CD mastering – the most seasoned digital audio discipline – has turned into a loudness war rather than a quest for getting decent audio quality out of a potentially well-sounding media. Maximum loudness is also becoming a goal in itself in new movies, so that film operators are having to turn down the replay level to avoid complaints from the audience.

In general, when audio normalization is based on peak-level detection, material with narrow dynamic range ends up the loudest. CD production not only relies on a peak-level measure (i.e. measurement scheme), it relies on a particularly bad and simplistic one, allowing massive amounts of distortion to be generated downstream of the studio in data-reduction systems and consumer equipment.

The purpose of this article is to justify and recommend more fitting ways of measuring and controlling the audio level in digital broadcasting than looking at isolated samples or quasi-peak levels. The new ITU-R BS.1770 standard, specifying long-term loudness and peak-level detection, is evaluated and a centre of gravity approach to loudness control is suggested. Metadata associated with Dolby AC3 is shown to be insufficient at tackling the level and distortion issues across broadcast platforms, while legitimate control practices may be derived more cheaply and without ambiguity using statistical descriptors and real-time metering derived from BS.1770.

For the past two decades, the PDA has gone through a fast and turbulent period of development. It started off in 1984 as a small handheld computer for storing addresses and phone numbers, taking notes and keeping track of daily appointments. Nowadays there are extensive operating systems and features available for PDAs. With their processing capacity and storage space constantly expanding, the modern PDA offers a lot of possibilities for the broadcasting world.

Transforming a PDA or Smartphone into a high-quality portable MPEG recorder is the next logical step to take. The use of a PDA with built-in wireless communication can provide an “all-in-one” solution, resulting in more creative broadcasting and a more efficient way of working. It can also be shown that the use of this PDA technology for newsgathering can bring down the broadcasting costs and increase the amount of material which makes it to air.

In our society, which is increasingly polarized by tense competition, Digital Rights Management (DRM) is seen as either the saviour of businesses trying to survive in the digital age ... or as the scourge of basic human rights. But it should not have to be like that.

This article describes the work of the Digital Media Project (DMP) which is developing an industry-agnostic and scalable DRM standard that can at least reduce the most blatant impositions of DRM. As part of the effort, the DMP is also providing an Open Source Software implementation of the standard that can be exploited to accelerate the deployment of interoperable DRM solutions and to test how Traditional Rights and Usages can be mapped to the digital space for the benefit of end users and entrepreneurs alike.

Tapeless workflows are now the goal of many broadcasters but the road to “tapelessness” is not always smooth and straight. Some of the biggest obstacles are cultural rather than practical. However the benefits of ending the battle for the master tape are well worth having. S4C has embarked on a programme of editing, creating and transmitting it’s content in a totally file-based environment and is beginning to see the benefits of this way of working.

This article explains our rationale and shows the way in which the various systems integrate.