Compressor and 5.1 Mix

[David Roth weiss]

Marc,

Sorry, but what you’ve written does not compute. I don’t know if it’s because you don’t understand how this works, or because you just weren’t precise enough in your explanation.

Was your audio mixed in 5.1 surround at a mix facility with 5.1 capability, or are you thinking that Compressor will accomplish that for you?

Please, be more specific about what you’re starting with. State exactly what the audio files are that you’re working with.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.

[Marc Buhmann]

Basically, I have nine audio tracks in FCP: two left, one center, two right, two left surround, and two right surround. I’m exporting the two pairs (with the exception of the one center) as five mono AIFF files to combine into a 5.1 AC3 audio file using Compressors Surround Sound mixing tool.

I realize this is sort of a hackneyed way of doing it, but it’s the best I can do at the moment.

[Michael Sacci]

First compressor is NOT a sound mixing tool. It is an encoding tool.

You have to have 6 discreet mono (panned to the center) audio channels. Left is mono, not a single channel that is panned.
Left
Right
Center
Left S
Right S
LFE (this is the .1)

So everything needs to be mixed down to the 6 channels (5 if you don’t have the LFE)

[Michael Gissing]

Crazy track configuration. Do you have a proper 5.1 mix (ie 6 track PCM either wav or aif files) from a surround mix facility?

If so, forget FCP. Use Compressor to make the Dolby ac3 directly from the 5.1 mix files.

[David Roth weiss]

Thanks for filling in Michael and Michael.

Both Michaels were heading in the direction that I was going Marc. I think I understand that you are trying a “cheat,” but that hardly seems worth the effort. You’re better off with a really good stereo mix, then using one of the vast array of fake surround presets that come pre-programmed into most A/V surround receivers. Doesn’t yours come with any of those?

BTW, a 5.1 mix out of FCS is actually doable these days using the 5.1 audio monitoring capabilities of the Matrox MXO2, five speakers, and a subwoofer, and mixing in STP, but I don’t think anyone is doing that, and I think it’s for good reason. And, I think if anyone was actually doing it, Michael Gissing would most likely fly from Tasmania and whoop them real good.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.

[Michael Gissing]

[David Roth Weiss] “BTW, a 5.1 mix out of FCS is actually doable these days using the 5.1 audio monitoring capabilities of the Matrox MXO2, five speakers, and a subwoofer, and mixing in STP,”

Don’t encourage such foolishness David! Minimum requirement for proper 5.1 mixing is a mixer that can sub bus 3 x 5.1 stems with full EQ & dynamics on those sub busses plus a final mix bus with foldown to stereo capability with proper monitoring. STP isn’t in that league and FCP doesn’t have sub bussing at all, let alone proper track based EQ & dynamics.

If anyone wants to try it, I not fly out and whoop them. They are going to whoop themselves anyway when they find out what a disaster they are wading into.

[David Roth weiss]

I agree with you completely Michael.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.

[Craig Richard]

Compressor does have the capacity to give you a surround mix if you feed it the right information. Your stems (all the channels you want to play from L on one stem, all for C on one stem etc.) you need to output from FCP and label them appropriately. Drop those stems into Compressors Surround and you will get your surround.
Problem, of course, is actually hearing your “mix” while you are doing it – which you can’t do this way.
Firewire carries 6 channel audio, you could use something like a Motu Ultralight via firewire, output to your surround 6 channel in and hear it that way from something like Soundtrack Pro, it’s a little whacky, but it would work.
good Luck.
c

[Marc Buhmann]

That’s what I’ve done Craig. I’ve tried exporting the tracks for each stem (didn’t know the proper term earlier) as mono, stereo and dual channel AIFF files but none of them worked. I really thought a mono version should do the trick. Again, it’s just the left back and right back speakers. And the tracks are being put in the right configuration in Compressor.

Also, just want to thank everyone for the suggestions.

[John Ward]

We’ve had some luck using the ESI Gigaport HD – USB interface, 8 audio outs, headphone out – and mixing in STP with reference video for timing. Not the ideal solution but it got the job done. Link for the Gigaport is here:

https://www.esi-audio.com/products/gigaporthd/

We also used it in FCP using the 5.1 monitoring to get client approval on the basic surround mix done in STP but with the nice big HD footage playing at the same time. Trying to do the same in STP with full HD video playing wasn’t smooth enough.

Since we had a 5.1 receiver sitting here we also just burned tests to a disk image and used the optical out of the workstation to check that the encode worked without wasting disc after disc.

I know there are much more technically accurate and elegant solutions but it got us where we needed to go with the budget we had. Be happy to answer any questions if you have them.

Good luck,

John Ward

Editor / Animator,
Synergetic Productions

john@synergeticproductions.com
https://www.synergeticproductions.com
315.437.7533