Torino Winter Games Broadcast in
Dolby Digital 5.1 on NBC Networks

Next February, NBC will broadcast the XX Winter Games from Torino, Italy, in HDTV and Dolby^® Digital 5.1 surround sound. Viewers with Dolby Digital 5.1 decoders will experience this compelling technology while watching any of the available events produced in HD, including the Opening and Closing Ceremonies, figure skating, speed skating, ice hockey, ski jumping, aerials, freestyle skiing, and much more. Dolby Digital 5.1 will also be available on the Universal HD cable network.

Viewers of NBC’s standard NTSC service, as well as cable networks MSNBC, CNBC, and USA, will also reap the benefits of surround sound from a Dolby Pro Logic^® II encoded version of the same mix provided to the HD services.

Dolby has long been a supporter of NBC’s broadcast of the Summer and Winter Games, and the 2006 Torino Winter Games will be no exception. Dolby has provided NBC with multiple encoders and decoders for use at the individual venues and at the International Broadcast Center in Torino, as well as at their New York and Los Angeles broadcast centers. An engineer from Dolby will also be on-site in Italy to support the equipment installation and to provide expertise in multichannel audio mixing and encoding.

“We’re very proud to present this premier sporting event in Dolby Digital 5.1,” says Dave Mazza, NBC senior vice president of engineering for the games. “Together with the high-definition video, it will provide our viewers with the most dramatic broadcast experience possible. And we really appreciate the support we get from Dolby. The expertise they bring helps us get the most from this challenging production.”

To provide the Dolby Digital 5.1 program to their viewers, most NBC stations need only acquire a DP569 Multichannel Dolby Digital Encoder, and possibly a DP583 Frame Synchronizer. Other equipment—such as the LM100 Broadcast Loudness Meter and the DP564 reference decoder—may be useful for monitoring and QC operations, but are not required. Click here for more information about how NBC stations can get ready for broadcasting with Dolby Digital 5.1.

Over the past few months—and following much hype and excitement—the first major European HD channels have launched. These new channels cover a wide range of programming and all feature Dolby^® Digital 5.1 sound.

In Scandinavia, Canal+ Nordic launched its premium channel, CMore HD, on September 1, making it Europe’s first major HD channel. Although it is initially broadcasting movies in MPEG-2 video, the channel plans to move to MPEG-4 and also widen its range of content to include episodic programming as well as sports. The channel is broadcast across Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark.

Other next-generation services have also launched in Europe. On October 26, the HD versions of German free-to-air channels Sat.1 and ProSieben were switched on by the Bavarian governor, Edmund Stoiber, at a ceremony in Munich. These new services, typically a mixture of US TV shows and movies, are broadcast in 1080i video format and MPEG-4 audio via the Astra Satellite system using the new DVB-S2 modulation process. Dolby Digital is provided as the only sound format, with decoding performed at the set-top box for stereo televisions. A bitstream output is also provided for connection to a typical home theater.

Also in Germany, Premiere went live with HD and 5.1 surround sound across three separate channels on October 3. Premiere’s offering is by far the largest European HD rollout to date, with programs as varied as movies, documentaries, and football, all delivered via satellite. Premiere has asked its set-top box manufacturers, Pace, Humax, and Philips, to include Dolby Digital Plus decoding for future flexibility of the platform.

Europeans can also look forward to the upcoming launches of Sky HD in the UK and Canal+ HD in France. By June, nine HD channels are expected to be on air, all of which use Dolby Digital or Dolby Digital Plus for the audio.

But it isn’t just HD services that are adding Dolby Digital sound to their programming; the number of channels offering Dolby Digital 5.1 with their SD services also continues to grow. In October, Italy’s Mediaset began offering its premium SD movie channel in 5.1; at the start of November, Russian broadcaster NTV began doing the same, becoming the first Russian operator to go live with Dolby Digital. These broadcasters, together with the new HD services, have now taken the number of channels on air in Europe in Dolby Digital 5.1 to more than 50.

With the rollout of HD throughout 2006 and the ongoing addition of 5.1 to existing SD channels, Dolby Digital continues to be the multichannel audio system of choice for Europe’s digital broadcasters.

For more information, see A Guide to Audio for HDTV in Europe.

McLeod’s Daughters is an Australian drama about an outback farm called Drovers Run and the lives and loves of the four women who run it. The show is seen in more than 230 territories worldwide, and is remarkable as it was the first Australian drama to be delivered in HD and Dolby^® Digital 5.1. In addition, all of its 32 episodes per year are filmed in Super 16 film on a remote location in South Australia.

The location for the show is an old working farm north of Adelaide, which was purchased specifically for the production. All the scenes, including the interiors, are shot on the farm property or in surrounding area. This, combined with the ferocious schedule (they shoot two episodes every 11 days), has led to some interesting innovations when it comes to recording the sound, according to Stephen R. Smith, the show’s sound supervisor. “Although the boom does get used, radio mics have been the most practical way of capturing that dialogue,” he says. “The cast are delivering lines on horseback, in wide exterior shots, and in awkward interior rooms.”

