For my 2 cents on it... Shows in general actually use this thing called "dynamics" (seriously!) And good shows can generally afford good sound specialists (anyone ever just LISTEN to 24 or LOST?) They take advantage of the full stereo spectrum, and often even the full surround array. Whispers are quiet, gunshots are loud. People on the left of the screen speak out of the left speaker...
Commercials also make full use of the stereo (and by default almost) surround. Everything comes out of every speaker. At full volume. Compressed. Whispers take up almost as much of the meter as the cheers from the wives when they get the stain out of the shirt.
Convince the advertisers that if they make a commercial worth stopping and listening to, that people WILL stop and listen to it... and you have solved most of the trouble.
So what are stations supposed to do if the last 30 seconds of the program were silence (or almost...) Run the commercial without sound? Wouldn't it suck if the last 30 seconds of the show were a gunfight (in dolby surround, no less!)
There is a LOT more to it than just gain. If it was just gain, then we would already be there.
How about going from an HD 5.1 surround mix program to a stereo (or even mono x2) commercial? Or the opposite way?
I am an engineer at a TV station, and while there are a lot of products out there to try and control volume levels... None of them work all that well, and none of them work near as well as an employee who is paying attention to something more than just the meters.
Digital has (oddly enough) taken away a lot of the control that stations used to have over things like audio and video levels. The attitude seems to be "It's digital, all of that is automatic now" Station Automation only makes this situation worse. Even if there were still a "knob to twiddle" there wouldn't be anyone there to twiddle it.
It also doesn't help that your stereotypical TV Chief Engineer is "the old guy who has been doing this for 40+ years". They have spent their entire lives learning and practicing TV. And next to none of it applies anymore. Most of them were convinced to stick it out through the DTV transition, but I am expecting a very large number of them to go ahead and retire now that it has passed. Perhaps the younger crowd of engineers, who all grew up on computers and with digital everything will do better... or maybe they just grew up with the attitude "it's digital... what are you going to do?"
First, document everything, and be honestly prepared to walk away from the company and report them to the BSA if needed.
Then, show them the possibilities. Whether that is through FOSS, or buying legitimate licenses... Whatever route you think you may actually have a chance of convincing them to follow
If they take the opportunity you present them to become legit, all is well. If they balk, you walk... and report tham.
At least in the US, free, over the air ATSC broadcasting DOES include a (brief) guide. It is encoded in a standard, open manner, and the ability to read it is available to anyone who wants to bother.
Cable?? That's another story...
I did find the solution to that... (at least it has worked for me so far...) Install FF. Change all instances of the icon to the big blue "e", and label them all "The Internet".. If you have particularly observant offenders (not likely considering the situation...) Change the title bar text to match, Use an IE clone skin, and set silent upgrades...
Ummm... is it just me, or was bad smells causing bad behavior NOT PRESENT AT ALL in the study... Why do so many comments keep equating the two?
We can debate whether citrus scented windex constitutes a clean smell or not, whether the other methods were robust, etc... But the study was about clean smells and ethical behavior and had nothing to do with bad smells and unethical behavior.
Even assuming that "clean smells" promoted more ethical behavior, it does not logically follow that "unclean" smells would promote unethical behavior. This isn't physics where "equal and opposite reaction" rules apply. It is phsiology and phychology... Where giving a stimulant to a chronically hyperactive child calms them down. Where people always say one thing when they really mean a mother...
Who said clean smells good? Stick your nose over a bottle of ammonia and tell me that again! Yet ammonia is still popular as a cleaning agent, and many would call it a clean smell.
If they can figure out a way to implement something like the Emergency Alert System [Wikipedia] on the internet, you might be able to convince me (And a lot of other people) {they are currently working on updating the EAS system, including an IP protocol... the trouble is that IP is by design a fault tolerant protocol, and Emergency alerts are by nature NOT [they HAVE to get through, is what I mean]) There are some very specific requirements for EAS and they are having a lot of fun talking about the future possibilities on the web... Then reality gets in the way and we are back to square 1.
while I am personally glad this finally went through... I can vouch for the potential issues this can cause with existing broadcasts. ATSC is so sensitive to multi-path as it is... (and other forms of interference to boot, but I digress) Throwing out a bunch of unlicensed transmitters, borrowing the space between TV stations is a very scary proposition.
Businesses may scoff, other than the really small or home based type... but I think this is Apple's "in" to the home based server market. Set it up in your living room along with your AppleTV, connect it to your router along with your work and personal computers, serve all your media, all you mail, all your everything to all your house.
SOP for businesses, sure. Geeks everywhere have been doing it for years. Does your grandmother have a home server? She will, and Apple wants to be there.
connect your firewire external with your install disk image on it... or connect directly to anothe rmac via firewire and boot in target disk mode... or boot from the network to a shared disk image, or...
Actually, this will provide more flexibility in their optimizations. There are some aspects that the CPU does very well, and there are others that the GPU handle well... being able to say "perform THIS function on the CPU and THAT one on the GPU, will free up resources on each chip. Utilizing the CPU for some functions will free up resources on the GPU, and vise-versa, allowing (theoretically) to optimize the performance of EACH one for a better overall experience.
this study proves it! See... only stupid people are prone to suffer from schizophrenia. Smart guys like us don't have anything to worry about says the smug scientist...
It's the academic version of NIMBY
Slashdot Mirror
For my 2 cents on it... Shows in general actually use this thing called "dynamics" (seriously!) And good shows can generally afford good sound specialists (anyone ever just LISTEN to 24 or LOST?) They take advantage of the full stereo spectrum, and often even the full surround array. Whispers are quiet, gunshots are loud. People on the left of the screen speak out of the left speaker...
