Understanding audio requirements for broadcast (A1, A2, A3, A4)

[Justin Crowell]

It’s really bizarre that I just found this thread, because this is EXACTLY what I’m doing right now. We are an audio post facility, however, so we did all of our mixes in Pro Tools and are now just doing laybacks in FCP.

My question is: Our mixes are all prepped for broadcast levels (the broadcaster gave us the exact voice vs M+E info). Under “Audio Outputs” in Sequence settings, do I want to make A1/A2 (full mix) and A3/A4(M&E) both stereo pairs or dual mono? Do I want to set my Downmix Db to 0, or off?

This site makes me think I should be doing dual mono, as my levels are all set and should basically be passed through: https://blog.abelcine.com/2009/02/05/final-cut-pro-stereo-downmix-confusion/

To your question about QT conversion: that is used if converting the sequence to something other than the sequence compressor. So, you’d use this if you were prepping for web with H.264, or transcoding to something like XDCAM or something that the layback house is looking for (these days Prores is almost always adequate). Most transcoding will cause a drop in quality, so only do it if you need to.

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