bill is made into law, the FCC will have one year to come up with provisions for video programming so that
Passing the subcommittee is just the first hurdle, and the even if the full committee and the House pass it, it will still need approval in the Senate before it can become law. Similar laws have failed to pass in recent years, so don’t get your hopes up. For now, the best you can hope for is a television set that has good automatic volume control, and knowing how to set it. [Due to technical difficulties, this entry was posted late.]
Posted by Alfred Poor, October 13, 2009 6:00 AM
Reader Commentary On the subject of volume levels going up and down depending on a commercial or a show: I notice while we watch several channels, the shows and the commercial varie a lot. Even news broadcast vary their volume. I have my TV, etc going through a A/V receiver. Anything other then the station Tv volume coming through the receiver is steady. There are not up and down volume. The problem is varable from the broadcast station. I have FIOS, in goes through the set top box, then through my receiver. I have even tried the broadcast right from the Tv to the receiver. The same problem...up and down variable volume levels. My Tv does control the steady volume, but not going through my receiver. I can be listening to a show at a comfortable level, as soon as the commercial comes on, the level could be up or down. Another commercial and the volume changes again, back to the show then another level. I usally have my remote near by and either hit mute, or lower the volume when loud. Some stations are ... I have some doubt about this...Although all commercials could be set to the same volume there are some pretty large variables in station playback equipment, media, and broadcast audio. Keeping the audio the same from the program if it's live to the commercial is quite a task as the audio in the program is dynamic, varying from a whisper to sounds that nearly lift the speakers kinda like the old TDK add for audio taps IIRC. Speaking of commercials: WE often set our DVR to record shows long after we've gone to bed. I've noticed in many shows from the sci-fi channel that there is a slight and very annoying break in the signal approximately every 30 seconds, give or take about 5 seconds. On the DVR it's much worse and on the computer the picture goes completely for a fraction of a second. I set the DVR so I could step through it frame by frame. There was a picture in there of a DVD with cover. IOW an add. Now it may be something they are doing, or it may be they have very poor c... That's a curious observation about the SciFi channel, Roger. Could it be a subtle way to combat DVRs? I think it would be a short-sighted strategy, but an interesting one. On a similar vein, I like the "Start Here" screen that ABC puts after its network spots. Sometimes it comes right before the start of the next segment of the current show, but sometimes it is sandwiched between ads. Maybe an experiment to see if people stop the skipping when they see it, so they are more likely to see the next ad? As for the volume on programming and ads, I agree that it's complicated, but I believe it actually could be handled at the station. Just run the sound for everything through a compressor, bringing up the lowest dynamic and attenuating the highest levels so that they all fall within an "acceptable" range. I still believe that it's best handled in the TV itself, however, so the viewer has the option of controlling the levels on his or her own. Alfred... Well, if you want to practice your "quick draw - McGraw" technique then try it on CBS's CSI Miami on an over the air signal. If you have any "young-uns", sick family members good luck. It isn't just the commercials either. I called the station, and sent them emails and I don't think it did any good at all. It is about the same as some of the lousy attempts at spelling on some of the graphics local stations put on. We never seen that years ago, but is so prevalent now. Must be that we have to insure that everyone has the "warm and fuzzy" feeling. As for the volume variations, it is a matter of giving the folks with the big 5.1, and 7.1 systems something to "play" with.... So who is jacking up the volume - the station or the commercial provider?... There are two points of control. The advertisement producers set the levels for their segments, and the program producers set them for theirs. The point of an ad is to get your attention, so it's natural that the ad producer will choose to set it at or near the top of the acceptable level. For dramatic reasons, it's not unusual for a program segment to end with the audio equivalent of "fade to black". So you end with a major collision at the transition between the program and the ads. The individual station controls how loud the audio signal is in general. Here in the Philadelphia market, the CBS affiliate cranks their volume up compared with all the other stations in the market. I have no explanation for why they do this, but it is very noticeable. The fact that algopher cites CSI as being a problem there, I suspect that there's something in the CBS network or its affiliates that is behind this louder volume. Alfred... This all very interesting comments. I am glad to see that everyone has the problem with variable volume levels. I have 9 neighbors that have the same issue. It was terrible on Comcast and worst or Dish and Directv. Fios seems to be better with now big issues of drop outs and delay on audio and video. Prior ventrues never did solve the problems after over a yeat of some major trouble shooting with even trucks parks at distribution cable points and even in fromnt of my house to monitor. Once I switched to Fios. everything was 99% improvement. I have been into Fios for about 6 months and had no problems. Recently though, I had some clitches in the system. For several days I lost the pictures for a few seconds that went black on the screen. It was happening on all my HD channels. That was fixed by resetting the DVR box. Everything was fine for a few days. Then I started to loose audio with words being chopped off or clipped. This went on for a while. Most uncommon with Fios. I checked wi... I was told that the feed that they get is all over the place for lack of better terminology; so I would guess CBS in this case.... Programs have relatively high dynamic range audio and there fore the loud bits are loud and the quiet bits are, you guessed it, quiet. Commercials on the other hand are usually heavily compressed. This means that the loud bits are as loud as they are allowed to be. (no pun intended) The quiet bits are raised in level to be just slightly less loud than the loudest bits. This means that although there is no difference in maximum levels (as required by law, TV stations can loose their licenses for doing so) the commercials sound much much louder. For an example,... when you watch the program you set your volume level at whatever nominal level you normally like to watch, depending on which channel you are viewing. This level is based on the average level of the program. Even if there are very loud sound effects and yelling voices you will be comfortable because the differences are proportionate and appropriate for what is happening on screen. When the commercial comes on ... "SUNDAY! SUNDAY! SUNDAY! AT NEW ENGLAND DRAGWAY! SEE THE NATIONAL NITRO FUNNY CAR CHAMPIONSHIPS! ..." It's a wonder that our generation can hear at all. (And I saw Hendrix at Boston Garden!) As for dynamic range, I agree; it's a very good thing, whether it's the color depth in a display or the audio in the programming. Alfred... More from Alfred Poor
More in Category: General Interest
About Alfred PoorAlfred Poor is a well-known display industry expert, who writes the daily HDTV Almanac. He wrote for PC Magazine for more than 20 years, and now is focusing on the home entertainment and home networking markets. |
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