HD Dittocam Sync Fix in Works

RUSH: Let me take time-out here from the content portion of the program to address a customer complaint. We try to take these on head on. Sometimes they get so voluminous we cannot answer them all in e-mail. Many of you are writing with mild-mannered and sometimes strongly worded complaints about the lack of sync between voice and video on our new HD Dittocam feed. There are abundantly clear technological reasons for this. We are in the midst of a fix. Now, what we’re going to have to do is we’re going to have to set up three external mixers to go along with the one built-in internal mixer, and what will happen is the audio of this program will be directly fed from a console in Florida up to the B console in New York where we will set up a mix-minus that does not include the talk-back.

Then what’s going to happen, my audio will be mixed with the B mix-minus feed from New York and we’re going to run the combination of those two things to the HD Dittocam. What will happen then is that the audio from me will feed to the camera, the video, with no delay. Now, there is going to be a price to pay for this. I mean, not a financial price. But this will mean that the commercials and the sound bites will be delayed by just the same split second that you see the delay now between what I say and what you see me say it on the Dittocam. I don’t think you’re going to notice that because nobody will be actually speaking the recorded commercials, the spots, or the sound bites. Because it’s just my lips that you are looking at. Now, we’re going to have this done by tomorrow’s show. (interruption) I’m dead certain this is gonna work.

We’ve been looking at every option we can, and this is the fastest, it’s the most efficient — and, frankly, it’s the option that makes the most sense. (interruption) Why should I go through it? People aren’t going to understand anyway, Snerdley. Why should I go through it again? I just wanted to explain to them what we’re going to have to do here to… (interruption) Okay! We’re going to have to set up another mixer. We’ve got mixer A, mixer B. We gotta go mixer C here in the studio. We’re going to feed my audio directly from the console in Florida to the console to the B console in New York, and we’re going to set up a mix-minus at that point that does not include the talk-back, which is key. If you leave the talk-back in the circuitry then everything goes out the window. If you leave the talk-back in, none of this will work.

So we’d have to exclude the talk-back. After we’ve done all that, we are going to mix me — my audio — and the mix-minus New York feed from console B, coming from mixer C, and we’re going to run that completed circuit to the HD Dittocam — and there will thus be no delay (or no lack of sync as it appears) between my lips (what I say) and the way people see it on the HD Dittocam. Believe me, we’ve looked at a number of different ways including ripping it all out and starting all over. We looked at suing the manufacturer, everything. We thought about calling a Democrat tort lawyer but we figured: Why go to all that problem? So that’s the fix and we hope to have that in by tomorrow. See, we deal with customer service complaints here out in the open, up front, and we give you the explanation of how we’re going to deal with it. You won’t find that anywhere else.