Live From MLB All-Star 2024: With New Technologies, Audio Production Gets Complicated Ad-integration tech, RFID-enabled concessions make it interesting for the FOX Sports team By Dan Daley, Audio Editor Tuesday, July 16, 2024 - 10:25 am
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FOX Sports' process to produce the audio for tonight's MLB All-Star Game may be lengthy and opaque to viewers, but it's absolutely critical to their fully enjoying the game. And synchronizing the familiar sound effects - bat cracks, catcher's-mitt pops - has become complicated as the video has become increasingly complex, thanks to new and diverse technologies.
Having mixed plenty of postseason games at Globe Life Field in Arlington, TX, FOX Sports Senior Mixer/Audio Supervisor Joe Carpenter is intimately familiar with the venue, but, he says, there's still a process he needs to navigate.
Synchronizing Sound and Video Audio sources vary from stadium to stadium, but the audio team will receive a basic FX feed consisting of at least bat cracks, crowd sound, and usually a first-base microphone. Then starts a process that's technically sophisticated but also depends heavily on the human eye and ear.
FOX Sports' Joe Carpenter aboard Game Creek Encore
The challenge is to synchronize those effects feeds with the video in the production truck. That will vary, Carpenter says, based on the types of equipment, such as converters and encoders, used in each production environment.
The challenge for [the audio team], he explains, is that you wait until the control room times out all the video and then you've got to time out your audio with each source. There are a number of things in the [signal] chain that can cause audio to go out of sync.
The critical harmonization of sound and picture extends to each camera-mounted microphone, which must be properly timed with the picture coming from replays. Sometimes, Carpenter is well into a first inning before everything is fully aligned.
It might take me four or five pitches to get the bat cracks lined up in time, he says. I'm pretty good at it, but they throw the first pitch of the game, and you're like, here we go; let's see how close I am.
Carpenter, who is working with FOX Sports' Home Run Production (HRP) workflow, ascribes the complicated sync environment to new video technologies. For example, Brand Brigade, an advertising-technology company specializing in virtual advertising and product placement, integrates virtual messages into more than 4,000 sports events annually, including MLB games. The integration process takes milliseconds, but that's enough to skew the synchronization between highly transient audio, such as a bat crack, and fast-moving video.
Every play in baseball starts with that Camera 4 shot from behind the pitcher, which is on a Brand Brigade delay, he points out. Other cameras have augmented reality built into them doing banners and field overlays, so I'm going to have that delay in there no matter what. I have to compensate for that, and it can get tricky.
Other video elements that can affect audio sync include RF cameras, in which any changes to their telemetry can impact timing with sound.
That's constantly in your mind, Carpenter points out. You might have everything set, and then the RF guys might not remember to tell the audio guys that they tweaked the telemetry, and that will throw it off a little bit. I'm not a paranoid guy who checks everything every 10 seconds, but it's certainly in the back of your mind to look at things as they are used, to make sure that they're still in the same [temporal] realm that you think they are.
Carpenter, working at a Calrec Apollo console in Game Creek Encore, will be joined on the show by submixer Joel Groeblinghoff and A2s Fred Ferris, setting up the field mics, and Mike Rew, working the crowd mics and the booth audio.
Analog Abounds at Globe Life Field Some elements of the All-Star Game, Carpenter has found, have actually been beneficial. For example, Globe Life Field's largely analog infrastructure has plenty of copper wire to go along with the network cabling. For the Home Run Derby and other events in the festivities leading up to the game, instead of seeking room on the various digital networks he will eventually use, he used the analog conduits to dial in the events' sounds, such as the crowd microphones.
Plus, there's a certain amount of warmth that the analog signal path has, which is nice, too; maybe it's subconscious, but there's something about [analog], says Carpenter, an unabashed Grateful Dead/Jerry Garcia fan. I know [FOX Sports lead play-by-play announcer] Joe Davis prefers to listen to analog.
And, he continues, there aren't infinite amounts of room to put your gear and your switches and your [Calrec] Hydra network in ahead of time. We just plug into the existing analog so that we can set it up and have it ready. It's one less thing we have to wait to set up.
Chatty Ballplayers, Dynamic Line-Ups Viewers can expect to hear some banter between players on the field and talent in the booth. Carpenter says that, although he's always ready and willing to have a player wire up, the frequent substitutions of an All-Star Game mean that individual ballplayers may be on the field for only an inning, sometimes even less. At least a few catchers, who tend to anchor the dynamic line-ups of All-Star Games, will be wearing a lav mic and IFB earpiece.
But there will be plenty of other sources of sound. For instance, a triangle of lavaliers will be embedded in the ground around the rubber of the pitcher's mound, creating a small L-C-R array, which will fit nicely into the broadcast's 5.1-surround format. Two semi-buried lavs in front of the mound will pick up
