-
Export PAL Video for International Broadcast TV with Separate Tracks
Hi all,
I’m delivering a batch of videos for broadcast TV overseas in Europe and we’ve been requested to split the dialogue and music onto different tracks in order for them to dub over the English dialogue. Normally you’d export 4 channel audio, but the dialogue and music are both identical on the Left and Right channels, so it would be easier to deliver a video with 2 mono tracks (one dialogue, one music).
Since we’re dealing with lots of nested sequences, it’s not possible to route the audio via the Track Mixer. What I’ve done so far is export a ProRes .MOV file of the timeline with only the dialogue tracks enabled, resulting in a video with stereo dialogue (but both L and R are identical). Then I exported a stereo .WAV file of the timeline with only the music enabled (again L and R are identical).
Then I brought those two files back in Premiere and lined them up in the timeline: stereo dialogue track on Audio 1, stereo music track on Audio 2. I panned Audio 1 to the left and Audio 2 to the right in the Audio Track Mixer to ensure they’d stay separate in my export.
I need to deliver PAL specs (1080i Upper First, 25 fps, PAL) and also would love to export as “Dual Mono Tracks” instead of Stereo. This way, when previewing the file the dialogue and music will play in the center instead of panned L and R. Also when they bring the file into an editor it will automatically separate the dialogue and music into two tracks.
However, Media Encoder will not let me choose PAL settings while *also* giving me access to the “Audio Channel Configuration” under the Audio Tab for choosing which channels to export. I’m forced to choose one or the other.
For example, compare these two:
Format: H264, under the Video Tab I’m able to choose 25 fps, Upper First, Square Pixels, and PAL for the TV Standard. But when I go to Audio Tab, under AAC, the channel options are either Mono, Stereo, or 5.1. None of those audio options will do what I need.
vs.
Format: Quicktime, under Video Tab, none of the codecs give me the option for PAL as the TV Standard. However, on the Audio Tab, I’m able to set the “Audio Channel Configuration” to two streams of audio, each with 1 channel of output, using channel 1 and 2 respectively as the source as seen here:
This results in a video that when played by Quicktime Player sounds centered channel, but when imported into Premiere it automatically splits the audio across two tracks.
So how can I export a PAL 1080i 25 fps video while also having access to the Audio Settings shown in the photo?
Thank you in advance!
-
3 Replies
-
What are the EXACT delivery specs?
[Daniel Hoover] “Normally you’d export 4 channel audio, but the dialogue and music are both identical on the Left and Right channels, so it would be easier to deliver a video with 2 mono tracks (one dialogue, one music).”
Do you have an M&E track (music and effects) made for the program? They probably want the full stereo mix L-R on 1-2 and M&E only mix L-R on 3-4.
[Daniel Hoover] “also would love to export as “Dual Mono Tracks” instead of Stereo”
This depends on the format. Quicktime stuff can have stereo pairs. MXF OP1A stuff usually uses mono channels for multichannel audio.
-
Thanks for the response, Tero.
That’s the tricky part, they didn’t give us exact delivery specs to use, so I’d like advice on what file type/format/codec to use here. The most detailed info they required of us was HD 16:9 PAL 1080i 50 Hz 8 bit with split tracks for dialogue and music/effects.
Creating split tracks is no big deal, I’m just curious what filetype/format will satisfy those PAL requirements and keep the dialogue/music elements separated on either 4 tracks or each stereo file mixed-down to a mono file each.
I suggested to the station an H264 30 Mbps file, which would make previewing the video for dubbing purposes much easier than an MXF, and the station agreed that would be acceptable. But H264 doesn’t appear to support the Dual Mono Tracks export option that a Quicktime file would.
-
They seem to have no idea what they’re doing so you can do whatever you want.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up