Mixing Sports in 5.1-Channel Surround Sound
Dolby Podcast Episode 10, March 15, 2007
Jim Hilson, Senior Broadcast Audio Specialist for Dolby Laboratories, gives the inside scoop on how surround sound makes the biggest sporting events - like the Olympics, the NCAA Basketball Championship, NASCAR racing and the Super Bowl - sound great. Listener, Joran, gets a PC soundcard recommendation from Jack.
Hear them all: Listen to Dolbycast on iTunes® or subscribe using your favorite RSS reader.
Mentioned in this Episode
[music]
Jack Buser: Hello, and welcome to Dolbycast—the insider's guide to entertainment technology from the experts at Dolby Laboratories. I'm Jack Buser.
Craig Eggers: And I'm Craig Eggers.
Jack: And we're here to give you the straight talk on everything you need to please your ears.
Craig: And welcome back to Dolbycast. Hi Jack.
Jack: How you doing Craig?
Craig: I'm doing great. I am really stoked about today's presentation.
Jack: I've got to tell you, we say that every time, but this time I'm telling you.
Craig: This is it. We've got us a real engineer here.
Jack: We really do. I am so excited.
Craig: This is going to be so cool.
Jack: We got the man, the myth, the legend.
Craig: Mr. Jim Hilson.
Jack: Jim Hilson is here in the studio with us. He is...
Craig: The Senior Broadcast Audio Specialist for Dolby Laboratories.
Jack: That's right. And he's going to be talking to us about sports and how you do 5.1 in live sports. Tell us all the tricks of the trade.
Craig: This guy has his fingers in everything about audio when it comes to watching sports in your 5.1 surround system.
Jack: I can't wait to just...
Craig: He is responsible for how great it sounds.
Jack: But first, as always, we are going to be answering a listener question as promised.
Craig: We have a question. And the question...
Jack: Go ahead.
Craig: Go ahead.
Jack: No, I was just going to thank everybody for sending...
Craig: Were you going to say thank you?
Jack: I was. I never forget to thank everyone for sending in those questions.
Craig: Thanks for those questions.
Jack: Listen, we are just overwhelmed by listener response. Thank you guys so much for your letters. It seems like you guys out there are really enjoying this and it really just makes it all worthwhile. Thank you so much for sending in your questions. We're answering as many as we can, but keep them coming. All right, so Craig, what is today's question?
Craig: Now?
Jack: Yes please.
Craig: You sure?
Jack: Yes, go ahead.
Craig: You're done?
Jack: All right, I'm done.
Craig: OK.
Jack: Let's do it.
Craig: So, this question is from Joran. It says, "I'm looking for a good PC soundcard that can support DDL."
Jack: DDL being DD Live— Dolby Digital Live. Dolby Digital Live is our technology for actually doing interactive Dolby Digital, meaning if you have a PC or a PC soundcard that supports Dolby Digital Live, you can actually play all your games, play all your music, do basically all your PC sound into a Dolby Digital signal.
Craig: So all of the sources are converted to a Dolby Digital signal for output.
Jack: In real time.
Craig: In real time.
Jack: It's very cool.
Craig: For output via standard digital audio output. And you can connect that to...
Jack: To your home AV receiver.
Craig: That's very cool.
Jack: So, if you've got a PC with a 5.1 or 7.1 channel system, Dolby Digital Live is a great technology for you to have in your PC. So, the question is where do I find a soundcard that supports Dolby Digital Live?
Craig: There you go.
Jack: And I am going to actually recommend the Sondigo Inferno. And the name of the card is the Inferno, and it's actually a 7.1 channel PCI soundcard.
Craig: Cool.
Jack: Of course, it's also capable of 5.1 if you don't have 7.1 speakers. It will also do 5.1.
Craig: So it's future ready.
Jack: And, let me tell you, this soundcard is red hot. Not only does it have Dolby Digital Live technology, so you can connect your PC to your home theater system, it also has Dolby Virtual Speaker. So if you only have 2 speakers, you can actually still get a 5.1 channel experience. It's got Dolby Pro Logic II, so if you're listening to stereo music.
Craig: Any stereo source is converted to 5.1.
Jack: If you're downloading movies off of the iTunes movie store, what have you, it will convert those stereo movies, stereo music into 5.1 channel surround sound. It supports Dolby Pro Logic IIx as well.
Craig: Which is the 7.1 solution.
