WRITTEN BY kyle stockbridge,
office administrator OF BOOM BOX POST
If you work in post-production, you’ve probably heard it thousands of times: a tiny short beep two seconds before the start of the video.
The 2-pop is one of those standard practices in post-production that is so simple, so old, and so deeply embedded in our workflows that it can be easy to forget just how important it is. It has survived the transition from film to videotape to digital, nonlinear editing and is still routinely exchanged between picture editorial, music, sound editorial, ADR, Foley, mix, color and finishing.
But where did it come from, and why do we still use it in every project?
What exactly is a 2-pop?
A 2-pop is a one-frame, 1 kHz tone placed exactly two seconds before the first frame of the program. On the picture side, that frame traditionally contains the number "2" from a countdown leader and the remaining two seconds after the 2-pop are black.
This serves as an incredibly precise synchronization point. It’s one unmistakable frame of picture paired with one unmistakable frame of sound. If the picture's 2-pop and the audio's 2-pop line up, the two are in sync… and if they don’t line up, you can easily see and hear exactly how off they are. Although extremely simple in principle, it’s the best and most used synchronization tool we still use almost 100 years later.
It started with film leaders
The 2-pop descends from the film leader, which predates television and digital editing by decades.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences introduced the Academy Leader on November 1, 1930. This was the original leader that counted down using film feet rather than seconds (appropriate for a medium in which the physical length of the film itself mattered). In 35mm, there are 16 frames per foot. For a bit of practical trivia: "NINE" and "SIX" were spelled out so that they couldn't be confused when the film was viewed upside down. Here’s an example of a similar leader, introduced in 1951 by SMPTE known as the Society Leader.
Then, in the mid-1960s, SMPTE (Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers) introduced the Universal Leader, designed to work for both television and theatrical applications. Instead of counting film feet, it counted seconds: 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2. At the "2" position, a short audible beep was introduced—the ancestor of the 2-pop we use today.
Ironically, the “Universal Leader” wasn't quite as universal as its name suggested. The new design was intended to replace the older Academy Leader for theatrical use, but projectionists largely resisted it. The traditional Academy format continued to be used in theaters and was eventually given its own SMPTE designation.
So the modern 2-pop isn't really an invention of digital audio, NLEs or Pro Tools. It is a piece of film-era infrastructure that simply refused to disappear.
Why is it still so useful?
Modern software can maintain sync with extraordinary precision. Pro Tools doesn't need a beep to know where a picture starts… but humans still need one.
A typical post-production project may exchange hands dozens of times across many departments and facilities using different hardware, software, types of media… all before coming back together for the finishing process. The 2-pop provides the reference point that survives all of those handoffs.
Just internally at Boom Box Post, we have a dialogue editor, foley editor, backgrounds editor, multiple sound effects editors all working on the same video simultaneously in different sessions before turning their work back in to be assembled and eventually passed on to mix. Without a precise sync point, you can see how the project can fall apart quickly.
Is the 2-pop universal? Is it global?
There doesn't appear to be a clean geographic map where one country uses 2-pops and another country uses something completely different. Instead, the distinction tends to be between professional post-production workflows and workflows where picture and sound never need to separate.
The 2-pop appears in professional film and television workflows across North America, Europe, Australia and other international production centers. European workflows may use different timecode conventions—for example, 10:00:00:00 as a picture-start reference rather than the 01:00:00:00 commonly encountered in North American workflows—but the underlying synchronization concept remains the same.
There are also legitimate variations.
Some television workflows use a 3-pop, or even a 3-2 pop: a sync reference three seconds before first frame of action, sometimes followed by the conventional 2-pop. This is not a geographic replacement for the 2-pop so much as a different broadcast convention.
And some modern workflows use no pop at all. If everything remains inside a single editorial system, or if the production's delivery specification doesn't call for one, a 2-pop may provide little practical benefit. That's why someone can work for years in editing or production and never be taught what a 2-pop is—then encounter it immediately upon entering professional sound post.
So perhaps the better question isn't "What countries use the 2-pop?"
It's "What workflows need a universal sync reference?"
Wherever picture and sound are routinely separated and exchanged between departments, the 2-pop tends to survive.
A tiny piece of history that refuses to die
The 2-pop has survived optical film, magnetic tape, DAT, DAWs, HD, 4K, HDR, digital cinema and cloud collaboration.
