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Creating Dialogue Stems
Hello Everyone:
I decided to go ahead and use Sony Vegas 12 to edit my dialogue so to keep the flow in one system. I am in the process of painstakingly separating the dialogue into tracks for my feature in Sony. I am anticipating having more than one hundred tracks, so, ultimately I would like to create stems, but I do not know how to create dialogue stems or any stem.
Does anyone know the process of creating stems?
Many thanks,
Debbie
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10 Replies
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I am not an audio expert, but I have heard of stems. What I don’t understand is how are stems any different from a track group? Or asked another way, how do you use dialogue stems?
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com -
Hi Stephen:
I believe that stems are something like busses where I can combine several tracks and drop it into the timeline as one track.
Musically, if you have a horn section, all instruments are placed on a stem fully mixed. Then all you have to do is place that one stem in the timeline. It saves on memory. A complete symphonic piece can be saved in two to three stems.
Everyone, please correct me if I am off a bit.
Many thanks,
Debbie
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[Debbie King] ” It saves on memory. A complete symphonic piece can be saved in two to three stems.
“The only way to save memory and/or overhead is to render an audio mix to a file and then import that file onto your timeline.
If your audio is stereo you can use nested projects. Do your mix in a separate project and then place that project onto the timeline of some other project. Vegas only support stereo for nested project audio.
Other than that you have a track group as previously mentioned, likely running that mix through a unique audio bus as well.
It almost sounds like the stem you mention is like a video editor sequence. Vegas does not have sequences, but rather has project nesting.
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I vaguely recall something like this from my advanced audio class. What we worked with were created in the recording studio, and they included only a single type of instrument or, for dialogue, a single voice in each stem. Thus, the violin stem had only the violins. There was no trumpet sound on that stem. Thus, the volume and mix of instruments could be completely controlled and adjusted. However, there is no ability in Vegas, or anywhere else that I know of, to isolate the sound of one instrument from source audio that contains a mix of instruments. That is why they must be created in a recording studio.
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Hi Norman and Bob:
I have Cubase Artist 7. Would I need to create stems in the DAW and drop it into the timeline? Vegas does not create stems? Cubase is still a tremendous learning curve for me.
Norman, a little over my head. Not sure of what you mean by nesting.
Many thanks,
Debbie
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[Debbie King] “Norman, a little over my head. Not sure of what you mean by nesting.”
Open the Vegas help. Go to the index tab. Enter “nest”. This will point you to a help topic names, “nesting projects”. Should be enough info to help you understand.
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[Debbie King] “Does anyone know the process of creating stems?”
There is no easy way to do this in Vegas Pro. What you need to do is route the tracks for each stem to a separate bus. Then mute all of the buses except one and render that as a stem. Then mute that bus and unmute the next bus and render that as the next stem. Repeat until all of the buses/stems are rendered.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
As has been asked – wouldn’t it be easy to do this with embedded projects or track groups?
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com -
[Stephen Mann] “As has been asked – wouldn’t it be easy to do this with embedded projects or track groups?”
I don’t think embedded projects would be easier but track groups might help because you can mute the entire group.
I think I figured out an easy way to render stems.
Step 1: Read my tutorial Multichannel Render Template in Vegas Pro
Step 2: Render a multi channel wave file.
That should do it. Use one Bus for each stem. It can be stereo or mono. When you do the multi-channel mapping in my tutorial make sure that you map stereo buses to stereo channels and mono buses to mono channels. Each channel will be one bus and thus one stem. When you drop the multi-channel Wave file into Vegas Pro it will separate out with one channel on each track and those are your stems. Hopefully it will do the same in Pro Tools or other DAW’s. (I haven’t tested that yet)
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
Hi John:
Thank you so much. Now I can see what stems are. So after rendering into 4 channels, I can drop those stems back onto the timeline, correct? And if I pointed 20 tracks to those 4 channels, it will save in memory, correct?
Many thanks,
Debbie
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