Jack: It will go all the way up to 7.1. Same thing as Dolby Pro Logic II, except it will convert stereo into 7.1 or convert 5.1 into 7.1 even. So that's very cool.
Craig: Or 6.1 into 7.1.
Jack: Or 6.1 into 7.1 as well. And one of my favorite technologies Dolby Headphone, which means that you can support 5.1 surround sound over any set of standard headphones. Just plug your headphones into the soundcard and boom, you've got 5.1. This is great for gaming. This is great for watching movies without disturbing others. This is great if you've got a laptop on the airplane.
Craig: Personal 5.1 surround sound.
Jack: So, let me turn you on to the Sondigo Inferno. I'm holding it here in my hand, and I got to tell you this thing is cool, and I have to put this thing in my computer.
Craig: Jack, I have to say you did a great job of answering that question.
Jack: All right, thank you very much, Craig.
Craig: Thank you very much.
Jack: It is my pleasure. Again, thanks everyone for writing in.
Craig: So listen, let's take a break.
Jack: Let's do that.
Craig: And then we will be back with our very special guest.
Jack: Jim Hilson.
Voiceover: Jack and Craig would love to answer your questions. Email them at dolbycast@dolby.com.
[music]
Craig: And welcome back to Dolbycast. I'm Craig Eggers, and we're here with Jack Buser.
Jack: Yes.
Craig: And a very special guest.
Jack: Jim Hilson.
Craig: So, Jim Hilson is the Senior Broadcast Audio Specialist for Dolby Laboratories. I've got to say this in advance, a lot of people think of Dolby as “hey, I got Dolby in my DVD player, I've got Dolby in my AV receiver, I've got Dolby in my PC and my games”. A lot of people don't realize that Dolby is really, really active behind the scenes.
Jack: That's right.
Craig: Working very, very closely with the content and the creative community to develop these really, really compelling...
Jack: Movies, TV shows, games. Wherever you have entertainment, you will have a Dolby engineer behind the scenes making sure that entertainment sounds as good as it can possibly sound.
Craig: And we've got one of the best.
Jack: We've got one of the best, Jim Hilson. Jim, welcome to the show.
Jim Hilson: Thank you.
Jack: Thanks so much for making the time. I know you are incredibly busy.
Craig: With all that fanfare Jim is probably going, "How am I going to live up to all this?”
[laughing]
Jack: Listen, I've got to tell them right as we get started, Jim is behind the scenes at your favorite football games, basketball games, NASCAR, what else? I mean, just talk overview...
Jim: Olympics.
Jack: Olympics. What else?
Jim: Music awards.
Craig: Tell us what you've done in the past year, Jim.
Jim: In the past year, well, let's see. It would be the Olympics in Torino [ Turin, Italy in 2006 –Ed.], the NASCAR coverage, baseball for Fox, football for Fox, Country Music Awards...
Craig: Country Music Awards were incredible.
Jack: Yeah, those were very cool actually.
Jim: Consultations with a lot of other broadcasters that are working on things that will call me or talk to me at various times with emails or whatever.
Craig: So Jim, why is Dolby involved? Why do you do what you do?
Jim: We want to bring the expertise that we learn from each broadcaster to others, without giving away trade secrets, of course, but we want to make the broadcast as good as it can be to keep the quality there.
And in the early days, a lot of it was with Dolby Surround, where we were trying to get a technology advanced out to people that were out in the field, the consumers, but knowing that a good sounding mix was a good sounding mix where there wasn't as much stuff as you have now.
Now everything you go see in the movie theater is 5.1. People know what 5.1 sounds like. In the early days of Dolby Surround that wasn't the case, so we worked very hard with the broadcasters to get the surround sound experience going and get it adopted.
Jack: Now, in today's world it seems like pretty much every TV show, every sporting event is in 5.1 surround sound, high definition. Is that a fair statement?
Jim: The majority of them are.
Jack: Yeah.
Jim: Yeah. All the big, you know, NFL football, the NASCAR coverage, basketball, and baseball, and things like that, all the way down to the local level where we've got local people doing 5.1 broadcasts of the local baseball games on basically a daily basis.
Craig: Very cool.
Jack: So people would be listening to this podcast right around the time March Madness should be starting, right about now. Tell us about March Madness, is that going to be a 5.1?
Craig: Are you traveling? [laughs]
Jim: I don't know if I'm traveling to that one or not but I will definitely get some phone calls I'm sure from people that wanted help with setting stuff up. March Madness is unique because they have got a bunch of different venues running at the same time.
