Digital TV sync problems

Factual Questions
1

We’ve talked here about how sometimes the audio and video portions of digital TV transmissions can get out of sync. But I’ve just seen something that doesn’t seem to admit of any of those explanations (as I recall them).

On tonight’s Countdown With Keith Olbermann on MSNBC, the final segment was a studio interview with Harry Shearer. I soon noticed that the audio of Shearer’s voice was almost a second behind the video of his mouth moving. It was quite obvious. So I was puzzled when the shot cut to Olbermann, and he was in sync. It was the same throughout the rest of the segment: the camera shooting Shearer was out of sync, but the others were not.

So how, in a multi-camera show, shot in a studio, did one camera get out of sync with the rest? This is clearly not a transmission delay, or anything else I can think of. But I stopped working in video production long before everything went digital, so what do I know?

If you want to see for yourself, the show is repeated at 10 pm ET. The segment was in the last 7 minutes of the show, so tune into MSNBC at about 10:53 ET or so.

2

Was Shearer in the same studio, or was it a satellite interview with Olberman in New York and Shearer in L.A.?

I have a friend who’s an audio technician for one of the broadcast networks. As I understand it, the blame scale goes:

  1. The satellite
  2. The microwave connection to the satellite
  3. The wireless microphone
  4. “Software glitch”
  5. The technician before you who was supposed to have the whole thing set up and tested.
3

He was across the table from Olberman, and when you saw him speak in the camera that was shooting Olbermann over Shearer’s shoulder, he was in sync. It was only when they cut to a different camera, shooting Shearer only, that the video was ahead of the audio. It’s bizarre, and you can see for yourself in about 30 minutes from now.

4

OK, that’s weird. Maybe the interview wasn’t live, and in the editing they didn’t get the one video added correctly. The only other thing I can think of is if they can set an audio delay to account for satellite delay, and forgot to unset it.