Commercials also make full use of the stereo (and by default almost) surround. Everything comes out of every speaker. At full volume. Compressed. Whispers take up almost as much of the meter as the cheers from the wives when they get the stain out of the shirt.
Convince the advertisers that if they make a commercial worth stopping and listening to, that people WILL stop and listen to it... and you have solved most of the trouble.
Good luck with that one, by the way...
So what are stations supposed to do if the last 30 seconds of the program were silence (or almost...) Run the commercial without sound? Wouldn't it suck if the last 30 seconds of the show were a gunfight (in dolby surround, no less!)
There is a LOT more to it than just gain. If it was just gain, then we would already be there.
How about going from an HD 5.1 surround mix program to a stereo (or even mono x2) commercial? Or the opposite way?
I am an engineer at a TV station, and while there are a lot of products out there to try and control volume levels... None of them work all that well, and none of them work near as well as an employee who is paying attention to something more than just the meters.
Digital has (oddly enough) taken away a lot of the control that stations used to have over things like audio and video levels. The attitude seems to be "It's digital, all of that is automatic now" Station Automation only makes this situation worse. Even if there were still a "knob to twiddle" there wouldn't be anyone there to twiddle it.
It also doesn't help that your stereotypical TV Chief Engineer is "the old guy who has been doing this for 40+ years". They have spent their entire lives learning and practicing TV. And next to none of it applies anymore. Most of them were convinced to stick it out through the DTV transition, but I am expecting a very large number of them to go ahead and retire now that it has passed. Perhaps the younger crowd of engineers, who all grew up on computers and with digital everything will do better... or maybe they just grew up with the attitude "it's digital... what are you going to do?"
First, document everything, and be honestly prepared to walk away from the company and report them to the BSA if needed.
Then, show them the possibilities. Whether that is through FOSS, or buying legitimate licenses... Whatever route you think you may actually have a chance of convincing them to follow
If they take the opportunity you present them to become legit, all is well. If they balk, you walk... and report tham.
At least in the US, free, over the air ATSC broadcasting DOES include a (brief) guide. It is encoded in a standard, open manner, and the ability to read it is available to anyone who wants to bother. Cable?? That's another story...
I did find the solution to that... (at least it has worked for me so far...) Install FF. Change all instances of the icon to the big blue "e", and label them all "The Internet".. If you have particularly observant offenders (not likely considering the situation...) Change the title bar text to match, Use an IE clone skin, and set silent upgrades...
Ummm... is it just me, or was bad smells causing bad behavior NOT PRESENT AT ALL in the study... Why do so many comments keep equating the two? We can debate whether citrus scented windex constitutes a clean smell or not, whether the other methods were robust, etc... But the study was about clean smells and ethical behavior and had nothing to do with bad smells and unethical behavior. Even assuming that "clean smells" promoted more ethical behavior, it does not logically follow that "unclean" smells would promote unethical behavior. This isn't physics where "equal and opposite reaction" rules apply. It is phsiology and phychology... Where giving a stimulant to a chronically hyperactive child calms them down. Where people always say one thing when they really mean a mother... Who said clean smells good? Stick your nose over a bottle of ammonia and tell me that again! Yet ammonia is still popular as a cleaning agent, and many would call it a clean smell.
I don't believe nobody else has said it yet... It was the only way they could actually get a room full of geeks to all shout "Yah-hooooooo-ooo!"
If they can figure out a way to implement something like the Emergency Alert System [Wikipedia] on the internet, you might be able to convince me (And a lot of other people) {they are currently working on updating the EAS system, including an IP protocol... the trouble is that IP is by design a fault tolerant protocol, and Emergency alerts are by nature NOT [they HAVE to get through, is what I mean]) There are some very specific requirements for EAS and they are having a lot of fun talking about the future possibilities on the web... Then reality gets in the way and we are back to square 1.
while I am personally glad this finally went through... I can vouch for the potential issues this can cause with existing broadcasts. ATSC is so sensitive to multi-path as it is... (and other forms of interference to boot, but I digress) Throwing out a bunch of unlicensed transmitters, borrowing the space between TV stations is a very scary proposition.
Businesses may scoff, other than the really small or home based type... but I think this is Apple's "in" to the home based server market. Set it up in your living room along with your AppleTV, connect it to your router along with your work and personal computers, serve all your media, all you mail, all your everything to all your house. SOP for businesses, sure. Geeks everywhere have been doing it for years. Does your grandmother have a home server? She will, and Apple wants to be there.
connect your firewire external with your install disk image on it... or connect directly to anothe rmac via firewire and boot in target disk mode... or boot from the network to a shared disk image, or...
I'm waiting for the DIY open source hardware helmet-cam that ties in with streetview... Then things will get really interesting!
If I wanted to socialize... I wouldn't be sitting in front of a computer.
Actually, this will provide more flexibility in their optimizations. There are some aspects that the CPU does very well, and there are others that the GPU handle well... being able to say "perform THIS function on the CPU and THAT one on the GPU, will free up resources on each chip. Utilizing the CPU for some functions will free up resources on the GPU, and vise-versa, allowing (theoretically) to optimize the performance of EACH one for a better overall experience.
My first first post... and I don't have anything witty to say...
this study proves it! See... only stupid people are prone to suffer from schizophrenia. Smart guys like us don't have anything to worry about says the smug scientist... It's the academic version of NIMBY