Re-edit of a film with 5.1 stems - post sound guide

[ronin99]

Hello,

I was wondering if any post audio pros could answer this.

We re-edited a finished film from years back. For the re-edit we used the 5.1 stems:

The 5.1 dialogue tracks
The 5.1 background tracks
The 5.1 FX tracks
The 5.1 Music tracks

So all 24 tracks were carried throughout the edit. Now my question is
what is the procedure to create new master Stereo and 5.1 files?

For the Stereo file is it as simple as
Pan all L and Ls channels to the left
Pan all R and Rs channels to the right
Leave C channels as is and discard LFE
then export?

For 5.1 would you just mute all tracks except the Center channel for each stem,
and export, then repeat that for L,R,Ls,Rs, LFE?

 

[Noiz2]

5.1 dialog?

To create new 5.1 and stereo print masters you would do new final mixes.

For the 5.1 mix you might start with everything at unity and see how it goes, might work but you reedited so there may be some adjustment.

For stereo you are going to have to play with it a bit. You probably don't want a lot of the surrounds in the L/R, but it depends on what is in the surrounds. Kind of the same for the LFE. You may not need it at all in the stereo but probably you want some. You can't just dump it in or you will probably overload the speakers.

What you don't know is how these STEMS were mixed in the last final. As a general thing STEMS should mix equally to make the printmaster but on a low budget film that is not necessarily the case.

For stereo it also depends on if you are doing a L/T or a Lt/Rt. The later is more common for a released film but on a no budget film they probably didn't have the ability to do a LtRt.

I would look at that 5.1 dialog though. It is very unusual to have anything but a LCR dialog track. They may have some vocal FX that they stuck on dialog so? But if it's a normal film you should have nothing on the Lfe and the surrounds. In which case just drop them, it will cut out a little noise.

I shouldn't have to say this but you can't mix 5.1 with out being able to monitor in 5.1, and you need to mix your print master not just crash the tracks together and hope for the best.

 

[ronin99]

Hi Scott,

Yeah I'm not sure why but our dialogue stem is 5.1 whether there's anything on its Ls, Rs or LFE tracks I don't know.
But thanks for the info, I'm sure we will send it back to the original mixer to create new print masters.