Surround Sound Question

[P.S.T.]

I had already asked about the whole film sound process http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?p=882876#post882876 and surround sound came up. I've read everything about surround sound and how it works but I'm still confused on some things.

I don't have any sounds recorded in surround sound. I've done a whole track of punches and another of swooshes solely from a sound library. I also did a whole track of foley and ambience and one of dialog. Now, how would I go about making this surround sound? I have a plug-in in Cubase called Sonitus Surround that lets you pan things front and back and left and right. I know exactly how surround sound works and how Dolby Encodes the sound. Well, I have two ways of thinking of doing this but I don't have time to experiment. I have to have everything done today. The main concern is that I want to have things panning left and right, and front and back. My first idea is simple. I have a Dolby Transcoder. I was thinking of mixing down the special sound effects and copying the same track three times. Then, to simulate this as if it was a surround recording, I would lower the volume on one track and up it on the others. For example, a punch is swung from left to right. One track would lower in volume, another would go up some and the last would finally end at the same volume as the first one was. This would be as if I recorded in surround. Then I'd take these three tracks, set them left, right and center accordingly and let it encode it.

My other method is a bit strange. I would use the same method of lowering and raising the volume on three tracks. But this time, I would use the Sonitus Plug-in and pan one track hard left,one hard right, and one in the center. Then I would copy and paste the same left track and pan it all the way back and do a phase shift on it. Same goes for the right one and then just export as a mix. It's not Dolby but I think it would work.


Anyone have some advice on making a surround sound mix. I need input quickly! THank you:thumbup:

 

[SMuir]

Why not simply automate surround panning on individual tracks?

The bulk of your surround imaging is likely to be atmospheric effects. Although surround atmos' recordings are great, they're not the only way to get the job done. You can build up surround coverage using stereo recordings in much the way that you would fill up a stereo image with mono recordings. When you cut in a track of atmos', cut in a second track of the same sound offset 30 seconds or a minute or so. Trim the in and out of the second track, looping back to the start of the effect if you must. This will give you a good pseudo-surround group: the first stereo track becomes the L and R, while the second stereo track becomes the LS and RS. Alternately, you could pan them to the first track becomes L and RS, while the second track becomes LS and R. There are plenty of ways to use stereo and mono recordings to fill up the surrounds.

The lion's share of your hard effects will likely stay on the front LCR group. Dialogue and ADR will almost always stay on the C. Foley usually stays on the C, insofar as it covers principal characters. Offscreen and BG foley, of course, is panned where appropriate.

Be very careful playing around with phase relationships: legacy surround systems like Dolby Surround or Dolby Pro-Logic among otheres can have unpredictable reactions to out-of-phase tracks. You may also risk renderring your mix stereo- or mono-incompatible.

 

[matthewd5]

ditto everything he said. he said it much more clearly and accurately than i could describe!

i am very fortunate because we built a new house a year ago and i have a studio that is built 75% for editing and other similar tasks and 25% as a great home theater...so my desk is centered in the 5.1 surround field and on the front center wall i have an hd flatscreen so i can see the project larger when needed.

and walter graff gave me an excellent tip when i was working with him on a project and mentioned the room design, there is a half wall in front of my editing station and to the left of it there is a step down and then a couch centered in front of my desk/half wall where someone can sit and watch but NOT be sitting next to me watching over my shoulder.

i just editing an indie feature that i did sound on and i used a combination of adobe audition and premiere pro.

i also used a mackie control surface which helped a little bit.

i wish someone would come up with an interface that was more like an old fashioned joystick.

i know in the adobe software there is the little hockey puck thing you move around but it wasn't as effective as i would have liked.

i guess i should dig out my wacom tablet and try that...hmm

matthew

 

[P.S.T.]

Ok I'm not sure if I understood but you sure did inspire me. All I did was automate the panning in the stereo file,copied it and panned it all the way back in the center and reversed the phase. So it does the same thing both front and back but the phase reverse makes it realistic. Badabing!:thumbup:


Thanks

 

[SMuir]

Again, watch out for out-of-phase audio.

If I understand what you've done correctly, you're essentially bussing the front LCR onto the rears and reversing the phase. This approach is likely to de-localize any hard effects (ie. a car door slam goes from being "right there" in front of you to being "somewhere out there"). You'll be much farther ahead simply keeping you're front LCR mix as-is, and just adding additional atmosphere tracks to fill up the rears.