There was a problem with Capes at 1000 this morning - audio with CA was fine but the video failed to play and was frozen at the start.
AFAIK on network BBC 1 and BBC 2, when there is a symbol with a live CA voice over, they actually play two copies of the symbol (in this case Capes) at the same time. One copy is what you see on-screen (but its audio is mute), the other copy is the one you hear (its audio is routed to a fader which the CA can dip to suit themselves).
That's interesting and certainly news to me. Why is that then?
There was a problem with Capes at 1000 this morning - audio with CA was fine but the video failed to play and was frozen at the start.
AFAIK on network BBC 1 and BBC 2, when there is a symbol with a live CA voice over, they actually play two copies of the symbol (in this case Capes) at the same time. One copy is what you see on-screen (but its audio is mute), the other copy is the one you hear (its audio is routed to a fader which the CA can dip to suit themselves).
That's interesting and certainly news to me. Why is that then?
I'll try to explain.
You may have noticed that on most TV channels when a voice over is made, the sound on the ident is dipped while the announcer is talking, but then returns to full volume once they have finished talking, before there is a hard cut in to the programme. Quite often the change from the ident music to the music of programme is quite jarring.
On network BBC 1 and BBC 2 the live announcer is in control of the music on the ident, and is able to dip it to whatever level they like and can let the ident music carry over on to top of the programme, fading it out as they see fit to achieve a less jarring, more polished effect.
To achieve this is quite tricky.
The presentation mixing desk has buttons on it which carry both vision and sound. In order to split the vision and sound (so that the announcer can dip the music on the ident without affecting the volume of the programme's sound) they play two copies of the ident as I described above.
The viewers see the vision of one copy of the ident, but hear the sound from the another copy (via the announcers booth).
The output of the announcers booth (with their voice and the music of the ident) is on a fader which the director of the channel opens just before the end of one programme, and then closes again just after the next programme has started.
Sometimes things go wrong with this system, as was mentioned by Revitt above.
There have been other occasions where the ident you see has played ok, but the one you hear has failed to play, so the ident goes out with no music, but you can still hear the announcer. Other problems can include seeing black, but hearing the anno... or seeing the ident, but hearing nothing all at (if the fader carrying the output of announcers' booth is not open.
In the Nations, things work differently as there is one person doing the work of both announcer and director. For example, in NI, there is only one copy of the ident playing. To achieve the same audio effect of being able to control the ident music, once the ident is playing the announcer/director presses a button which routes the sound from the mixing desk on to a fader which they can dip, but which does not effect the sound from the next programme. In Scotland and Wales they operate in a different manner I believe.
For example, in NI, there is only one copy of the ident playing. To achieve the same audio effect of being able to control the ident music, once the ident is playing the announcer/director presses a button which routes the sound from the mixing desk on to a fader which they can dip, but which does not effect the sound from the next programme. In Scotland and Wales they operate in a different manner I believe.
This was one of the first things I noticed when BBC Scotland and BBC Wales became available countrywide on DSAT a number of years ago.
The effort involved in being able to fade the ident sound down to an almost inaudible level when cutting/dissolving to a programme (without interfering with the sound of the programme) is well worth it in my view, and sounds so much more professional than having the ident sound going at full throttle when joining the programme. It sounds really naff having the ident soundtrack up full and then having it cut off abruptly when the programme is cut to.
However, what sounds even worse, is a situation where the ident sound can be altered independent of the programme, and is pushed back up to full volume at the end of the announcement, and then allowed to spill over in to the programme, still at full volume, and overpowering the first few seconds of the sound of the programme. Down to personal taste I guess, but I really hate that particular scenario.
