I really should know the answer to this and I've done a few searches but I don't have a definitive answer...

I have a piece of music mastered at 44.1Khz and 24 bit, so I'm wandering whether when providing music to a pro-video editor (Avid), if they can and do use 24 bit or 16? I shan't provide a 48Khz up-sampled version as they can do this, but I do have the choice of dithering down to 16 bit on their behalf, or if the broadcast requirements suit 24 bit then I'd obviously rather leave it.

Anyway, I fear I've opened the door wide here... Thanks in advance.

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Excess makes the heart grow fonder

Send the best you've got, unless they've specifically asked for something else.

Bit-depth isn't really "resolution". But that's another can of worms :-)

Thanks - yes, you're probably right.

Out of curiosity, what is the bit-depth and sampling rate of a finished film? Is there a resource that explains output formats? For example, cinema quality/DVD/Blu-Ray/Digital TV etc...

(apologies for the can of worms...!)

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Excess makes the heart grow fonder

Edited by siderealxxx (17/04/12 01:00 PM)

Quote siderealxxx:

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Out of curiosity, what is the bit-depth and sampling rate of a finished film? Is there a resource that explains output formats? For example, cinema quality/DVD/Blu-Ray/Digital TV etc...

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Doubtless there are systems that pride themselves on 192KHz zillion-bit playback quality.

Whether this makes any audible difference at release-print stage is another matter :-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_rate#Audio

Quote:

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The standard audio sampling rate used by professional digital video equipment such as tape recorders, video servers, vision mixers and so on. This rate was chosen because it could deliver a 22 kHz frequency response and work with 29.97 frames per second NTSC video - as well as 25 frame/s, 30 frame/s and 24 frame/s systems. With 29.97 frame/s systems it is necessary to handle 1601.6 audio samples per frame delivering an integer number of audio samples only every fifth video frame.[11] Also used for sound with consumer video formats like DV, digital TV, DVD, and films. The professional Serial Digital Interface (SDI) and High-definition Serial Digital Interface (HD-SDI) used to connect broadcast television equipment together uses this audio sampling frequency. Much professional audio gear uses (or is able to select) 48 kHz sampling, including mixers, EQs, compressors, reverb, crossovers and recording devices such as DAT.

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If they require a 48kHz master (it is likely they are operating at 48kHz) just ask your mastering engineer to provide a 24/48kHz version, this avoids the SRC in AVID or FCP which is unlikely to be as good as your mastering engineers SRC.

cheers

SafeandSound Mastering
music mastering

Video has to be edited at 48kHz (there are a couple of pull-up/down rates for specialist things but they can be ignored here). 44.1 isn't acceptable... But you know all that. Film is also done entirely at 48k. None of the audiophoolery 192 nonsense!

Word length is more variable. All systems can use 16 bit. Many will do 20, and a lot will do 24. Pretty much all the current software based editors will handle 24 bit, but some older broadcast infrastructures restrict to 20 bit.

Fim distribution and DVD/blu ray etc generally do 24 bit, but this is mangled through data reduction (dts, ac3 etc)!

Hugh

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Technical Editor, Sound On Sound