The sound is recorded to DAT via a location mixer. Once the recording is complete, the film and DAT tapes are sent to Tracks Post Production in Sydney (approximately 900 miles away) where the film is transferred to HD tape and an Avid editing system. Once the rushes have been cut on the Avid, the sound tracks are transferred via OMF to the sound department for mixing and editing. These steps are performed on a Fairlight Prodigy 2 system with Digidesign Pro Tools used for dialogue processing. Atmospheric sounds are mixed into the 5.1 soundtrack from a custom sound library, giving particular locations their own moods.

At this point, the 5.1 soundtrack is downmixed to Lt/Rt and stereo using a Dolby SEU4; the Lt/Rt signal is then recorded onto the tape masters on tracks 1 and 2. The 5.1 mix is encoded into Dolby E and recorded onto tracks 3 and 4. Smith occasionally uses his old Dolby Cat. No. 43 unit to clean up background noise in the final dialogue mix. “It still saves me every now and again,” he says. Postproduction is essentially turned around in a week. “We try for as little ADR as possible because of the time it takes. We found it easier to build an ADR room on the top floor of the house the series is shot in; when actors are available between scenes, they are whisked upstairs and record necessary lines for previous episodes.”

Millennium Television, which co-produces the series with Nine Films and Television, has overcome numerous difficulties to produce this ambitious drama, and the show’s success continues to bring further technical challenges. “We have been asked to look at producing 5.1 on an NTSC HD master. As the series is produced in PAL, there is a requirement for a speed change and pitch correction of the 5.1 soundtrack,” says Smith. “We have been using a Dolby Model 585 Time Scaling Processor for the 5.1 pitch correction, and it has given us the best results for this task.”

With an audience of millions, numerous awards, a unique location, and a solid, forward-looking production mindset, how does the future look for McLeod’s Daughters? “We are now shooting our sixth series,” says the show’s executive producer, Karl Zwicky. “The future is bright, and the show holds a unique spot in world television.”

See A Guide to Audio for HDTV in Europe for guidance on how to produce 5.1-channel channel audio content. For more information about McLeod’s Daughters, visit http://mcleodsdaughters.ninemsn.com.au/.

Introducing Dolby Media Producer

Dolby^® Media Producer is the definitive suite of three professional software products for DVD and HD disc media, including Dolby Media Encoder, Dolby Media Decoder, and Dolby Media Tools. Along with applications for disc media, Dolby Media Tools offers functionality that can be used to repurpose previously encoded audio for other applications, such as VOD.

The Dolby Media Encoder is designed for use on a local computer or over a network to a centralized server for access by multiple clients within a facility. The encoder software is accessible via a browser window, and it works with several source-file formats, including BWF, WAV, and AIFF, at a variety of bit depths and sample rates. Multichannel non-real-time encoding of Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby Digital, Dolby TrueHD, and MLP Lossless™ formats are supported via an intuitive user interface on the Mac OS^® X platform. The Dolby Media Encoder can encode streams in all of these formats with full metadata. In addition, the Dolby Media Encoder provides handy features such as a confidence decoder, project level management, template storage, and an activity log.

The Dolby Media Decoder is a professional reference decoder that provides decoding and monitoring of the four Dolby formats. It also supports all consumer listening modes (including downmixing and dynamic range control), as well as providing decoding for Dolby Pro Logic^®, Dolby Pro Logic II, and Dolby Digital Surround EX™ formats. The widely used Sony P2 protocol provides transport control functionality for audio-to-video synchronization.

The Dolby Media Tools utility is used independently of the encoder or decoder. It enables users to trim, concatenate, and restripe timecode as well as edit metadata. This makes it possible to take an encoded audio file created for one delivery medium, like DVD, trim off the theatrical logo and ratings cards from the DVD version, and replace them with front-end logos and other elements that are used for pay-per-view and video-on-demand services. This makes it easier to repurpose existing Dolby Digital (and in the future Dolby Digital Plus) content by minimizing the need to re-encode the entire feature for simple changes in pre- and post-feature content." For additional information, view the Dolby Media Producer specification sheet, and the lists of Dolby dealers and distibutors in your area.

NBC’s long-running late-night hit Saturday Night Live made its season premiere on October 1 in HD and Dolby^® Digital 5.1. This marks the first time that a weekly late-night variety show has been produced and broadcast in 5.1.

But SNL is just one of many shows, both new and ongoing, making their Dolby Digital 5.1 debut this season. This includes virtually all episodic prime-time programming on CBS, making it the third major network—along with ABC and NBC—to provide viewers with such a wealth of content in this exciting format.

As for daytime programming, Good Morning America went live on ABC in HD on Thursday, November 3. While the studio segments shot on the its set are still stereo audio, the show’s Friday Concert Series music segments will be produced in Dolby Digital 5.1 surround.

Of course, this is all in addition to the many regular sporting events, live music shows, awards shows, movies, and other programming that have been available in Dolby Digital 5.1 on many networks for the last few years. Stay tuned for even more later this year.

Access current Dolby Digital network implementation information for NBC and ABC local stations online.