Jack: right...
Jim: and so we set stuff up in all the different venues and it ends up going to the network and they take the feeds one after another through the day and just keep putting things up on the air. So the trucks have to be set up and then they move after a weekend to another city or several cities and do it again until we get to the Final Four which ends up in one city for two games.
Craig: So you're in the primarily in the truck, working the truck.
Jim: Primarily in the truck. If I'm on site, I'll be in the truck. The main audio guy.
Jack: What does that mean? What goes on in the truck?
Craig: Exactly, where is the truck at and what goes on there?
Jim: Well the truck is usually parked out behind the venue or off to the side someplace and that's where all the television cameras and all the microphones end up at, along with a lot of videotape recorders. In the old days, that would be hard disc video recorders. And the graphics people are all sitting in trailers.
These are trucks, they are semi-trailers; usually 53 feet long with expansion pieces that come off both sides, or one side for sure. And lots of equipment, lots of people, lots of things going on in there; communications and everything, and then everything comes together and they make a television show which then goes off to the network and looks like, basically, a finished product.
Jack: Wow! And that's all being done on the fly? It's a live broadcast.
Jim: All done on the fly. Live.
Craig: So as it is being done on the fly, we have seen pictures of directors pointing to different cameras and telling, "OK, you're on you own and so and so." Does that change? Does the audio perspective also change with regards to your perspective as to watching the actual image on screen?
Jim: It depends on what you're doing. We have found out that early on when you're doing live sports, that if you take the venue and keep flipping it around because you're always in the same place and you're just changing the angle of which you're looking at... the things like if you switch the crowd back and forth, it gets kind of disconcerting to you, OK.
But, at the same time, if you go to a shot where you got the cheerleaders raising their pom-poms and shaking them, you want to hear that. So you bring the mic up as close to that to get that sound up.
Jack: So it sounds like you must have mics everywhere. Let's talk about basketball, since we are going into March Madness. How many microphones are out there on the court.
Jim: Actually, not as many as you think. It's the way they are used.
Jack: right...
Jim: There is usually a pair of microphones near the half-court line. There is a microphone up at the net on each side. There's some microphones on the goal post assembly that points out at the court around the key and there may be handheld cameras down there that also have microphones on them.
Craig: So, one of the things that you have told us earlier was as the game moves up and down the court, there's things happening in the truck to ensure that sound's being captured with the action on the court itself.
Jim: yeah, you have to watch what's going on on screens. If I'm sitting in the audio room and I'm mixing the show, I'll pick the cameras I want to see for what I'm doing. If I'm consulting on it, then the guy who's mixing it will pick what those are but we'll look at 10 or 12 cameras maybe, on a big show, then we may have to get the switchers so we can actually switch the sources of what we see on monitors because we have too many going on monitors.
So we'll look at what's going on and we'll decide how we want to go. If you're doing football; football is usually done in thirds. It's the 20, the 50, the 20, and that camera is what they call the “game camera”.
Jack: Right.
Jim: So it follows the action of the game. So that's the one you watch to see when they're breaking the huddle or when they are doing everything which is the key used for all the things you do. OK, and then you mix the game according to what you see on the screen.
Jack: So do you make these decisions prior to the actual game itself?
Jim: No, there is kind of a formula for how it is done and each mixer mixes a little bit differently. But there is a basic philosophy in how you mixed. Like in football, before the play, you are not allowed to use certain microphones and once the huddle breaks certain microphones come into play that you can use...
Jack: right...
Jim: and 3 seconds after the snap, those microphones tend to go away.
Jack: very cool.
Jim: So you have to follow those microphones and bring them up and bring them down and the idea is to do it in such a way that nobody notices that you have just taken out a microphone that was on the field and replaced it with microphones that are now around the field. When the play ends and you go to replays, whatever, and the announcer is talking, now the crowd comes more into play.
Jack: Wow.
Jim: So it's a subtle change of the umpire mic on the field going to the parab microphones around the field going to the crowd outside of it and as they break the huddle you want to hear the slap when they clap their hands and then you want to go right back into it.
Jack: It sounds like as much of an art as a science really. You know, you have to be doing all this stuff on the fly; there is so many microphones to watch and anything could happen during the game.
Jim: Yeah, and you have to watch... like for example, sometimes you get stuck when there'll be a big play and you got your parab downs in one end of the field.
Jack: What's a parab?
Jim: Parabolic microphone.
Craig: It's the mic thing with the big glass thing around it, right?
