SD 633: working with poly wav and iso files.

[Ty Ford]

Hello Jonathan and welcome to the Cow AUdio Forum.

I have a Sound Devices 664. I set it to PolyWav.

When I record, I get however many ISO tracks plus a two-mix. So in your situation, three inputs, three iso tracks. Plus a two channel mix (either dual mono or stereo)that goes out the main output to camera.

When I import that polywav file into FCP, it comes in as 5 tracks. From the top down; the two mix followed by the three iso tracks.

I have never tried to name them in the 664 or in FCP. I just know what they are. I don’t know if FCP can handle that sort of meta data, perhaps it can.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Ty Ford
Cow Audio Forum Leader

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[Jonathan Levin]

Hi Ty.

That was about the clearest explanation I have come across. Thank you so much.

Since this is a new machine for me, and I’m coming from mostly using my Shure FP33, I’ve decided to run a few tests. This might be long, but maybe it will help someone else.

Tests were run with Wav Poly, Wav Poly (ISO only), Wav Mono, and Wav Mono (ISO only). I had a Lav going in Channel/input 1 of the mixer and a Shotgun in channel/input 2. The files were there imported into Final Cut 10.2.1 for evaluation.

1) Poly Wav- For this test I panned channel 1 hard left and channel 2 hard right. I also recorded what I was recording into, Lav or shotgun to help identify. In FCP, when I imported the file, I have four tracks on top of each other, top being labeled “Mono 1”, second down “Mono 2”, third down “Mono 3” and bottom track “Mono 4”

At this point I was a bit confused, but soon realized that Mono 1 and Mono 2 are the “L/R” mix tracks. Mono 3 is my Lav and Mono 4 is the Shotgun. So got that sorted out. I also realized that Mono 1 and 2 can be disabled, leaving only the Lav (Mono 3) and the Shotgun (Mono 4), to be mixed any way I’d like.

Unbelievable cool!!!

2) Second test same as above, but I had the pan on the mixer set to center for both the Lav and Shotgun to see what that did. Interestingly, I had three track in FCP. Top track called “Audio 3” my Lav, second track down “Audio 4” my Shotgun. The third track is a bit of a mystery, it is called “Auto-detect Stereo”. Don’t know what that is, unless it is some kind of mix, but you can’t “expand” it in FCP.

So it looks like planning and panning is the way to go if you want the true L/R mix, and the individual channels/inputs from mixer.

3 and 4) Poly Wav (ISO only)- kind of what I expected. In my case no L/R mix, just “Channel 1” corresponding to the Lav and “Channel 2” corresponding to the Shotgun. In one test, I hard panned like the above, and the 4th test I centered all on mixer. Interestingly, all files and their tracks import into FCP X as panned center.

To take less time, I did run tests on Wav Mono, with panning variations as above, and also Wav Mono (ISO only) with the panning variations. What I ended up with were a whole bunch of individual audio tracks that would need to be brought in one at a time to a Project in FCP X. To much work.

Conclusion, I really like the Poly wave, since it gives you the mix AND the individual channels from the mixer. I can simply choose not to use (disable) the mix and work only with those ISO(?) in post.

My only wish is that the names that I set up on the SD 633 channels would carry over to FCP. That would make identification a little easier. But I kind of get how the hierarchy works. If anyone has a way to get that to work, I’d like to know.

The Mono files are to scary for me now.

On to test XLR mic level out from mixer to mic-in on Nikon DSLR to record scratch track for syncing.

I hope this helps.

Jonathan

[Ty Ford]

Jonathan,

Thanks for the intrepid tour. I’m sure we all got something useful out of it!

Regards,

Ty Ford
Cow Audio Forum Leader

Want better production audio?: Ty Ford’s Audio Bootcamp Field Guide
Ty Ford Blog: Ty Ford’s Blog