XD CAM Audio import

[Andy Mees]

Ling,

When you import from XDCAM through file transfer then you are taking the clip (audio included) as shot and simply moving it to your hard drive.
In its basic format, depending on the kind of XDCAM camera you used and the format that you shot and your method of transfer you may have 2, 4, 6 or 8 channels of discrete mono audio. I suspect that what is happening is that your playback software, or the settings in your NLE are such that each channel of mono audio is being monitored as center panned stereo. For example, this is the default handling for discrete mono audio tracks in Quicktime Player.

Let us know what format of you are shooting and with what camera, how it is you are importing your XDCAM clips and into what platform and NLE, and what application you are then playing these clips back with and / or editing them. With that info it would be easy to address your problem more specifically.

Best wishes
Andy

[Ling Lee]

Andy,

I think I solved the problem.

When I went to audio mixer in FCP and then went to A1/A2, I put the balance of A1 on the very left and the balance on A2 on the very right and then I could see on the master audio meter the difference of right and left. (we recorded one channel with a radio mic and the other with a boom).

It is still a bit weird why i have to do that but at least i saw that the XD CAM Transfer program didn’t import my audio as mono.

Best wishes,
Ling

[Andy Mees]

>It is still a bit weird why i have to do that

Not really Ling,

As noted, if you put mono audio in a stereo track then it will be interpreted as center panned. If you want track separation when dealing with stereo pairs then you have to use the pan controls. Ling, an alternative would be to change your sequence audio pairs to dual mono instead of stereo (Sequence Settings… >> Audio Output tab), then your mono audio tracks would not rely on the pan setting but rather on the audio output channel assignment.

Hope that explains it better.
Best
Andy

[Ling Lee]

Hello Andy,

thank you so much. Changing the audio settings was such an useful advice!

Many thanks,
Ling