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Streaming services' obnoxiously loud ads become illegal on July 1 in California

arstechnica.com

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Re: Streaming services' obnoxiously loud ads become illegal on July 1 in California

#81

Post by dpark »

dylan604 wrote: post #71
kube-system wrote: post #49

> [...] opposed the bill. The groups argued that “many” streaming services were already trying to manage the “loudness of advertisements that come from server-side ad insertion that may be inconsistent with the loudness of the programs,” Well, stop "trying" and fix it already. It's your own damn system.

but it's not. it's right there in what you quoted. the louder ads are coming from an ad provider. ad providers are the problem. loudness doesn't have a standard. different streamers want different loudness settings. ad platforms would have to have multiple audio streams limited to the different loudness settings. it's not a hard problem in the least, but one of adding to the complexity of content management. or the s…

> loudness doesn't have a standard

It literally does. Audio players were implementing ReplayGain support 25 years ago.

> ad platforms would have to have multiple audio streams limited to the different loudness settings

This is trivial to solve. You have a standardized volume and a scale factor for each service. Or you use ReplayGain or similar for the same.

> it's not a hard problem in the least

No, it’s really not.

Re: Streaming services' obnoxiously loud ads become illegal on July 1 in California

#82

Post by busymom0 »

idolofdust wrote: post #69
cmovq wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a technical reason why apple doesn’t allow HDR to be selectively turned off? I’m surprised this is still not at least an accessibility option.

Go to the accessibility disply settings, turn on white point, then set it to the lowest percentage you can. HDR is no more.

Can you explain what exactly that setting goes? If I set it to 0, it makes my screen brighter. What value should I use?

Re: Streaming services' obnoxiously loud ads become illegal on July 1 in California

#83

Post by budoso »

zimpenfish wrote: post #40

Instagram does something similar - they have random ads in HDR which iOS will display at obnoxious brightness. Just what you want as you scroll by trying to find someone you actually follow.

FYI You can get stop this by enabling low power mode.

Re: Streaming services' obnoxiously loud ads become illegal on July 1 in California

#84

Post by qwerpy »

rolph wrote: post #62
distances wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or use an ad blocker.

or use a different frontend.

This is a good solution. I have invidious running on my home server, and my phone is permanently WireGuard’d to my home network. Front end is completely configurable. No ads, no suggested videos, no comments. There’s even a download video button.

Re: Streaming services' obnoxiously loud ads become illegal on July 1 in California

#85

Post by gloryjulio »

dylan604 wrote: post #71
kube-system wrote: post #49

> [...] opposed the bill. The groups argued that “many” streaming services were already trying to manage the “loudness of advertisements that come from server-side ad insertion that may be inconsistent with the loudness of the programs,” Well, stop "trying" and fix it already. It's your own damn system.

but it's not. it's right there in what you quoted. the louder ads are coming from an ad provider. ad providers are the problem. loudness doesn't have a standard. different streamers want different loudness settings. ad platforms would have to have multiple audio streams limited to the different loudness settings. it's not a hard problem in the least, but one of adding to the complexity of content management. or the s…

We can have a volume normalization ceiling function in the final pass of video data compression stream for the ads injection section. The volume normalization variable can be chosen by the stream er so that the ads' volume would be clamped below the maximum of the streamed content volume.

Conceptually I don't see how hard it is for the stream provider to implement this. Whether they want to implement is another story.

Re: Streaming services' obnoxiously loud ads become illegal on July 1 in California

#86

Post by dylan604 »

stevemk14ebr wrote: post #77
dylan604 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but it's not. it's right there in what you quoted. the louder ads are coming from an ad provider. ad providers are the problem. loudness doesn't have a standard. different streamers want different loudness settings. ad platforms would have to have multiple audio streams limited to the different loudness settings. it's not a hard problem in the least, but one of adding to the complexity of content management. or the s…

You can do volume normalization, it's a thing. Lets not pretend this is some black magic.

what about anything I said suggested this is black magic? I specifically talked about the steps to properly adjust the loudness.

Re: Streaming services' obnoxiously loud ads become illegal on July 1 in California

#87

Post by linzhangrun »

In China, problems like this are usually solved through departmental internal documents, or just through officials directly, privately and orally command.

Passing legislation for this kind of thing is almost impossible. This is the so-called "rule by man".

It is quite an interesting thing to see a country across the ocean solving this kind of problem through law.

Re: Streaming services' obnoxiously loud ads become illegal on July 1 in California

#88

Post by kube-system »

knollimar wrote: post #63
Vinnl wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understood why we're OK with placing billboards, which by definition try their best to get you to look at them, next to the road, which we're supposed to look at.

They should be at stoplights not on highways

Intersections are the most dangerous parts of highways, it is even more critical to be paying attention there.

Re: Streaming services' obnoxiously loud ads become illegal on July 1 in California

#89

Post by hurfdurf »

dylan604 wrote: post #71
kube-system wrote: post #49

> [...] opposed the bill. The groups argued that “many” streaming services were already trying to manage the “loudness of advertisements that come from server-side ad insertion that may be inconsistent with the loudness of the programs,” Well, stop "trying" and fix it already. It's your own damn system.

but it's not. it's right there in what you quoted. the louder ads are coming from an ad provider. ad providers are the problem. loudness doesn't have a standard. different streamers want different loudness settings. ad platforms would have to have multiple audio streams limited to the different loudness settings. it's not a hard problem in the least, but one of adding to the complexity of content management. or the s…

>loudness doesn't have a standard

If you can't create, copy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBU_R_128

Re: Streaming services' obnoxiously loud ads become illegal on July 1 in California

#90

Post by topranks »

dpark wrote: post #81
dylan604 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but it's not. it's right there in what you quoted. the louder ads are coming from an ad provider. ad providers are the problem. loudness doesn't have a standard. different streamers want different loudness settings. ad platforms would have to have multiple audio streams limited to the different loudness settings. it's not a hard problem in the least, but one of adding to the complexity of content management. or the s…

> loudness doesn't have a standard It literally does. Audio players were implementing ReplayGain support 25 years ago. > ad platforms would have to have multiple audio streams limited to the different loudness settings This is trivial to solve. You have a standardized volume and a scale factor for each service. Or you use ReplayGain or similar for the same. > it's not a hard problem in the least No, it’s really not.

Replaygain works reasonably well for modern music, as do the LUFS units.

The problem with video content is there can be extended very quiet parts. If you try to bring the “average” volume of an ad to the same “average” volume as the last 30 minutes of a drama it could end up being insanely low. The average level of the drama being low due to long quiet parts.

Not always the case but this problem isn’t as simple as it might seem.

My main hope is that this doesn’t kick off a “loudness war” for tv/movie content on streaming in an effort to get its average volume up as high as the ads.

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