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Mastering to HDCAM-SR with a 5.1 Surround Mix + LtRt Stereo
Hi there,
Just had to deliver a commercial for cinema with Premiere, which required me to waddle my way through getting a 5.1/LtRt mix laid down to an HDCAM-SR tape. Working in commercials, I just exclusively output in stereo, until today. So there was a short struggle with how to do this, but it all came up roses in the end.
My first thought was to make a sequence with the master audio track set to 5.1, then do a separate layoff for the stereo mix mapped to outputs 7 and 8. No matter how many times I played with the surround mapping, both in the Audio Mixer tab as well as the system preferences, I could not get the HDCAM-SR deck to see the mapping as I had set it up.
No matter what, on channel 1 was my Left stem, channel 2 was my right stem, channel 3 was Ls, channel 4 was Rs, Channel 5 was Center and Channel 6 was LFE, which was a bit tricky because the only way to get the LFE track to show up was to turn up the LFE knob on its track in the Audio Mixer window. Even then, it would bleed into other channels unless I mapped it to a specific surround slot.
This might be my Blackmagic Decklink card working some mischief, but I have a feeling it’s something in Premiere because I eventually found a workaround that works great and is super easy and flexible to set up. Keep in mind this is for tape layoff only, not for listening in a room to a surround mix.
The following process is dependent on having individual mono surround stems. I’m not sure what the process would be if you had a single surround file, although I suppose you could break it out to mono, as long as you knew which stem was what.
Here goes:
The sequence must be set up with Multichannel audio as the master track. Standard audio tracks work fine for the individual tracks.
In the Audio Mixer Tab in the viewer window, map Tracks 1 and 2 to direct output assigment 1+2, the 3 and 4 to 3+4, and so on.
Pan 1 all the way to the left and 2 all the way to the right. Keep going down the tracks, alternating like this. This will map channel 1 to track 1 of the tape, channel 2 to track 2, etc.
Drop your mono 5.1 stems in whatever order you want and they’ll be broken out into single channels on output.
For your stereo mix, select your stereo mix file (assuming that’s what you’re working with) and in the top menu select Modify > Audio Options > Break Out To Mono. Then drop the resulting LtRt stems into channels 7 and 8 and…
Done!
Hope this helps somebody down the line. I’d love to see a slightly more direct output mapping for these kinds of situations, i.e. a setting that plainly spells out that audio track 1 will get laid down to audio track 1 on the tape, ditto on down the line for all audio channels.
That said, this is a super easy workaround and takes a few seconds to set up. I’m going to look into Audition, which I’ve played with very rarely but really enjoy, to see if maybe outputting a 5.1/LtRt to tape through that software is a little more straightforward.
If anyone would like to add to or correct my workaround, please feel free. I’d love to know if there’s something I should have done differently. Have a good one!
Best,
Jon -
7 Replies
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Thanks very much for posting this.
I would have just used Final Cut Pro to do that, but
good to know it can be done properly through Premiere. -
Unfortunately FCP wasn’t an option. This was a finishing sequence with DPX image sequences in the timeline. FCP can’t play those back.
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Jon, I guess you never came across this in your travels. Glad it worked out for you.
https://www.retooled.net/?tag=premiere-pro-cs6&paged=3
Tom Daigon
PrP / After Effects Editor
http://www.hdshotsandcuts.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxPrG3WUyz8
(Best viewed at 1080P and full screen)
HP Z820 Dual 2687
64GB ram
Dulce DQg2 16TB raid -
Sure didn’t! Thanks for sharing the knowledge Tom. This will be a huge help on the next delivery. Hope your 2013 is off to a good start!
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Glad it could help, Jon.
2013 finds me looking for telecommute edit jobs after being layed off from a facility I worked at for 9 years.Things could be better 😀
Tom Daigon
PrP / After Effects Editor
http://www.hdshotsandcuts.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxPrG3WUyz8
(Best viewed at 1080P and full screen)
HP Z820 Dual 2687
64GB ram
Dulce DQg2 16TB raid -
That’s tough, Tom. Really sorry to hear that. I’m putting some positive vibes out there for you. Hopefully the next job is better than the last!
Jon
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Thanks! 😀
Tom Daigon
PrP / After Effects Editor
http://www.hdshotsandcuts.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxPrG3WUyz8
(Best viewed at 1080P and full screen)
HP Z820 Dual 2687
64GB ram
Dulce DQg2 16TB raid
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