Conforming/syncing multichannel audio to audio on timeline

[Shane Ross]

Well, typically this is done in one of two ways.

1) Merge the multichannel audio with the video BEFORE you start cutting, and cut with the multichannel audio.

2) Export an AAF and EDL of the cut with the 1 channel, and the audio house conforms with the master multichannel audio. But you said that it’s not quite lined up? Then a lot of tweaking will have to be done.

There is no way, that I know of, to link the audio automatically to the master audio if you cut with a guide track only. In all the stuff I cut, I cut with the multichannel audio grouped with the video…and put all tracks on the timeline, lowering the volume on the tracks I’m not using.

Shane
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[Jon Gray]

Thanks for the reply Shane
I’ve inherited the project from the offline so option 1 of cutting with the multichannel audio is not possible.
If I match frame/find in bin I see the clip has 5 channels, so ideally I want to ‘expand’ the clip on the timeline
to 5 channels of audio. The clip on the timeline is referencing the master clip in the bin which indicates it has 5
channels of audio. Cutting the extra channels in manually seems a slow way of doing something that MC could
do for you.
My other option is to get Pro Tools to conform the multichannel audio to an EDL I generate from MC.

[Glenn Sakatch]

Just spit ballin…I wonder if you could unlink the clips from the media, modify the clips to be 5 channel audio clips and then relink to the audio recordings? I’ve done it the other way, where I import media from a camera with 8 audio channels, but only two of them have audio, so I’ve modified the clips to only have two audio channels and re linked to the media.

The other method would be to build a macro to do the heavy lifting for you. I have macros on my Avid Control surface and on my old G13 that would swap out audio on a clip by clip basis with the push of one button. Takes a bit to build, but it is definitely doable. for mine it was set to mark a clips inpoint, go to inpoint, match frame, adjust track patching on the timeline and perform an overwrite edit. (a bit simplified, but that was the basis) I used this to go back through a program and add in all the ambience tracks after the edit was done.

I hadn’t tried it, but in theory your macro could also do a “step forward 1 frame” to hit the next clip, and “repeat”, so essentially the press of 1 button could do the entire timeline. For mine, I simply clicked on a clip, hit the macro, clicked on the next clip, hit the macro…you can go through a good sized timeline pretty quickly.

Depending on your sequence layout you could do this on the existing timeline, or create a duplicate, build a timeline of only the 5 channel audio, and then cut that into your existing timeline.

Glenn

[Jon Gray]

Hi Glenn
I understand the theory of both your suggestions but I’ll have to learn how to implement them.
I’m going to see if I can find any online tutorials.

Thanks for your help.

[Glenn Sakatch]

Michael Phillips has some info on his blog.

(Its a good place to start with many Avid questions)

https://24p.com/wordpress/?p=50

Glenn

[Jon Gray]

Thanks Glenn
Jon