Dolby AC-4 is a Next Generation Audio (NGA) codec system, using object-based encoding that builds upon the Dolby Atmos experience made possible with Dolby Digital Plus to deliver new enhanced experiences. You can find out more about AC-4 from our AC-4 FAQ.

 

One key feature for AC-4 is the ability to have multiple different presentations that consist of the same audio objects but mixed with different levels of relative gain. This is a great opportunity for sports productions for example to efficiently deliver with an option to boost the dialogue level and turn down the ambience, or even to provide an immersive in-stadium experience with no TV commentator.

 

The best experience for this until now was only possible where original production was able to deliver commentary and ambience as separate tracks all the way to the headend. With the new Dialogue Separation Tool (DST) component in our AC-4 encoder we can take any pre-mixed content, live or archive content and deliver this same enhanced user feature set.

 

This new DST feature allows the best in efficient delivery and makes it easy for linear services to improve accessibility and add some flexibility into the audio experiences delivered to end users.

 

Gain levels can be configured at the headend to deliver the experience customised to the service providers preferences.

 

Applicable to both online and broadcast deliveries the encoder features are made available through Audio/Video encoding vendors through Dolby Professional Audio Transcoder SDK.