Jim: Big glass thing, it's an operator that holds it, and it's a dish essentially, half bowl shaped.
Craig: he's the guy who always goes over when the running guy runs out of bounds. [laughs]
Jim: Yeah, you'll see him in the sidelines where there'll be a big round dish and there'd be a guy standing there holding it and pointing it.
Jack: And that's to capture a wide range of sounds?
Jim: A wide range of sounds at a far distance but make it sound like it's up close.
Jack: Very, very cool.
Craig: So when we come back, I want to talk to our special guest about a couple of things; a) what's the difference in mic'ing different venues, like NASCAR verses college basketball verses Super Bowl and I want to know what happens when a coach gets mad?
Jack: All right, what happens when a coach gets mad when we come right back. Thanks for listening.
[radio]
Voiceover: Questions for Jack or Craig? Email dolbycast@dolby.com.
Jack: Alright everyone, welcome back. The guys in the backroom told me that the parabs are running and that means Dolbycast is back on the air. We've got Jim Hilson, the man, the myth, the legend, the man behind the scenes.
Craig: The guy who makes everything sound great.
Jack: You've got it, and Jim, we want to know, what you do when you're in the truck and the game is going on and the coach goes nuts! What do you do?
[laughs]
Jim: Well, which sport are we talking about?
[laughter]
Craig: We've got some sports where you throw chairs across the floor. We've got other sports where they'll do everything else.
Jack: So when these special moments happen, what are some of the things you will do?
Jim: Well, actually the bad part about it is, like when you're doing NFL, you are not allowed to get sounds from the bench.
Jack: Oh, is that right?
Jim: Although, that doesn't mean you don't magically happen to hear something from some microphone that's in the vicinity.
Craig: You mean these guys cant say, "Hi, Mom" anymore on Monday nights?
Jim: No, because there were too many things being said that were inappropriate [laughs], wardrobe malfunctions and other things. It's more of an issue of hearing what the coach is telling the players to do and giving away secrets to the other side.
Jack: I can imagine why that would be a problem.
Jim:... because now we have quarterback communication, where the quarterback and the coach are talking on a headset and they could be relaying information to him — that “this is the play”, this is the defense they just put in.
Jack: Ah-ha!
Jim: Here's the offensive call they're going to make.
Craig: So, when you mic an event, for example, NASCAR, how is NASCAR different than a football game?
Jim: NASCAR is...
Craig: I've got to believe NASCAR sounds very cool.
Jack: I know.
Jim: NASCAR is actually very cool. NASCAR is mic'ed from a camera perspective, because there's a basic layout of cameras around the track. Depending on the size of the track, it depends on how many cameras you have, in order to cover the whole thing. There's some basic cameras, and they add more stuff in on a bigger track.
Craig: So, Jim. The thing I've often thought about is, often times when I'm watching NASCAR, I don't hear cars going behind me in the oval and in front of me on that oval. Is that done intentionally?
Jim: That would be... Actually, if you have the right shot, you will hear that.
Craig: If you're in the pits.
Jim: Well, no. If you're looking at something like the speed shot. That's the shot where they look down the track and the cars come at you. When we started doing the Daytona 500 in 5.1 we were doing the sound design, and we actually had a race that ran. It was just a little preliminary thing, and were doing the thing. We were trying to get the sound design worked out.
We were working through all the camera shots, and we had most of them so they sounded pretty good. But, NASCAR isn't shot from up in the stands like football is.
Jack: Sure.
Jim: It's shot from all over, and from the inside of the track pointing out, because you get better angles for a lot of those shots. So, when they got to the speed shot, traditionally a speed shot had been a microphone pointing at the cars coming at you, and then one a little distance away pointing totally the other direction, usually shotgun microphones.
So, you get a pan from the left side to the right side that goes past you. When we looked at the shot as we were listening in 5.1, I said, "The shot's at an angle. We're looking down on the track at this angle. The sound is really going from the left front to the right rear."
Jack: Right.
Jim: So what we did was we built the pan that way for that shot.
Jack andCraig: That's cool.
Jim: And there's a delay that's in there, so if you listen really closely to NASCAR, it actually goes from the left, to the left surround, to the right. And there's actually a delay line that's used in there to get the loop so it does this thing around you. Because of the way the delay works, and the microphones pick up, it actually sounds more pleasing than what the microphones raw would sound like.
Jack: I heard a rumor that you got an Emmy for a little something. Tell us about that. You actually have an Emmy, is that true?
