What is as important for a TV channel as the picture quality? That is right, it is sound – its quality and level. An audio too loud can distract TV viewers away from your TV channel. So following one of our customer, having issue with sound level of its video files, we developed, tested and implemented a great and very practical solution, that become part of our standard offer in any DV Play versions. While actually the sound level is something that is the responsibility of content creators, we know that many small/medium TV stations often use videos coming from different sources and different people, and is quite possible that a video that is too loud to be run on-air. And this to stay unnoticed for many next run of that video.
The sound solution we developed is called DV Play Auto volume and it works on 3 stages, you can set to use 1 or 2 or 3:
Stage 1. Measure all the time sound level and issue events for too loud audio, which video file it is, and at which time exactly it is. You can navigate to the issue with a single click, listen the video and ensure on your own that the sound is too loud.
Stage 2. Once a loud file is detected, you have two options – to re-encode the video with reduced sound level and replace it into playout, or to use DV Play feature to set volume (gain) and set to play this file with for example -5dB. Easy and efficient, you need just once to set the level for the video.
Stage 3. To set DV Play to make auto adjustment of the sound level instead of you. Meaning, when a too loud video is detected, it is measured that for example picks go to -3 dB, you set a target of maxumum allowed -6 dB and DV Play auto set -3 dB of the video file. This is done even while the video is ON-AIR, so it broadcasts just 2-3 seconds with louder sound.
This is a working, very practical solution in real use. That solution reduces all the time the gain of videos detected as too loud, therefore does not cause distortions.
Some TV channels have good quality check procedures, but even for them, the feature will be in a great use. Because it will give them a notification, is somehow a file skipped quality standard and goes too loud on-air.
Since 2021 DV Play (like many other playouts) has implemented volume normalization based on FFmpeg functions. So far (2026), we have found that it is not in practical use; it removes peaks, but also significantly changes sound quality in bad direction. That normalization is more of a marketing story than a practical use. Some other customers implement normalizations via dedicated hardware device, but it is a very expensive device (costs several thousand EUR). It is typically for SDI output only, while many customers use direct IP outputs.
DV Play and ASP development really never stop. Every month, driven by customers’ requests, we add new features, supplement current or become more experienced in support. There are more new features in this DV Play 7.86 release, but more on this in the next news. When we find a time for it 🙂
DV Playout is truly a leader in efficiency and is a solution N1 for people who value their time. Our playout is designed for maximum efficiency, multichannel and provides true 24/7 reliability in different user cases, including running up to 12 channels on a single server The deep integration between DV Play (playout) and Ads Schedule Pro (traffic) gives you the option to run and create playlists for more than 20-30 channels with 2 men only.
