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Cleint headset audio delay vs monitors in 2019


Philip Perkins

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This was discussed some about 6 years ago, at least.  You folks working on LA-style commercials with a big village these days, what is your stance on delaying the Comtek or IFB audio for those folks re: sync to the monitors they are watching?  I've done it, and it was kind of a can of worms, since I end up needing to do two headset broadcasts (delayed for people far from the set watching very latent camera-output) and not (for people who can hear the talent directly, and themselves talking to them, whom delay would drive crazy).   This made for a goofy situation for listeners who moved around, nearer and farther from the set, confusion between the sets of receivers etc.  To me, this did not seem worth the trouble and need for extra explanation.  Is this kind of thing expected now, like without you being asked to do it?

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If you do scratch audio onto the camera, the camera's audio should be embedded into the video stream which arrives at video village. You can hang a hardwired headphone plugged into the headphone output of a monitor. If someone wants to listen in sync, he or she can grab that headphone and if he or she leaves he has to take it off (because it is wired).

 

You need collaboration with the video guys which may not be easy (or allowed = US?) and ... it depends ...

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In my situations audio is going to (high end) camera and the camera puts it in sync to picture, but I don't want the village listening to that feed.  I need to be able to control what is in the feed and to kill it altogether between takes if that's how the director wants to roll.  The villagers aren't going to go for any sort of wired headphone anyhow--it's just not what they are expecting. 

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I only end up having to deal with the sync delay when VTR is doing live processing, like live keying or frame overlays, etc.  The extra processing can delay the video over a second or two which is too much to get away with.  For this situation I mostly run a comtek transmitter off the VTR cart and let their software match the delay rather than doing a clap test and trying to manually dial it in.  For the folks who are close to set, they are also watching the delayed picture so the delayed sync still works.  If the echo is annoying cause they are on set and usually end up taking their headphones off.

The couple frames that is inherent in the picture flow these days I have never received a complaint about so I don't try to match it.

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That's sort of where I'm at.  Years ago, when camera outputs first started to show 2-3 frame latencies I tried to fix the delays, and then gradually backed off, since generally no one seemed to care.  Lately the notion popped up again, but since it was an interretron with speaker for talent deal the delayed audio+live audio was too much and I kiboshed it.   I really only want to do the delay thing to people listening completely out of earshot of the set, who are never going to come up to the set with their headsets on....

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I agree.  Having echo from a delayed feed and being close to set is way worse than a little sync offset to the monitors.

As a side note, what are you using to delay your IFB feed?  I don't have a small delay box so last time I had to do it without a console I came up with a weird routing scheme sending audio through an ERX to the Comtek transmitter and using the built in delay of the ERX.

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On 8/1/2019 at 4:58 PM, Philip Perkins said:

The villagers aren't going to go for any sort of wired headphone anyhow--it's just not what they are expecting. 

 

In these situations I‘ll put another transmitter on the output of the monitor. That way I don’t need to worry about rf issues as there will be sound if there is picture, and the video op will deal with the picture. So they can be wireless in the village. That feed comes from a transmitter in my bag (or on cart) to camera. I have a second transmitter for anyone who wants to listen on set. Like Matthias said, with the 1039 receiver they can easily switch between the two feeds, but it rarely happens in my world that anyone switches from one to the other 

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Considering how often I have to explain that the blinking red light on a comtek means it's working not that the battery is dead, and there is no sound because we are still lighting, I can't imagine trying to get 15 + agency folks to understand / care about switching channels on their ifb.

If you can convince production to get the village far enough from set to be out of earshot they can listen through vtr's speaker which is delayed with picture, then comteks can be live so anyone who is bouncing back and forth can have both options without complication.  However this doesn't work when village is just in a blacked out tent 15' away.

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The easiest way for me to delay anymore is via the built-in output delay page of 6xx recorders (whole frames only).  I've used the little Sescom delays too.  I thought of using two TX and programming the 2 freqs into a set of R1A RX, so users could switch between the two at will.  But as was said that is kind of asking a lot of people who in fact may not even notice a 2 frame picture latency, or care about it if they do.   The times I've had delay be important had more to do with live-talent interaction over some kind of web feed with people in various remote locations, all with varying amounts of latency (so we chased the delay around live).   It's good to know that I could do this for a simple client viewing set up if I wanted to, but since my viewing situation is usually of the "tent 15 feet away" kind Plan A is to leave the delays off.

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