It has even survived the disappearance of the physical film leader that gave birth to it.
Not because modern software can't keep things in sync—but because when dozens of artists exchange hundreds of files across multiple systems, a single frame of certainty is still worth keeping.
And perhaps that's why the 2-pop is such a perfect piece of post-production technology: it does almost nothing, but what it does, it does with absolute clarity.
1978: Dugan prepares sound design materials in a dressing room at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego. Photo republished from here.
This is the one industry which regulates the use of the title Sound Designer. The Association of Sound Designers is a trade organization in the UK which represents theatrical sound designers. United Scenic Artists (Local USA829), part of IATSE, represents theatrical sound designers in the United States. And the Associated Designers of Canada represents English-speaking sound designers in Canada.
What Sound Design Is and Is Not
As you can see, there is a large discrepancy between uses of the term sound designer. This has enforced an even larger gap in the use of the more general term for the activity: sound design. If we each have a differing idea of what makes someone a sound designer, surely the act of engaging in sound design becomes even more oblique.
To give an example of how this vagueness affects our community, I would like to tell you about our first class of Boom Box Post interns.
We had two interns with very different backgrounds in audio. Upon their completion of our program, we individually gave them each an exit interview to help us get a better idea of how to improve our program in the future. One of the questions was, “What skill or task do you wish you had the opportunity to see during your internship?” Much to our surprise, both of them replied, “Sound design.”
We were momentarily baffled, since our company provides sound design for animated television series. Every day, all day, all of our team members are actively working to design, edit, record, and mix sounds to enhance the storytelling of an episode. So, we took a step back and asked a few follow-up questions:
“What do you mean by sound design, specifically?”
Both answered, “I don’t know.”
I got more specific, “Do you mean that you wish you got to see more recording of custom sounds? More creation of new sounds using a sine wave and synthesis? More use of plugins to mangle sounds?”
Both answered again, “No….. I don’t know. I just thought I would see some sound design.”
Clearly Jeff and I, and our community as a whole, including their college degrees, had failed these interns. We had failed them not by excluding sound design from our interns' experiences, but by failing to make it clear exactly what was entailed in sound design. They were seeing it every day and didn’t even realize it. Since then, we have revamped our program to include a straight-forward curriculum and clear definitions of what each role on our team entails, including sound design.
So to be utterly clear, this is the definition of sound design via Wikipedia:
“Sound design is the process of specifying, acquiring, manipulating or generating audio elements. It is employed in a variety of disciplines including filmmaking, television production, theatre, sound recording and reproduction, live performance, sound art, post-production, radio and video game development. Sound design most commonly involves the manipulation of previously composed or recorded audio, such as sound effects and dialogue.“
My best guess from this experience with our interns, and from the multitude of interviewees who profess to us that their ideal job is “sound designer who makes cool sounds,” is that much of our up-and-coming talent has formed their idea of sound design from Blu-Ray special features and YouTube videos of Ben Burtt describing his inventive creation of sounds for big-budget movies. So, let me be clear: a job does not exist where you get to sit around and muse about the possible ways to make odd sounds from scratch, simply waiting to be struck by inspiration, at which point you are given unlimited time and money to concoct extravagant contraptions to record and/or process. All of those really fun, really creative activities certainly do occur. They happen every day here at Boom Box Post. But they occur within the confines and time-constraints of what is often a high-pressure, time-sensitive, technical job.
I certainly recognize that our own Boom Box Post blog often offers detailed descriptions of our adventures in sound design, and we too tweet incessantly about our creative escapades. But, it is important to understand that these activities are so often written, tweeted, and vlogged about because they are the most fascinating part of our job, not because they are the only part.
So, go on, enjoy the latest SoundWorks video about the sound design for an upcoming blockbuster film, and keep adding #sounddesign to your tweets describing your sonic experiments just like we do! But remember that even Water Murch , the first ever great sound designer, also did a little editorial.
How do you use the term "sound design"? And who is your favorite sound designer? Please share in the comments below!
*Special thanks to Viktor Phoenix, Paolo Ogliari, Eduardo Vaisman for sharing their knowledge about the world of sound for interactive and immersive media with me. Without their very thorough and explanations of that industry, I would not have been able to write this post.