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Do you need Dual Mono to kill one track?
I’ve been reading a lot of posts and tutorials on the subject of converting Stereo Tracks to Dual Mono in order to, for example, be able to cut in a two mic interview, listen to both mics, and keep only the good one. Of all the solutions I found, most conclude that if you’ve already edited those interviews in stereo you cannot convert those clips into dual mono and you are hosed:
Then I found a trick not in those discussions or tutorials. Turn’s out it’s easy to silence one channel of a Stereo clip while keeping the other one center panned which (last I checked) Avid and FCP Legacy cannot do. And isn’t that the reason why we needed dual mono in the first place? Best of all you can do it after the clips are in the timeline.
Whenever you want to choose the best mic, just right click on your stereo clip in the timeline and select Audio Channels. Then under Source Channel where you see the words Right and Left, change the Right one to Left to hear only the channel 1 mic. Then change both source channels to Right to hear the Ch 2 mic. Leave it on the one you want. Since you’ll do this regularly, assign a shortcut (such as Control-A on a Mac) to the Modify Audio Channels command.
Another messier way to get the same result is using one of two Premiere audio filters, Fill Left and Fill Right which you add to a stereo clip in the timeline.
BTW, if your not using the default, “Standard” tracks, which allow either mono and stereo clips on the same track you should.
(all checked using CC7. CS6 manual says it also works there.)
– Larry Asbell
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4 Replies
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Alternate:
1) Add two submix stereo tracks, add Fill Left to one as a channel effect and Fill right to the other.
2) In the Audio Mixer panel, assign your original track output assignments (under channel effects) to Submix 1 and 2. Set the volumes of the sends to 0db and set the pan for one to -100 (left) and the other to 100 (right).
3) Right click these send assignments and select “Prefader”, mute your original track. Now sound only plays from the two stereo sends.
4) Voila! You can now add effects to each submix as if it were one channel of the dual mono source. As a bonus, the panner/balance clip envelope in the timeline now acts as a balance control between the two dual mono sources so you can mix and balance within the timeline.
This is the easiest track assignment to control the volume of dual mono if you didn’t split it from the get-go. Submixes are your best friend.
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The question I have, is why wouldn’t Premiere do this split automatically? I remember working in FCP and if I recorded audio on two different channels in the camera, I would have two fully controllable channels in FCP. Is there an advantage of the PP way?
-Trevor Ward
Red Eye Film Co.
http://www.redeyefilmco.com
Orlando, FL -
It’s not that Premiere can’t. In Adobe’s defense, It’s got a preference you can set to convert Stereo to Dual Mono on import or tape capture. And it’s got a way to convert clips from Stereo to Dual Mono in the bin. However not everyone anticipates the need, or an editor inherits a stringout from someone else, and needs a way to drop one channel out of sequence clips that are stereo. As it turns out there are a few ways to do that, too (tho’ a little hard to find).
True, the Audio Tracks preference defaults to ingesting Stereo as Stereo. Maybe your argument is that that the factory default should be convert to dual mono. For most of the work I do, that would work out best for me too.
But it’s a tough call for Adobe, to make a default be to convert one valid workflow to another. People do record in stereo intentionally and expect to keep it that way.
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I see your point. And being able to change the default may be just fine for me. But 90% of the time, I’m not getting a stereo mix. I imagine lots of professionals are going to want to create their own mix. FCP had it right. Even for those people who receive a stereo audio in FCP, still don’t have to DO anything to give them what they want. And neither did the people who wanted separate channels.
Me just grumbling a bit, but there are many little things that PP does that aren’t quite as refined as FCP 7 was. Seems like a mature software like PP should have these little refinements in place.
-Trevor Ward
Red Eye Film Co.
http://www.redeyefilmco.com
Orlando, FL
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