Guess where the following movie scene might happen:
When you sit on a leather couch chair at 45 degrees back, surrounded by a closed and spacious space, the screen in front of you is playing a large picture of a helicopter taking off and rescue, and your ears synchronously hear the propeller ringing in front of you until you disappear.
The answer is – in the car!
Immersive sound effects, spacious screens, confined spaces, comfortable seating... These movie-watching experiences, comparable to those in the VIP hall of the theater, can be achieved by opening "iQiyi" in the car.
Recently, iQIYI announced that it will land the "iQIYI Sound Effects" 5.1-channel surround sound on the NIO ET7, achieving an immersive viewing experience in the in-car scene for the first time.
The sound "moves"
From the auditorium to the car cockpit, how is the cinema-level experience "replicated"?
I believe that everyone has the same feeling: compared to watching movies at home, the experience of watching movies in theaters is more immersive.
That's because not only is there a large screen in the theater that brings a wide visual enjoyment, but also a stereoscopic surround sound effect that immerses people in it.
Star Wars director George Lucas once mentioned that 50% of the movie-going experience comes from sound.
Traditionally, the theater is surrounded and toped by countless independent speakers, and this "multi-speaker + multi-channel" configuration allows the audience to quickly enter the wonderful world of the film and deeply feel the sound of raindrops falling on the eaves and the roar of the wind.
Therefore, in order to experience the "cinema-level" effect in the car, the construction of the sound environment is definitely an important step.
What exactly is the channel that enables an immersive experience? The sound channel refers to the independent audio signal collected or played back in different spatial positions when the sound is recorded or played, and the number of channels is the number of sound sources during sound recording or the corresponding number of speakers during playback. Generally speaking, channels can be divided into mono, 2.0 two-channel stereo, 5.1 channels, 7.1 channels, etc.
Therefore, the more channels that can be played in a film and television content, the richer the details of the sound part and the more distinct the layering, so as to achieve an immersive audio-visual experience.
However, due to technical constraints and other factors in the past, most cars only supported traditional 2.0 two-channel sound.
It can be simply understood that a movie has more than 100 different sounds such as fighting sounds, bullet sounds, roars, character dialogue, etc., but in the end these sounds only have left and right two channel outputs.
This leads to the fact that when we watch the movie in the car, the sound has no orientation and three-dimensional sense.
However, in a 5.1 channel system, the sound can have a center channel, a front left and right channel, a rear left and right surround channel, and a 0.1 subwoofer channel.
In this process, there is also a unique division of labor between different channels
● Central channel: responsible for playing character dialogue;
● Front left and right channels: responsible for playing both sides of the screen, as well as some sounds outside the screen;
● Rear left and right surround channels: responsible for background music playback, as well as the creation of the entire sound field;
● 0.1 subwoofer channel: can produce a frequency range of 20 ~ 120Hz superwoofer, including the machine roar, space cracking and other bass we hear.
In this orderly division of labor, the sound can be released from left, center, right, left, right and other directions.
Where each sound comes from in the car and what route it runs along after it is emitted, these are all planned in advance by the 5.1 sound effect.
The separation and layering of the sound is not only stronger, but also makes people feel like they are on the spot.
Unfortunately, because the phone or headphones used daily are mainly 2.0 channels. Therefore, we can't directly listen to the audio to let everyone feel the immersive effect of 5.1 channels in the car. But it doesn't matter, everyone can feel these scenes together:
I think everyone has seen "Fast and Furious".
In the film, supercars speed by, giving us the most exciting racing scene on the screen so far.
If you experience the traditional 2.0-channel effect in the car, it is nothing more than the stereo sound of many sports cars playing.
But what if you open iQiyi to watch under 5.1 channels?
With the blessing of iQIYI's sound effect technology, you can feel the sports cars speeding by in different positions around you, and the roar of the car moves from "rear" to "front", as if you have also played drift.
For another example, in the drama "Wind Rises Luoyang", the super-burning fight scene of the Shendu Squad is thrilling and exciting.
If under the traditional 2.0 effect, this famous scene experience is afraid to be greatly reduced. Because, no matter where Gao Bingzhan and Wu Siyue's light skills flew, the car could only hear the sound of fighting coming from the same position.
But in the 5.1 sound performance, you will hear the tense, fast-paced BGM with the sword before and after the collision, the sharp arrow "brush" around you, the light footsteps moving back and forth around.
With the upgrading of automotive intelligent cockpit software and hardware, some models have more than 20 speakers with speaker arrangements, and support 5.1 channels under the vehicle networking system and even some models can support 7.1 channel configurations.
This creates new possibilities for upgrading the viewing experience: that is, closing the doors and enclosing the space inside the car is a private cinema.
It is worth mentioning that the main channel in some models will also use a 3-way speaker with a combination of high, medium and bass units. These advanced crossover sounds allow the treble in the film to be more extended and penetrating, the midrange to be thicker, and the bass to dive deeper.
Combined with the car's large screen, tranquility, as well as mood lights, comfortable seats, etc., it directly creates a theater VIP hall effect.
Powered by AI algorithms
If the sound is solved, can the 5.1 effect be fully realized? Of course not. In addition to the car hardware and software conditions to meet, the "content + technology" of the video platform must also keep up.
Although now some film and television works are equipped with the original 5.1 channel. However, at present, there are still a large number of film and television content that is the original 2.0-channel medium. Therefore, in order to achieve the 5.1 effect in the car, there must be a step 2.0 to 5.1 upgrade conversion process.
However, the film and television content library to be transformed has a large volume, not to mention, but also to classify the sound of each film into 5.1 channels, and then recombine the output. This may sound like an unfinished task.
Relying on the "iQIYI Sound Effect" AI audio enhancement algorithm technology, iQIYI can realize the conversion processing from 2.0 content medium to 5.1 channels at the production end, without being limited by the complexity and real-time nature of decoding, and the technology upgrade is convenient and does not affect the decoding end. To put it bluntly, through the algorithm, the machine can accurately identify a variety of sounds in the film and deliver them to the corresponding channel.
At this time, the AI algorithm is like a conductor, redefining the sound size, distance, displacement, etc. of the film, and completes the 2.0 to 5.1 conversion in the cloud, and does not rely on the CPU power in the car.
After completing this step, iQIYI then decodes and transmits the "stream" with 5.1 sound effects through the car machine system and distributes it to the speakers in the car.
It is worth mentioning that in this process, there is also a need for a "tuning" process to ensure that the 5.1-channel sound effect matches the spatial structure of the car.
At this point, it can be said that iQiyi's 5.1 channel content is officially "on the car".
It is reported that in the future, iQIYI will continue to cooperate with more car companies to continue to land surround sound effects such as 5.1 and atmos in the cockpit scene.
Source: iQIYI Industry Express
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