Create stereo mix from 5.1 in PPRO

[Joe Shaw]

I have a finished project in PPRO and I had someone do me a nice 5.1 surround mix.

What I need to do is to produce a stereo mix from that to have a standard non-surround mix.

Any advice or pointers on how to go about this?

Much appreciated.

 

[Allan Black]

It's an interesting idea getting someone else to mix for you, depends on who it is but you can pick up some tips if you get into it. But why did you do it?

Collapsing a 5:1 to stereo is fraught with difficulties, why not use the 5.1 as a basic guide and do the stereo mix yourself?

Cheers.

 

[Joe Shaw]

It's an interesting idea getting someone else to mix for you, depends on who it is but you can pick up some tips if you get into it. But why did you do it?

because I'm a director/editor, not a sound mixer.

Collapsing a 5:1 to stereo is fraught with difficulties, why not use the 5.1 as a basic guide and do the stereo mix yourself?

Cheers.

Perhaps my post didn't make sense - I have the project in PPRO, finished and with the sound mixed in 5.1. I am trying to do the stereo mix myself, but I was asking for some help/pointers to help guide me through that process...

 

[Humanwire]

You would normally make what's called an LTRT from a 5.1 mix with a Dolby encoder. An LTRT is a 2 track mix that can be decoded by a Dolby decoder (such as Pro Logic) into a 4.0 surround mix (Left, Center, Right, Surround).

Otherwise you can do a ghetto version with the 5.1 mix by panning the 6 individual files accordingly:

Left = Left
Right = Right
Center = Both left and right (the same amount in both channels)
Left Surround = Left -3dB
Right Surround = Right -3dB
LFE = lose it

Anyone else have any suggestions?

 

[Alex H.]

Yeah, I'd say that Humanwire has the best suggestion. For future projects, ask your audio post engineer to provide a stereo mix along wth the 5.1 surround.

If you go back to the soruce tracks in your PPRO sequence, you can remix the whole thing from start to finish in stereo, but that's a bad idea. Now that an engineer has done your audio post (do you know what system was used for that?), you have a different set of ears and most likely a much more extensive set of tools used to do the mix. The chances of making a stereo mix from scratch that will sound anything less than distractingly different from the 5.1 mix are slim to none.

By using the 5.1 stems, you're going to be able to keep as close as possible to the sound (read: EQ, compression, leveling, etc.) of the original mix.

 

[Joe Shaw]

Thank you. That is pretty much what I thought - but just wanted to confirm.

 

[Brandon Rice]

Thanks for this help guys, it helped a lot today.