Surround Sound?

D

DVX100Shooter

Veteran
Is there a way that I can send certain things to certain speakers when editing? I am sure I would need a whole separate piece of software to actually do 5.1 Dolby Surround sound but what if I wanted a certain sound to just play out of the left speaker? Would playing with the PAN do the trick? Now lets say I have a shot of car travelling left to right on the screen. Does the PAN also allow me to shift the sound of the car from the left speaker to the right speaker?
 
Re: Surround Sound?

I don't know if FCP can do that, I've never used it. For two speakers, yes the PAN control should do it -- it does in Premiere. For full surround sound, you may need to step over to something like Vegas, which allows full 5.1 surround encoding.
 
Re: Surround Sound?

FCP allows you up to 8 audio tracks; you can assign 6 tracks such that there's one for each channnel of a 5.1 system, edit these as you wish, and export them; then encode them with the included a.pack dolby encoder (wait - does a.pack come with FCP or DVDSP? anyone?)

This is not necessarily ideal; it's not convenient for surround panning as such, but does let you assign sounds to specific tracks. And, indeed, as in your example, you can pan things around L-R as much as you want. You can also fake surround panning by playing with levels of different tracks, but it'd probably be painful. For monitoring, you'd also need a CoreAudio-supported hardware device that'll drive your surround system.

So, it CAN be done; it's far from the easiest way. I'm not sure what's the best way to do this on a Mac; all the surround I've done I've RECORDED in surround, which makes the process easier.

Barry - does Vegas support real surround panning? and does it support live dolby encoding for monitoring?

Anyone know of low-cost surround mixing s/w for Mac?

-BArry
 
Re: Surround Sound?

For technical Vegas questions, I've found it handy to defer to David Jimerson... hopefully he'll weigh in here.

I know the new Vegas 5.0 brags specifically about surround-sound encoding, and even 4.0's DVD application included an AC-3 encoder, so I believe (which may be inaccurate) that yes, you can do live 5.1 mixing right from the timeline in Vegas 5.0.
 
Re: Surround Sound?

The best 5.1 mac program (except for ProTools) is a program called Bias Deck. Not the LE version you find for $79, but the full version for I think around $300. It will play out via a seperate card if you've got one that supports surround. Works much better than trying to get apack (DVDSP) to work for you.

Now -- quick and dirty?? Dump your tracks into Soundtrack. I like working with the pans and cutting my 5.1 there... (my 5.1 consists of usually music in the surround speakers and trying to get dialog in the center.) Soundtrack has a neat feature that lets you export your audio as individual tracks AND doesn't care if youv'e got spaces... like FCP does sometimes. THEN dump into aPack.

Good luck,

CaptM
 
Re: Surround Sound?

I have used Deck a couple times, it is a very helpful program and a nice mixing. Really, it is one of the next best things next to ProTools... Thanks for the links CaptM. One question though, how did/do you actually export in a surround format in Deck? I didn't realize you could do 5.1.
 
Re: Surround Sound?

Kyle -- Export as tracks... It's on the work computer not here at home, so I'll have to check again next week.

CaptM
 
Re: Surround Sound?

I had some very bad experiences with BIAS software so I tend to be prejudiced against the company.

That said, I use Mark of the Unicorn's "Digital Performer" for all my audio, including surround mixing up to 10.2. (No, I don't have the hardware to play that back, but it's nice to know you COULD...). 5.1 and 6.1 settings are easy to work with assuming that you have something attached to your Mac that'll play it back properly.

Once you have it mixed, though, you could use DVD Studio Pro and the included audio prep software (the name escapes me...) to prepare your 5.1 or 6.1 for DVD use, and burn away. Then you can confirm that it works in any good home theatre.

www.motu.com

Yes, it's overkill for just audio mixing, but as a musician I find it to be immensely useful for everything from cleaning up sound through doing foley, FX, dialog, and soundtracking.
 
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