Nugen Audio has released the latest version of their loudness metering software VisLM. V2.8.3 brings 2 new features, one minor - a change to the Netflix stereo preset and one major - the introduction of Flags, which help to visualize Alerts and navigate through them. An added bonus is that whilst we were preparing the video tutorial showing the new features, we discovered an undocumented feature in VisLM from Nugen Audio that is really clever and will save you time and money and so we had to include that in the video tutorial as well!

Netflix Stereo Delivery Preset Updated To Match Changes In Netflix Delivery Spec

Let’s start with the minor change. This reflects Nugen Audio’s aim to update the delivery spec presets as the standards-setting body changes its delivery spec. Paul Tapper, CEO of NUGEN Audio told us…

“We take pride in providing our customers with solutions that make their projects and workflows more efficient, especially across growing platforms such as Netflix. We find that tailoring our products to the specific needs of audio professionals enables them to accomplish their full creative vision in a time- and results-oriented manner. We look forward to demonstrating these products at IBC and speaking with our European user-base to find out more about the ways in which our software helps them achieve their goals.”

In this case, v2.8.3 brings a change to the Stereo Netflix preset to reflect the changes in the Netflix Best Practices 1.1 and Delivery Standards v3.3 in which Netflix now specifies a maximum LRA of 18 instead of 20.

You can see more about this feature in our exclusive video at the top of this article.

Nugen Audio Add Flags To The Loudness History Window In VisLM

The major new feature that Nugen Audio has introduced in v2.8.3 is Flags. This allows users to navigate through True Peak and short-term/momentary loudness alerts, as well as add manual flags for other points of interest.

Nugen Audio has had Alerts for quite a while now but you would be forgiven for missing them as they are very easily missed because they showed up as little red dots in the Loudness History display. You can see 3 in the image below but there was no way of interrogating what the issue was until now.

In v2.8.3 Nugen Audio has added this new feature - Flags. The first thing I want to point out is that Flags do not replace Alerts, they enhance them and add 3 new things.

Firstly, they convert the little red dots that represent Alerts, which you can just about see in the ‘Alerts and No Flags’ image above, into vertical lines that you can see above in the ‘With Flags’ image.

Secondly, with Flags enabled, you can now navigate between each flag and a small dialog box appears in the bottom right hand corner of the the loudness history window, showing in red what the issues are at this point of the mix.

Now if like me you find the flag text box a little small then you would be right. I checked the wth Nugen Audio and it is a bug. This text box should follow the Zoom Level option in the Global tabs in Options. With the Zoom Level set to Auto in the Global tab in Options, although all the other text resizes as you resize the plugin window, currently the Flags Alert text doesn’t resize as it should. The team at Nugen have identified this bug and the code is being tested and will be released as part of a small maintenance update as soon as it is clear from the testing stage.

Whilst we are mentioning bugs, the eagle eyed amongst you might have noticed that the Gate G10 indicator isn’t lighting to show that the Gate has closed. This too is a bug and Nugen have fixed this one too and it too is in the testing stage to make sure the fix hasn’t caused any other issues before it to is released as a maintenance update.

Back to the Flags feature, the third part of the new Flags feature is that you can create your own flags. As you are playing through, just click on the Flag button and you will notice that an orange line appears at that point on the timeline in the Loudness History window. It’s good that they have chosen a different colour for manually placed flags from the flags which come from Alerts. The Flag navigation controls include orange ‘manual’ flags as well as red alert flags and notice that you get little arrows top and bottom of the Loudness History Window.

You can see more about this feature in our exclusive video at the top of this article.

The Undocumented Feature In VisLM That Will Save You Time And Money

In preparing for the video in this article, I opened a session that I had created to look at what happens to the dialog level when you reduce the loudness range and because as part of that research I had been using an AudioSuite version of VisLM and so the session had both AudioSuite and Real-time versions of the VisLM plug-in open.

I spotted a new yellow button below the loudness history display and assumed it was a new feature in VisLM 2.8.3, that wasn’t in the version of the manual I was working from. I reached out to Nugen Audio to ask what this button was all about, to be told it isn’t a new feature but it is a feature that isn’t in the manual. What is more is it is a very clever and useful feature that will save you time and money.

If you have ever used the feature in VisLM where you can ‘overdub’ a section of a mix and VisLM will recalculate the integrated Loudness and LRA, on the fly, to reflect the changes you are making to the mix when dropping in and fixing some patches, then you will know how much time it saves not having to reanalyse the full mix.

But for this feature to work, you effectively have to play the whole mix into the real-time VisLM plug-in so that it could capture the data on the mix, ready to be able to update it when you undertake the changes.

What if you haven’t done that? Maybe the mix has come from another facility that don’t use VisLM, it will take you the duration of the mix to load the data onto VisLM which on long form content could be an hour or more, to be ready to use the ‘on-the-fly’ loudness data update feature.

What if there was a way to harness the offline, non-real-time features of AudioSuite plug-ins to complete this analysis in double quick time? Well it turns out that this undocumented feature does just this.

You can analyse the full mix file using the AudioSuite version of VisLM. The you will see the new yellow button light up telling you that the plugin has data ready to export. When you click on that button in the AudioSuite plug-in a corresponding Import button appears in the real-time plugin. When you click on the Import button, the real-time plugin asks you to play the audio from the timeline, to identify where the clip is on the timeline and once the blue progress bar has filled up, you can stop playing the audio and the real-time plugin will load the loudness analytics from the AudioSuite plugin and you are ready to go.

In the example I show in the video, at the top of this article, I have a 57 minute mix that takes just 45 seconds to analyse in the AudioSuite plugin saving just short of an hour to get to the same point with just the real-time plug-in. Clever or what?