Compressor and 5.1 Mix

[Marc Buhmann]

Upon closer evaluation it looks like the mix is indeed 5.1. The reason I thought it wasn’t though was because the back left and right speakers are a lot quieter than they’re suppose to. When played in FCP in stereo they are quite loud and match everything, but when played on the home theater those speakers are barely audible. Is there a setting I’m missing in Compressor that may be dropping the volume?

[Craig Richard]

We’ve had some confusion with Stereo and Grouped outputs, meaning it sounded like some tracks just dropped out at times, usually when more than 20 tracks had something on them in FCP. I would take all stereo pairs out of the FCP stream, then output your stems, making sure when you output aif only the audible for those stems are on. It’s a pain, but works. I’ve also heard that panning your tracks to the appropriate side or center helps, but that seems not to have any effect here, and shouldn’t really with dolby these days.
You might try to import into DVDSP your ac3 Surround if you have an optical, or pcm adapter for your mac to your surround receiver, you should be able to hear it without burning so many discs.
Good Luck,
CS

[Paige Reitz]

I am hoping to author a DVD with 5.1 surround sound for an upcoming documentary. I have never done this. And, frankly, I’m a little baffled by it. I’m hoping to find any tips and clarity on the workflow.

I have edited my footage in FCP. I exported my audio in OMFs to the audio post house. They returned the files from Pro Tools as .wavs (one mix the standard stereo pair; the other six files for the 5.1 surround, Left, Right, Center, Subwoofer, and Left back, Right back.) That’s all good. I can re-import the .wavs back into FCP and synch up with the 2-pop. Obviously exporting the video and stereo mix is easy, and can be a quicktime export or sent to compressor. No prob. However–the 5.1 files are new for me.

As usual, the web offers a deluge of outdated and conflicting information. From what I can gather, there are two basic workflows:

1) in FCP, go to sequence settings and change from a stereo mix output to a 5.1 discrete channel output. Then export directly to compressor and apply the AC3 setting to the audio and it will then (in theory) recognize the discrete channels and encode them properly to be authored in DVD Studio Pro, which after burning, will be properly decoded and read by a 5.1 sound system.

2) export each channel separately out of FCP (repeat six times for each of the channels). And export the video solo without audio. then open compressor. load the video, apply the “best quality DVD” setting to it to convert to mpeg-2, and then click “add surround sound” button in compressor and then click and assign each channel a file from the six just exported individually. then compress those to AC3.

Overall, seems like workflow number-one is the fastest and most direct if it works, but may not assign the right channel to the right speaker–will the file for center track really replay in the center speaker or come out of the back left speaker? Step two seems to address this with actually selecting individual files and assigning them speaker configuration in Compressor. however, it seems like the repeated exports increase the workflow 6x–plus how do you know you are keeping synch between not only all 6 audio channels but also the video?

Anyway, I could be even more detailed in my questions, but it’s all jibber-jab unless someone has done it successfully. So, as far as I can tell, it’s a super easy workflow; I’m just new to it and would love a few tips on how to do it right.

If you you anything on it, hear anything, or could help connect me to someone with this info, I’d sure appreciate it!

Ian McCluskey
NW Documentary 115 SW Ash St, 620
Portland, OR 97204

— posted via intern Paige

Paige Reitz
NW Documentary
Portland, OR
PReitz@ups.edu

[Craig Richard]

We have had the best luck using your #2, it’s seems to work very well and offers a slight bit more control, and you can hear your surround (if you are set up for it) in DVDSP in the timeline.

[Paige Reitz]

We have had some issues with the sound being off from the video by just one or two frames. Any suggestions on how to avoid this?

Paige Reitz
NW Documentary
Portland, OR
PReitz@ups.edu

[Stephanie Hubbard]

Hello there,

I am but a humble editor/director. My sound guy has given me a 5.1 mix – (on stems) I have dutifully laid it into my FCP timeline – along with the LtRt tracks.

I have researched the ways to output a 5.1 – and followed the directions to give to the “output guy” who was going to use compressor and some other things to burn me a SD dvd with a 5.1 mix.

But problems are occuring:

1) I can’t seem to keep the names of the audio tracks when it outputs – so all eight tracks get called by the same name – so I gave the output guy a key to use.
2) so the Video of the prores output I made with the WRONG audio (it pressed it into stereo) won’t match with the second, 8 track audio only output I made that I thought would solve the problem.
they are all 29.97 but they aren’t synching – I think maybe the “output guy” told either the vid or the aud to be 23.98 or something.

3) I’m trying to render my program again to output with audio again – but frankly I’m worried –
is it even possible to output 5.1 from FCP? does he really need it to stay labelled Should we just make a nice stereo mix?

ADVISE please – to huranghu@gmail.com Thanks!
Stephanie.