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Topic: Trailers are too loud - the smoking gun

Peter Mork
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 181
From: Newton, MA, USA
Registered: Jun 2002

posted 10-23-2004 03:36 AM

A while ago on this forum I noted in passing the fact that trailers (in America, at least) generally seem to play TOO LOUD. Everyone knows that, right? I said I knew there'd been a move in the industry a few years back to curtail this excess loudness, but that it had seemingly been "nipped in the bud".

But lo, a fellow poster responded with this:

quote:
By the way Peter, TASA has been going quite well since June of 1999 when the Trailer Audio Standards Association became the law. The MPAA has been enforcing an upper volume (average) limit since then. It started at 87 dB in 1999, and has moved to 86 dB, and currently it is at 85 dB. It was not nipped in the bud, it bloomed into a success that won a Technical Achievement Academy Award to two fellows from Dolby, and a very nice chap from Disney.

Well, that shut me up. But wait - what are we to make of this?:

This comes from a current trailer, wouldn't you know. Surely a track where the two halves merge together and leave little islands is what you would call OVERMODULATED. Eh?

Again, I say - nipped!

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Daryl C. W. O'Shea
Film God

Posts: 3977
From: Midland Ontario Canada (where Panavision & IMAX lenses come from)
Registered: Jun 2002

posted 10-23-2004 03:42 AM

quote:
The MPAA has been enforcing an upper volume (average) limit since then.

Is the entire trailer like that? You could blow the roof off of the building and still be under the limit if you have a minute of silence after that.

Was the trailer submitted to the MPAA?

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Peter Mork
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 181
From: Newton, MA, USA
Registered: Jun 2002

posted 10-23-2004 04:26 AM

Yes to both questions.

I think one of the ways they cheat is by compressing (removing the dynamics from) trailer sound, in a way they never would when mixing a feature. Makes everything sound louder, even if technically they don't break the MPAA's guidelines. But c'mon - the track above is out of bounds anyway. Call the cops!

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Steve Guttag
We forgot the crackers Gromit!!!

Posts: 12814
From: Annapolis, MD
Registered: Dec 1999

posted 10-23-2004 05:56 AM

Daryl is correct in that the loudness meter has to do with the loudness over a period of time.

As a percentage of the total track your segment shown is insignificant.

Nothing said that loud "stings" and such were not allowed...just that the average level for the whole thing can't be loud. There is nothing in the processess that says one can overmodulate and distort the crap out of the signal. As far as the optical track is concerned...it is going to top out at 94dB for SR and 91dB for the rest (perhaps a bit more in the low frequency department).

Again, the TASA program never said you couldn't have extremely loud sections but that the overall level couldn't be loud. Thus, if your segment of film were to represent say a significant portion of a 10-second length trailer, then it would most certainly fail to meet the current established level. If it were part of a 3-minute trailer, then it would contribute to its level rating but would be relatively insignificant.

TASA does not say that you can only have but so many segments above a certain level either....thus a longer trailer can more loud passages than a short one...since as a percentage, each passage contributes less.

But as Daryl states, for each loud passage you are going to have to balance it out with a more quiet one.

I wonder if the green (or red) rating strip is also factored in to their number since it almost always has no sound [Smile]

Steve

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Adam Martin
I'm not even gonna point out the irony.

Posts: 3686
From: Dallas, TX
Registered: Nov 2000

posted 10-23-2004 10:54 AM

Where is this mystery thread that you have quoted? Why start a new thread for the same subject?

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Peter Mork
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 181
From: Newton, MA, USA
Registered: Jun 2002

posted 10-23-2004 11:12 AM

It's not really on the same subject. It's the discussion of cyan tracks that got slightly off topic.

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Mike Blakesley
Film God

Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99

posted 10-23-2004 12:22 PM

The trailer volume program is a flop. I have a feeling all the measurements are being done on instruments and making it look good on paper, but nobody is actually listening to the way they sound in an auditorium!

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Brad Miller
Administrator

Posts: 17775
From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall)
Registered: May 99

posted 10-23-2004 12:37 PM

Agreed, it doesn't seem to have really accomplished anything. I still have to play trailers lower. Commonly 4.0 - 4.5 for trailers. Features still at 7.0

The previews should NOT be more powerful than the feature.

