LAUSR

The National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) approached Dolby Laboratories in early 2017 to explore what value immersive audio might bring to the NHRA’s television broadcasts. After site visits, audio captures, video production analysis, and production tests, a hybrid production strategy leveraging conventional live and cinematic post-production methodologies using both the static placement of objects and the dynamic panning of audio objects in the immersive space and in realtime was employed. This approach took advantage of the relatively predictable nature of each NHRA drag race to enable the use of live, dynamically panned audio objects combined with statically panned objects like ambience and crowd paired with substantial use of audio scene changes. This hybrid live/post approach to the creation of live Dolby Atmos immersive audio experiences could be used as a model for other sports and exposes opportunities for a measure of automated audio production control through the capture and use of telemetry data from spider-cams, jib-cams, and the participants themselves.