Hi, I recently completed production of an eight minute film score. The final destination is DVD-Video. I need to know what levels the audio should be mastered to play at. The answer seems obvious but I don't want to make any assumptions, can't make a mistake and have become a little bit paranoid. My job is simply the audio so I should hand off a 16bit, 44100 digital master with no peaks above 0.0dbfs and the video production house can adjust to suit the final destination format; broadcast, analog, digital, whatever. The problem is, the video production house never asked the client what the destination is but assumed it is analog and for broadcast. The client contacted me and stated that they had to turn their home stereo playback volume up all the way. And even then it wasn't loud enough. Incidentally, the client is happy with my master. They stated that it sounds "great" on their home stereo. There is a great dynamic range between the peaks and valleys which is exactly appropriate for this sound track. Reguardless, my knee jerk response was to suggest making up some of the volume by raising the average level through remastering or remixing and mastering. However, this is a mistake because the existing product is fine. My conclusion is, I need to provide the video house with a product that they will not adjust in any way. I don't know how this production house merges audio and video so I can provide a test tone for them to calibrate with. Of course I'd prefer they simply dran-n-drop my file into an audio track but maybe it's just not done that way. I assume audio for DVD-Video should be mastered with no peaks above 0.0dbfs, exactly like any other digital audio. Correct? Well, I decided to relay the long version of the story because I'm certain that someone else here will eventually share my joy. :) Until this is resolved, I will continue; just living in a cave, cleaning the guns for jah, watchin' clouds rollin' by and watchin' fishes jumpin' high. ron __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - 50x more storage than other providers! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
