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Unusual stereo to mono audio problem
Hello all,
I have a problem that has driven me up the wall.
We have a big project using dSLR video synced with audio from a field recorder. The field recorder generates stereo .wav files with one channel of audio. Left is the microphone signal. Right is nothing.
One of our editors has somehow deleted the right channel from these stereo pairs. I don’t actually know how.
Now we are in a position where we can’t apply audio filters like Fill Right to pan the audio center because the track is considered mono. However, the audio only plays out of the left speaker. How can we center the audio? I’m on a deadline please help!
Cassidy
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4 Replies
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Try creating a mono submix in the mixer. Send that channel to the mono submix by setting it from “Master” to “submix” and that should merge everything to true mono. Watch out, any stereo tracks will suffer from volume compensation because of the dead right channel, you’ll need to increase their volume by 6db individually.
Off the top of my head, this is the fastest way without doing some reimport magic.
Angelo Lorenzo
Fallen Empire Digital Production Services – Los Angeles
RED transcoding, on-set DIT, and RED Epic rental services
Fallen Empire – The Blog
A blog dedicated to filmmaking, the RED workflow, and DIT tips and tricks -
Thank you Angelo. A submix worked very well. Also makes it easy to double up on the gain when boosting a weak signal!
Do you have a recommendation for dslr + separate stereo audio workflow to avoid this kind of trouble? Should I apply pan filters at the outset? Import as mono tracks? Use submixes?
Thanks
Cassidy
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If it’s something like the H4N recorder, I usually set the recorder to mono if I know I’m only feeding in one mic.
Alternately I would set Premiere to add stereo tracks as mono. Edit > Preferences > Audio, change stereo from “Use File” to “Mono” and you can set that for 5.1 and other multitrack audio. This splits each channel into individual mono files.
If you have a huge mix of mono-as-stereo files, I would just downconvert them in Audition before bringing them into Premiere so they are true mono.
Angelo Lorenzo
Fallen Empire Digital Production Services – Los Angeles
RED transcoding, on-set DIT, and RED Epic rental services
Fallen Empire – The Blog
A blog dedicated to filmmaking, the RED workflow, and DIT tips and tricks -
Try Audio Effects > Fill Left (or Fill Right).
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