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reducing 4 audio tracks to 1
I Have a sound recordist that is recording 4 tracks however my editor only wants to work with 1 mono mixdown of the 4 tracks. I could mixdown but I would loose the metadata and so Sound Post would have no reference to get to the 4 iso tracks.
Does anyone know the workflow for this?
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4 Replies
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Typically the mix track and the ISO tracks are already part of the BWF file being imported into the system. They are not created afterwords. Media Composer has no facility to create a mixdown track with relational reference to the original source and maintain all source metadata.
A 4 track recorder will allow 3 ISO and a mixdown, while an 8 track recorder will do 7 ISO and 1 mix. Is this not what the on set audio person did?
Michael
Michael Phillips
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The normal workflow would be for the editor to use all 4 useful tracks.
Why would s/he want to do something different? -
Well yes and no, depending on overall workflow. Different strokes for different folks. It is easier to deal with the mix track when there are ISO mikes on each character, or one for boom, and some for lav’s etc. The editor will work with the mix until scuh a time that they want to go to the ISO for whatever reason. Also reduced the number of tracks needed, track patching etc, during the initial creative edirorial phase. This is also common when there is a separate sound editing team (dialog editor) who is going to go and do all that smoothing out and replacement as needed anyway.
Michael
Michael Phillips
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Basically you have summed it up Michael. Cutting with a 1 track mix makes it much easier for an editor to work, some insist on this, alot dont. Our recordist had only a 4 track in his budget and to do so would mean he has to work with 3 tracks and the 4th is reserved for our mix, something he was not prepared to do. In the end I did come up with a few work arounds only to find out they found money in the budget for an 8 track recorder and its now sorted. FYI if you are interested in boring tech talk read on , if not, go frolic in the sun,
I used quicktime pro to make a mono mix. i imported the recordist bwav into the Avid then deleted the media. I unlinked the clips and batch import to the Quicktime mono mix. now I have a clip with the meta data from the recordist that has mono sound. I would then have synched up A1 with picture. When locked off I would unlinked again and batch imported back to the sound recordist audio.
For delivery I would have had to checker board the editors cut and add in the other 3 tracks of audio into the cut for the sound post guys(something that would have happened anyway).
Nb there must be plenty of ways to automate the quicktime pro mixdown part.
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