Why does audio in a music video differ from audio in the song's spotify release?

[heavenorlasvegas]

I was wondering about this. Especially in older records.

pull up for instance, billy idol's rebel yell on youtube, the official video. Then proceed to access the same song on spotify. It's a different mix. This is the same for alot of 70's and 80's records.

anyone like to take a stab at the reason behind this?

[MarkOne]

A lot of records had (have?) radio edits, to remain comfortably within the sub-3 minute timescale dictated by many broadcasters (particularly FM radio in the USA). Spotify and its ilk have no such restrictions, so naturally labels upload the full release version of the song.

Often the videos were shot for the radio edit. I suspect, because MTV also had specific time limits too.

These may not be the only reasons, but that’s my guess.

[Drew Stephenson]

You might also be hearing the effect of a mix/master being uploaded to one platform that was intended for vinyl whilst another platform has a mix/master intended for CD.

[Wonks]

As videos from the 80s would certainly been expected to have been played back on TVs with limited frequency response, especially on the bass, the mix for video would have been similar to the radio mix to make sure it sounded good without much bass, as opposed to the full range CD/vinyl mix. And there would often (in the US at least) have been different mixes for AM and FM radio.

Videos often had added intro and end scenes with talking and action sounds.

[James Perrett]

Early 80s video mixes were mono because stereo TV hadn't been invented back then. By the mid 80s stereo was starting to appear but I wouldn't be surprised to find that the mixes were mastered differently for video. Certainly the original Rebel Yell video is very crudely compressed compared to the more recent remaster which seems to have had some more sophisticated compression applied to bring out the ambience and background detail.

I'm not sure that it is a different mix - just different processing at the mastering stage.

[ceejay]

Early 80s video mixes were mono because stereo TV hadn't been invented back then.

... we had stereo TV here in Oz from 1982 ... not particularly successful however ...

[Rich Hanson]

It certainly wasn't uncommon to have a different mix or edit on the video, releases by ZTT were often different to any of the 7" or 12" versions for example.

As to why? Who knows!

[Martin Walker]

It certainly wasn't uncommon to have a different mix or edit on the video, releases by ZTT were often different to any of the 7" or 12" versions for example.

As to why? Who knows!

I actually added a few seconds of fade-in sound effect on one of my videos, because visually this worked better than the instant start of the album track.

I now prefer the video version, which has taught me that thinking visually can sometimes help improve the audio

[Wonks]

I actually added a few seconds of fade-in sound effect on one of my videos, because visually this worked better than the instant start of the album track.

That "Pole Dancing with Walker" is a classic! How you managed to cling on to the pole whilst covered in baby oil I'll never know!

[Martin Walker]

The secret is only to cover your body with baby oil, but not let it get on your hands

[heavenorlasvegas]

Anyone else?

what might be making a songs video release sound different than the album release?

What gear would the video mix have passed through that the album release did not?

Roger

[MarkOne]

The Kinks 1970 hit Lola has a different mix specifically because of the BBC.

They released the song and then flew off to tour the USA to promote the Lola Versus Powerman album.

While on tour they discovered that the BBC had banned the single from air play due to the line “ Where you drink champagne and it tastes just like Coca Cola” which contravened the Beeb policy on advertising.

Ray Davies Flew back to the uk for one day to record a radio edit with the offending phrase substituted by “Cherry Cola” because the loss of airplay would stop it charting (it subsequently charted at #2)

[jaminem]

In terms of level, a single may be different to the album version as the single is usually as loud as possible whereas the album version has to sit next to or between 2 other tracks so sometimes the mastering engineer will reduce the volume of a track a little so that it 'sits' better with its compatriots when listened to in sequence...

[heavenorlasvegas]

is audio through vhs playing a part here at all does anyone think?

thanks

roger

[Wonks]

No, unless you are playing a video on a VHS machine. Then you are at the mercy of the TV speakers as to the sound.

Remember that all the videos you saw on TV and are generally the ones that have been digitised and put on YouTube will either have been on film or on a broadcast quality video format like Betacam.

VHS was a lower quality domestic format and wouldn’t have been used for TV (except for public submittal programs like You’ve Been Framed).

There will be some YouTube videos taken from VHS tapes but the official channel videos for groups will be digitised from the broadcast quality video tapes where possible.

When broadcast on air, then the sound will have passed through the standard limiter/EQ arrangement of the broadcasting station, but that won’t have been the sound on the tape.

[MOF]

I’ve heard dolby mistracking artefacts on some of the Freeview music channels no doubt due to an analogue to analogue bounce.
The picture quality is even worse, especially where they’ve zoomed in to get a 16:9 widescreen image from an old 4:3 source. Seeing cropped heads shows how lazy (automated) the process is, and of course the resolution gets worse, some of them look like it was faxed over, it’s that bad.
Another thing I see on lots of music documentaries is a really bad picture delay relative to the sound of archive footage, really easy to correct, not sure if there’s some legal requirement not to alter supplied (library?) footage, as I see it regularly.

[James Perrett]

Another thing I see on lots of music documentaries is a really bad picture delay relative to the sound of archive footage, really easy to correct,

Are you sure that the artists are actually playing the music you are hearing? Plenty of TV performances are mimed and sometimes the artists deliberately make it clear that it is mimed by doing it very badly.

[MOF]

Are you sure that the artists are actually playing the music you are hearing? Plenty of TV performances are mimed and sometimes the artists deliberately make it clear that it is mimed by doing it very badly.

They may be miming, but it’s not that kind of in and out of synch’ it’s constantly out by half a second@.

My earlier comment about Dolby NR wasn’t strictly accurate, it could have been a transfer to a digital medium but either there were no Dolby tones on the tape or the transfer engineer didn’t know how to line up the decoder.