How do you bring audio back into a stereo output

Bubblegummonster

Bubblegummonster

Active member
Hello everyone.

I'm sure this is probably very simple, it's just something I've never had to do before.

I've watched Barry Green's book on sound, which is very good. It tells you that you can split the sound if your camera allows so you can record two versions of the same audio. But have one with lower levels as a back up in case the other clips out.

I did this with a short sketch we filmed over the weekend. I then realised that to just lay down one of the channels I'd have to add an audio effect in premiere which would just outpul the left channel. But that then means that I'm only getting that sound out of the left channel. How would I then bring it back into stereo?


Thanks in advance



Peter
 
Every NLE offers audio controls that include some version of "pan", and panning to center is the solution. Premiere Pro, I believe, offers a "fill left" or "fill right" option.
 
Yes, you use only one of the two tracks you recorded, discarding the other one. Your "keeper" is the one that is the best, usually the one recorded at the higher level. The other, low-level, track is an insurance track, there to give you replacement dialog allowing you to cut and replace sections out of the primary track in the event a sudden unanticipated extra-loud sound has gone up into clipping. By using only one track, it's going to be mono, of course, but that's the way dialog should be recorded anyway. Stereo is for music and ambience but not speech. In post you pan the mono original track equally into both the left and right stereo output channels so it ends up centred on the screen (the pan control actually lets you position it where ever you want in the final stereo image).

It would be possible to use the same technique for stereo recording but it would require more equipment, in particular a mixer with multiple stereo outputs and a multichannel recorder with at least four recording channels.
 
Alex H. said:
Every NLE offers audio controls that include some version of "pan", and panning to center is the solution. Premiere Pro, I believe, offers a "fill left" or "fill right" option.
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I'm just curious because I don't do it this way. If there isn't a stereo pan option aren't you losing signal by doing this. Say you have nothing on the right and dialogue on the left, by panning it to the right to make the dialogue center you are making the track with nothing more dominent. I bet you didn't mean this but it came across that way to me. IMO, it would be better to bounce the left and right tracks as multimono or just pull the left track in on your multi track instead.
 
Mitch.Kear said:
I'm just curious because I don't do it this way. If there isn't a stereo pan option aren't you losing signal by doing this. Say you have nothing on the right and dialogue on the left, by panning it to the right to make the dialogue center you are making the track with nothing more dominent. I bet you didn't mean this but it came across that way to me. IMO, it would be better to bounce the left and right tracks as multimono or just pull the left track in on your multi track instead.
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Can't speak for Alex's intent but panning the mono track into the centre is exactly the right way to do it. IMHO dialog coming exclusively from one speaker or the other is incredibly annoying to the viewer. Bouncing back and forth between two speakers is even more irritating. Think about cutting together a dialog between two people. After an establishing shot one frequently goes to closeup reverses with the speaking person more or less centred on the screen for the conversation itself. You want the speech to sound like it's coming from the person speaking, NOT from a loudspeaker over to the side beyond the edge of the screen. Even in an establishing two-shot you want the sound to come from the centre of the viewer's attention - even serving to direct his attention there - not from somewhere out in the grey limbo outside the frame.
 
I've watched Barry Green's book on sound, which is very good. It tells you that you can split the sound if your camera allows so you can record two versions of the same audio. But have one with lower levels as a back up in case the other clips out.

I did this with a short sketch we filmed over the weekend. I then realised that to just lay down one of the channels I'd have to add an audio effect in premiere which would just outpul the left channel. But that then means that I'm only getting that sound out of the left channel. How would I then bring it back into stereo?
Click to expand...
Most audio NLE's are set up to have "mono" tracks and "stereo" tracks, and some have surround tracks. Your final mix settings determine what the output will be. If you have your output mix set to stereo, you can lay in as many mono tracks as you want and place them wherever you want in the stereo field through panning. This is how most dialogue is handled. Even if you recorded stereo, versus two mono channels, you can split the stereo wav/aiff in an NLE into 2 mono tracks.

I haven't used Premiere, but find someone with Protools, Digital Performer (what I have), or some other audio NLE (musicians are a good source) to split your stereo recording into 2 mono tracks. That gives you the intended benefit of using a "High/Low" mix that Barry discusses and you used.
 
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Doc Bernard said:
...I haven't used Premiere, but find someone with Protools, Digital Performer (what I have), or some other audio NLE (musicians are a good source) to split your stereo recording into 2 mono tracks. That gives you the intended benefit of using a "High/Low" mix that Barry discusses and you used.
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Even freeware Audacity has a "split track" tool that converts a single stereo track into two separate mono tracks.
 
Steve House said:
Can't speak for Alex's intent but panning the mono track into the centre is exactly the right way to do it.
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And that's exactly what I was talking about. The main track is split from the safety track, and only one of them used in the edit (typically, the primary track, only falling back on the safety in cases of overmodulation). In some NLEs, this requires splitting a defaulted stereo pair into individual, mono tracks. Doing that leaves the separate tracks still panned to their defaults from the stereo pair (1 to left and 2 to right). So, placing one of them in the time line will result in audio that plays out of only one channel. It has to be panned (or in Premiere speak, filled) in order to center it.
 
gpforet said:
I use Sound Devices Wave Agent for renaming and splitting into mono.
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Depends what software is on the computer where I am but I personnaly use RX to do this. I find most of the time people just have soundbooth which is just as easy but I hate that program. I simply right click and say add to multi track. It separates the tracks and makes them automatically center panned. From here if your safety track isn't needed just delete and bounce your mono track.
 