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Scott Norwood
Film God

Posts: 8146
From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas)
Registered: Jun 99

posted 10-23-2004 04:01 PM

Note, too, that not all trailers are approved by the MPAA, so they can do whatever they want with their soundtracks. Does anyone else remember the disaster that was the "Y Tu Mama Tambien" trailer? That's what got me started on playing trailers at 4.5 (optical only) and features at 7.0 (digital, if available); this was with CP500s.

For some reason, the problem seems less bad in mono houses; in one place where I fill in from time to time, we play trailers at 5.5 and features at 6.5 (this is with a Kelmar system, not Dolby) and it sounds fine. This is a manual booth, but adjusting the fader isn't a problem at all in a single-screen house.

Personally, I don't really care about the "trailers too loud" issue anymore. As long as the trailers aren't too much different from one another, it's easy enough to come up with a workaround to adjust the fader between the trailer and feature. This is easiest with the CP500, but those using other processors who need an automated way to do this would do well to check Brad's "Tips" page.

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Jason Miller
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 241
From: Little Rock, AR,
Registered: Mar 2004

posted 10-23-2004 04:30 PM

personally, I like the DTS-6AD trimming feature that allows you to individually trim all the different sound playbacks. you set the volume for the movie, and set trims up during trailers. the automation pulses the processor to activate the trims at the start of the trailers, and turn it off at the start of the movie.

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Brad Miller
Administrator

Posts: 17775
From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall)
Registered: May 99

posted 10-23-2004 05:09 PM

But then you're stuck with the lousy sound quality of the 6AD! [Razz]

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Peter Mork
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 181
From: Newton, MA, USA
Registered: Jun 2002

posted 10-23-2004 06:03 PM

Like a lot of people I have too much to do to jockey trailer levels. So they end up playing loud, and I end up fielding complaints about it.

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Mike Blakesley
Film God

Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99

posted 10-23-2004 06:44 PM

NATO just passed a new resolution recommending trailer levels go down to 84db. They say if it isn't done, they will recommend to members that they take steps to lower the volume manually.

I say that isn't good enough. Obviously they don't realize how busy a multiplex projectionist can be. How about recommending that the members toss the trailers in the garbage? (You and I know that nobody would really toss them, but the threat might get the studios attention at least.)

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Daryl C. W. O'Shea
Film God

Posts: 3977
From: Midland Ontario Canada (where Panavision & IMAX lenses come from)
Registered: Jun 2002

posted 10-23-2004 06:56 PM

Taking the whole 30 seconds or less per screen/feature to adjust the volume (1 minute if you're not in the booth and you move slow) has got to be faster than the time it takes to field complaints. If you've got too many screens to do it manually, you'd best get yourself some automation anyway, and ANY automation can be made to control the trailer/feature fader given just a little bit of thought.

quote: Jason Miller
personally, I like the DTS-6AD trimming feature that allows you to individually trim all the different sound playbacks. you set the volume for the movie, and set trims up during trailers. the automation pulses the processor to activate the trims at the start of the trailers, and turn it off at the start of the movie.

The trims suck big hairy ass since they're just that, trims. They should all be presets like a CP-500/650.

If you use the trims everything is thrown off when you get a feature that has a hot or cold mix such as xXx or say Sea Biscuit.

I use the 6ADs trailer trim feature up until xXx came out which I had to turn down by about 2.0 of the master fader. That left trailers nearly inaudible, whereas they were fine (matched to normal features) before.

Between the first showing and the second showing opening day I rewired the automation to trigger the remote fader to be used as the trailer fader instead. This allows it to behave like any Dolby processor, having a fixed fader setting for trailers.

I still use the non-sync trim out of necessity.

Using the built-in trailer trim is just inviting idiot staff to jack with the settings when they get features that are too loud or quiet, which IMHO is bad since there are too many settings in the 6AD that are accessible without the password that will mute the sound (or output test tones) without warning/confirmation.

quote:
But then you're stuck with the lousy sound quality of the 6AD!

Even though I agree that the 6AD's SR emulation also sucks ass, I've never found it too be an issue with 6ADs in mainstream houses since a non DTS print is rare and us Canadians are good little people who return discs with prints.

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Brad Miller
Administrator

Posts: 17775
From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall)
Registered: May 99

posted 10-23-2004 07:12 PM

Ah how quickly you forget it's not just the SR emulation that sucks ass, it's the "matrix decoding" too. (I put it in quotations because it is that pathetic.)

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