NGA

Webinar: Next Generation Audio & DVB

Posted on by Russell Trafford-Jones

Webinar Date: 18th March 2019
Time: 14:00 GMT / 15:00 CET

Object oriented audio is a relatively new audio technique which doesn’t simply send audio as one track or two, but it sends individual audio objects – simplistically we can think of these as audio samples – which also come with some position information.

With non-object-orientated audio, there is very little a speaker system can do to adjust the audio to match. It was either created for 8 speakers, 6, or 2 etc. So if you have a system that only has 4 speakers or they are in unusual places, it’s a compromise to it sound right.

Object oriented audio sends the position information for some of the audio which means that the decoder can work out how much of the sound to put in each speaker to best represent that sound for whatever room and speaker set-up it has.

AC-4 from Dolby is one technology which allows objects to be sent with the audio. It still supports conventional 5.1 style sound but can also contain up to 7 audio objects. AC-4 is one NGA technology adopted by DVB for DASH.

In this webinar, Simon Tuff from the BBC discusses what the Audio Video Coding (AVC) experts of DVB have been working on to introduce Next Generation Audio (NGA) to the DVB specifications over recent years. With the latest version of TS 101 154, DVB’s guidelines for the use of video and audio coding in broadcast and broadband applications, being published by ETSI, it seems like a great time to unpack the audio part of the tool box and share the capabilities of NGA via a webinar.

No registration needed. Click here to watch on the day.

Speaker

Simon Tuff Simon Tuff
Principal Technologist
BBC

Webinar: UHD & HDR

Posted on by Russell Trafford-Jones

Today at 14:00 GMT! 8th March
This Webinar covers Ultra-High Definition (UHD) Television and related technologies such as Higher Dynamic Range (HDR), Higher Frame Rates (HFR) and Next Generation Audio (NGA) in distribution.

What is the impact of Higher Frame Rates? What about Higher Dynamic Range? The German Institut für Rundfunktechnik (IRT) was involved in various subjective tests for HDR and HFR, and the IRT’s Dagmar Driesnack will cover those findings in her presentation.

Both features are also included in the latest DVB (Digital Video Broadcasting) receiver specification. Virginie Drugeon will present on DVB’s updated audio-visual coding specification, TS 101 154, which adds support for HDR, HFR and Next-Gen Audio.

Webinar Agenda

  1. Introduction
  2. UHD Features and Tests – Dagmar Driesnack
  3. Q&A
  4. UHD in DVB Distribution Standards – Virginie Drugeon
  5. Q&A
  6. What is next? – Interactive session with Dagmar Driesnack and Virginie Drugeon

Presenters

Dagmar_Driesnack_100x100.jpgDagmar Driesnack, IRT, EBU Strategic Programme for Video Systems Co-Chair

 

Virginie_Drugeon_100x100.jpgVirginie Drugeon, Panasonic, DVB TM-AVC Working Group Chair

 

On-Demand: DVB UHD HDR Webinar

Posted on by Russell Trafford-Jones


On-Demand Webinar

DVB recently updated its audio-visual coding specification, adding support for High Dynamic Range (HDR), Higher Frame Rates (HFR) and Next Generation Audio (NGA). You can now learn all about the new features in a webinar by the editor of this impressive specification, Virginie Drugeon (Panasonic) on January 18th, 2017. The webinar and Q&A time should take around 1 hour. You can send your questions by the Webex chat function during the webinar and questions will be answered in a few blocks during the webinar.

The specification update has been published as BlueBook A157 and will be passed to ETSI for formal publication as TS 101 154 v2.3.1.

High Dynamic Range (HDR) significantly increases the contrast ratio and results in pictures with more ‘sparkle’. The DVB HDR solution supports Hybrid Log Gamma (HLG) and Perceptual Quantizer (PQ) transfer functions. Furthermore, the new specification defines Higher Frame Rates (HFR), offering sharper images of moving objects by going beyond the current 50/60 frames per second. When it comes to audio, DVB has added the latest Next Generation Audio (NGA) schemes to provide immersive and personalized audio content using object- or scene-based coding.

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