Mitch.Kear said:
Depends what software is on the computer where I am but I personnaly use RX to do this. I find most of the time people just have soundbooth which is just as easy but I hate that program. I simply right click and say add to multi track. It separates the tracks and makes them automatically center panned. From here if your safety track isn't needed just delete and bounce your mono track.
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If after splitting the stereo pair and deleting the unused safety trackg, the remaining primary is a mono track already panned into the centre, what is the purpose of pulling it back to full left and bouncing a copy onto a second mono track to send to the right? With the mono track centre panned you already have it coming out of both speakers equally, centering the speech on the screen. What's the point of duplicating it? Consider the disaster if the duplicate track accidently got shifted slightly with respect to the primary.
 
Steve House said:
If after splitting the stereo pair and deleting the unused safety trackg, the remaining primary is a mono track already panned into the centre, what is the purpose of pulling it back to full left and bouncing a copy onto a second mono track to send to the right? With the mono track centre panned you already have it coming out of both speakers equally, centering the speech on the screen. What's the point of duplicating it? Consider the disaster if the duplicate track accidently got shifted slightly with respect to the primary.
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I think he's talking about working strictly in an audio editor/DAW: split the tracks, they become center-panned, delete the safety track, and bounce the remaining (mono) track to a new file to be imported to the NLE. Kind of a roundabout way of doing this, since most NLEs can handle the task. But, whatever works...
 
I suppose that could be it. Premiere and Vegas both have mixers that allow a mono track to be centre panned into both stereo channels without the need for creating the (IMHO) superflous extra track for the right channel. Never used FCP so I don't know about it but I would assume it would behave the same.
 
In FCP, select the audio and go to Modify>Stereo Pair and deselect. That creates independent, mono tracks that will still be panned left or right. Open the desired mono clip in the Viewer and set the pan value to 0 (instead of left to right, it uses -1 to 1).
 
Yeah sorry guys, I'm stricly audio and don't use video editing programs. I work with protools for my dialogue and sfx. Maybe cubase for writing songs or scores. But I don't find premier or fcp any good for audio. Vegas seems to have the best setup for it but still I don't prefer it.
 
Mitch.Kear said:
Yeah sorry guys, I'm stricly audio and don't use video editing programs. I work with protools for my dialogue and sfx. Maybe cubase for writing songs or scores. But I don't find premier or fcp any good for audio. Vegas seems to have the best setup for it but still I don't prefer it.
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Even so, the DAWs that I'm familiar with - SoundForge, Audition, Nuendo, Wavelab don't require you to create that bounce track to end up with a stereo final render. One can pan a single mono track to the center and it will appear equally in both the left and right output tracks. All of them allow for a mix of stereo tracks (music etc) and mono tracks (dialog) on the same timeline with mixing to stereo for output.
 
Steve House said:
Even so, the DAWs that I'm familiar with - SoundForge, Audition, Nuendo, Wavelab don't require you to create that bounce track to end up with a stereo final render. One can pan a single mono track to the center and it will appear equally in both the left and right output tracks. All of them allow for a mix of stereo tracks (music etc) and mono tracks (dialog) on the same timeline with mixing to stereo for output.
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You don't understand.If I bring a stereo file into protools I can simply pull the left or right side onto a mono track. No panning involved. In RX I can just delete the safety track, hit save and it is now a mono track. A mono file requires no panning. You are panning the left side of a stereo track to the center. Where, IMO, you should be creating multi mono tracks from the stereo. None of which requires any panning.
 
Mitch.Kear said:
You don't understand.If I bring a stereo file into protools I can simply pull the left or right side onto a mono track. No panning involved. In RX I can just delete the safety track, hit save and it is now a mono track. A mono file requires no panning. You are panning the left side of a stereo track to the center. Where, IMO, you should be creating multi mono tracks from the stereo. None of which requires any panning.
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LOL - I think we're actually saying the same thing, just using different words. What's been throwing me is your use of the words "bounce the track" - to me that means copy the track onto a second track - where you appeared to say that you were a) taking the original stereo track consisting of the primary track on one channel and the safety channel on the other; b) splitting it into two mono tracks; c) assuming the primary track doesn't needs repair, deleting the safety track; d) duplicating the remaining primary track to end up with two identical mono tracks; and e) routing one of those tracks 100% to the left channel and the other 100% to the right channel. I've been saying you don't need to "bounce" the track to create a new duplicate track at all, that a mono track would be centred equally to both left and right unless you pulled the pan control on that track off-center. The mixer panels in my DAWs have pan controls on both mono and stereo source tracks - on a mono source track it controls the positioning of that track between the left and right outputs, allowing you to put the mono track 100% into the left, 50/50 into each of them (or any other ratio you choose), or 100% into the right, while for a stereo source track it controls the 'balance', the relative level of the left and right source channels in their respective output channels. I use the term "pan to the centre" to mean leaving the pan control centred for the mono tracks so they route equally into the left and right output channels, just like the pan control on a mono mic input on a mixing console positions that channel equally into the left and right main outputs if you centre it, which is what you now said you do.
 
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