Jim: Supposedly I do. I've never seen this Emmy, but I was part of the team that did the 2005 Daytona 500 that actually won 2 Emmys, one for “Best Sound”, and one for “Technical Team Remote”.
Jack: Congratulations. That's just something.
Craig: So, when are we going to have 5.1 when we go to Scott Goodyear's car? You're going to be sitting in the car with Scott. How are we going to have 5.1 there?
Jim: Actually, there is some work being done in that area. As far as what's going to happen, I don't know exactly how far they've gotten with it, but there's a whole big movement with the RF camera links.
Craig: RF?
Jim: Which is “radio frequency” camera links. Wireless cameras.
Jack: Right.
Jim: The wireless cameras, up until this year, have been all standard definition that are up-converted. Because of the increased data that you need for a high def picture, which is 4 to 5 times more content as standard def, the data required to relay that is obviously going to go way up, which means the bandwidth required goes way up, and the power to transmit that goes way up. The technology has not been there.
The technology has finally caught up to the need, so we're starting to see high def cameras with multi-channel audio. We're working on ways...
Jack: Multi-channel audio in the camera?
Jim: Multi-channel audio pick-up in the camera that's sent to the truck and processed and developed into a surround sound field.
Jack: That's too cool.
Craig: So, when Scott Goodyear gets bumped from behind you're actually going to hear it, and you're going to feel it in the future.
Jack: Oh, that's wonderful. I can't wait for that.
So we talked about basketball, we've talked about football. We talked about NASCAR. I want to tell a little story about when we had you in to talk to some folks making some football video games. We had you come talk to the 2K Sports guys when they were making their football game one year.
Jim: Yes, we did.
Jack: You gave a sort of a small seminar on how the field is mic'ed. And then they went ahead and implemented a lot of the stuff into the video game, didn't they?
Jim: Yes, they did.
Jack: That was just very, very cool. So we actually put you in front of some football video games, in front of Madden and stuff like that. Would you say when you're playing a game that it approximates the experience that you get when you're watching it in high-def?
Jim: Yeah.
Jack: That's very cool.
Craig: I've got to tell you, the first time I watched Madden Football, it was like being down in the middle of the stadium.
So, you did the Olympics.
Jim: I did. I've done several.
Craig: Tell us some of the challenges with doing the whole production overseas, and sending that back to the States.
Jim: The biggest problem...
Craig: And globally.
Jim: And globally. The biggest problem is that the Olympics are a global event. They're covered now by what is known as the host broadcaster. There's one broadcaster that is responsible for the majority of the feeds to the rest of the world, and then, in the U.S., NBC owns the rights to the Olympics for the next several Olympics, continuing on from what they've owned since 2000.
They add cameras and production to what they get from the host broadcaster and they make up what we see here in the States. So, sometimes you'll see long form, such as the curling events in the Winter Olympics that were on CNBC. Those are basically what they call long form. That's what the rest of the world basically would see, is the competition from start to finish.
It basically runs fairly continuously with a few little holes. What you see on prime time is obviously edited, snippets of the highlights of what's happened during the day, and other things that go with it.
The biggest problem we have with these events is that we're trying to get them into surround sound and into 5.1. It's a cost for the host broadcaster. How many people really want this? That number is growing very quickly, so we see a lot of broadcasters that are asking now for 5.1 mixes, and so the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, all of the venues will be HD 5.1.
Jack: Very cool! I cannot wait. Listen, the Olympics — actually, when I bought my latest projector, that's what really sold me on the high def projector. Watching that, the Olympics.
Craig: So, for the prime time events, do you actually have time to sit down and work with the audio mix?
Jim: There's a little bit of time to work with it. They do a lot of post-production editing on some of those features. It depends on what country you're in. When we were in Sydney, we had tons of time, but when we were in Atlanta, we had very little time. So, depending on where you are depends on how much time you have before it has to hit air.
Jack: Well, listen Jim. Speaking of time, Scott in the back room is telling us we are at that time to call it a wrap. Thank you so much.
Craig: Will you promise to come back?
Jack: Please.
Jim: Sure.
Jack: This has been wonderful having you here on the show, and I know you're very, very busy, so thank you for taking the time, and we'll see you soon. I'm Jack Buser.
Craig: And I'm Craig Eggers.
Jack: Thanks for listening, send in your questions. We'll see you soon. This has been Dolbycast.
[music]
Back to Top
Back to Dolbycast main page
