exporting sound to a sound mixing person?

Azmyth

Veteran
I need to export all my dialog tracks so a engineer can mix them and clean up all the dialog and mix it so that everything is the right level.. in CS5.5 how would I give him just the audio? and how would I go about doing so?
 
Not familiar with that program... You should be able to separate the audio from the video, do a mixdown/conversion of dialogue in .wav format, and burn a disc to give to your editor. Look in your "help" file. Then he'll give you a disc of edited dialogue and you can bring it back in and realign... Does that sound like what you want to do (I think I understand your question)?

GJ
 
You should ask the sound mixer what they need, but likely they could want an OMF file, or XML file, and possibly a Quicktime as well to reference to.
 
Moving this to the Adobe Premiere forum.

Interesting choice. It really splits across both. Or rather there are two questions he is really asking. What to export and how to export it.

The How to should be in whatever he is working on's forum. I'm assuming as you did that it's Premiere Pro ,though I have known folks who cut in After Effects...

The What is a sound question but as others have mentioned it's more of a question for his sound post person, since it's a bit dependent on what they are working on.

As a general rule you need to send sound post:
1) A locked version of the film.
Exactly what format is fairly facility specific. I like HD in h.264 with key frames set to all frames. It's small(ish) plays very well in ProTools and looks great. The old standard was DV. It works well but HD material gets fairly trashed when squashed down to DV (what I have gotten anyway).

2) the audio tracks from your NLE.
This is almost always an OMF or AAF.

3) your production sound and log sheets.
Your post folks will want this for finding alts to fix dialog that is un repairable, finding some room tone and various other stuff. On micro budget "no time to do much" projects I may not touch those tracks but I want them handy if I need them.

4) an XML, EDL, etc (optional)
I usually ask for one so that when the "locked" picture changes I have a fighting chance of not having to spend a week trying to figure out where all the changes are. If your editor doesn't have any conforming software it doesn't really matter. Also if your picture really is locked it doesn't matter. My experience is that changes often happen after the film is "locked" so I would rather have the file just in case.
 
Moving this to the Adobe Premiere forum.

Don't know why you did that... since if one visits the sound forum, one finds that many people use Pro Tools, and so, may be more familiar with what format to export from NLE X, Premiere in this case, to import in to an industry standard like Pro Tools.

Is OMF or XML 'ok'... or is there something else...

I recall someone complaining that pre-CS5.5 exports to 'mov' files didn't put in multiple audio tracks, but mixed down to a stereo track. I saw a demo of Premiere <-> Audition import/export, that retained the various audio clips in 'track' form, but that was last year at NAB and I decided to wait for CS6 to upgrade my CS5... so, I've not attempted to really perform that import/export/dynamic link process.

And how many 'pro' use Audition... I'd hazard few...

The only Pro Tools I have, is what came with my m-audio Fasttrack Pro, and I don't know if the 'evaluation' is a timed out eval of the full Pro Tools, or a reduced functionality version... I've not started it up, just installed it...
 
Last edited:
The audio can be exported from the timeline, a track at a time simply by selecting it and making sure the start and end is selected properly. Highlighting the audio track on it's own then using export/media and selecting an audio format exports the audio for that track. If you select multiple audio tracks with them all unmated, you export the mix. If you select individual tracks one at a time, you can export each one separately.

The downside is that you are exporting any effects and transitions - which the editor may not want. It's simple enough to remove the transitions and then put each overlap onto a different audio track - like we used to in early version of premiere. This way the editor has access to all the audio. If you do this, make sure you always save each sequence as the same length track starting from the same point. This way - each audio track is an identical file size, and will be in sync when loaded into an audio editor. They'd probably also like the video track too so they can use that as a guide. Each track is silent, apart from the useful audio, which remains time aligned with the others.If you give them the individual clip audio, it will be similar to when music producers use stems - lots of almost random tracks that need shifting in time to align. Much depends on what the audio editor would like to work with. When I have to work with audio like this, I use my Cubase system, importing the audio tracks, and the video guide. Then when it's done I generate a stereo or multitrack mix, exactly the same length that I can drop back into premiere.

That sounds complicated, but works for me - and I just move the audio about on the network between rooms.
 
I haven't hired the sound mixer yet.. but I have two friends who do it, and may give me favors.. one of them uses pro tools and the other uses audition. if XML or OMF will work, I'll try that.
 
The bounce tracks mentioned is a last ditch resort and doesn't work well on long projects. It's also a Pain in the but for the sound folks because you are sending them a bunch of full length tracks. If I need to move something I have to cut it out of the track. You also loose all the clip info, AND you bake in all FX and level changes.

OMF is the standard and AAF is the would be new standard.

XML is like an EDL and doesn't contain the media. I only ask for them so I can use auto conform software if there are changes. If they were reassembling the production tracks from original recordings the XML would be important but I doubt that your folks are going to do that.

But you NEED to talk to your post person and find out what they want you to send them. If they don't have the OMF module for ProTools for instance you may have to do a track by track output. And I have no idea what Audition wants to see, though I suspect it would read OMF???

IF your going with someone using ProTools AND they don't have digiTranslator you can spit out a AAF and send me the AAF file (not the media) and I can run it through DigiTranslator and send them the session file.
 
T
But you NEED to talk to your post person and find out what they want you to send them. If they don't have the OMF module for ProTools for instance you may have to do a track by track output. And I have no idea what Audition wants to see, though I suspect it would read OMF???

This is a recollection of an ancient demo at last year's NAB... but because Audition is part of the CS5.5/6 Adobe Production suite, there is greater interchange capability. I didn't upgrade to CS5.5, but have waited for CS6, so I don't know how easy and 'clean' the 'dynamic linking' really works between the programs, nor how well export from Premiere and import to Audition really works...

My experience with such things involves Premiere <-> After Effects, and I did have a few surprises, relative to making 'subclips' in Premiere, but not having After Effects 'recognize' the trimmed subclips, when I 'imported' the Premiere project... I had to place the trimmed clips in 'sequences', then After Effects 'recognized' the trimming...

In addition, I'm sort of waiting for Apple's soon to be released set of laptop product 'refreshes', to buy, so I've not done a lot with dynamic linking, because the few experiments I've made, my machine falls on its face... and... I've not bought a tower product since the G5... which no longer is in service... but I digress...
 
Back
Top