[Declan Smith]

If you use the Atomos Samurai, that has an analogue audio input which can take the audio output from the XL-H1. So in short, this will simultaneously record video from HD-SDI, and audio from analogue output and the result is synched audio in a ProRes 422 (or DNxHD) file. No need for an additional device.

Declan Smith
https://www.madpanic.tv
After Effects CS6/ FCS3 / Canon XLH1 / Canon 7D / Reason / Cubase

“it’s either binary or it’s not”

[Declan Smith]

I wouldn’t be without my XL-H1. It’s an unbelievably versatile and flexible camera both with lenses / adapters and more importantly, picture control (and global shutter!!). It’s audio section is simply excellent as well. A very underrated and forgotten camera.

Yes, it’s long in the tooth, but the picture is still incredible, if HD is what you’re after. Just to be clear though, the XL-H1 is a 4:2:2 camera not 4:2:0. The only thing that makes the XL-H1 apparently 4:2:0 is recording to HDV (either tape or firewire).

I use the Atomos Samurai external recorder and record HD-SDI out of the camera which retains the full 4:2:2 signal. I can’t comment on how it will cut with the XA-20 but I have successfully cut in Canon 7D footage (and the XL-H1 picture is better).

It doesn’t natively have the shallow depth of field, but sometimes this alone can be a bonus, especially for event filming, and if that’s really required, I use a lens adapter. Also the EF adapter is great for telephoto (especially wildlife) as the sensor uses the best part of the lens (the middle) and hence the magnification factor.

It’s going to be down to a personal choice, but I have always rated the XL cameras as my favourite, and the XL-H1 being at the top of that tree. You need to be familiar with it’s limitation as well such as low light performance, dynamic range etc. All of these factors will need to be taken into account.

Declan Smith
https://www.madpanic.tv
After Effects CS6/ FCS3 / Canon XLH1 / Canon 7D / Reason / Cubase

“it’s either binary or it’s not”

[Declan Smith]

Hi Mickey,

All upgrades are relative to your starting point. The details of before and after my upgrade are below:

My 2009 MacPro started as this:

Model Name: Mac Pro
Model Identifier: MacPro4,1
Processor Name: Quad-Core Intel Xeon
Processor Speed: 2.26 GHz
Number of Processors: 2
Total Number of Cores: 8
L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
L3 Cache (per Processor): 8 MB
Memory: 24 GB
Processor Interconnect Speed: 5.86 GT/s

With the standard GT 120 video card and the following:
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570:
VRAM (Total): 1280 MB

Following the upgrade:
Model Name: Mac Pro
Model Identifier: MacPro5,1
Processor Name: 6-Core Intel Xeon
Processor Speed: 3.46 GHz
Number of Processors: 2
Total Number of Cores: 12
L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
L3 Cache (per Processor): 12 MB
Memory: 64 GB
Processor Interconnect Speed: 6.4 GT/s

With graphics card:
NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN
VRAM (Total): 6144 MB

Declan Smith
https://www.madpanic.tv
After Effects CS6/ FCS3 / Canon XLH1 / Canon 7D / Reason / Cubase

“it’s either binary or it’s not”

[Declan Smith]

With regards to your title “or other program”. It may be worth looking at affinity photo. It’s healing is extremely good

Declan Smith
https://www.madpanic.tv
After Effects CS6/ FCS3 / Canon XLH1 / Canon 7D / Reason / Cubase

“it’s either binary or it’s not”

[Declan Smith]

NLE’s always throw up problems at some point but there are usually solutions or workarounds. ffmpeg and sox are extremely capable tools and coupled with scripting can be very powerful and solve many ‘codec’ or batch type operations.

ffmpeg can convert between AVCHD (.MTS) files and MOV and use external audio, all in one command line. For example:

ffmpeg -i 00004.MTS -i 00004-8ChannelMerged.WAV -channel_layout mono -vcodec h264 -acodec copy 00004.mov

This will result in a H.264 Quicktime file with 8 channels of audio.

I appreciate it can be a bit of a minefield and you will end up with quicktime files, but that is no problem for Premiere Pro. In the command line above I elected to use h264 codec instead of prores in the previous example.

Declan Smith
https://www.madpanic.tv
After Effects CS6/ FCS3 / Canon XLH1 / Canon 7D / Reason / Cubase

“it’s either binary or it’s not”

[Declan Smith]

Hi

Welcome to the joys of bad multichannel audio support! I had a similar project, although I needed to merge 5 separate audio tracks into the video. The result is the same. Premiere just fails miserably to do it properly. What I did is step outside the NLE and use standalone tools to create the merged clips. You will need to ensure that your audio clip is trimmed such that it’s start point lines up with the start of your video clip.

In my case I had to use two free tools.

1. sox – This allowed me to merge my 5 standalone sound files into a single multichannel audio file.
2. ffmpeg – This allowed me to merge my multichannel sound file with my video file.

I see you are running on windows. I’m using a Mac, but ffmpeg should be available for Windows. Below is the command line I used to do the audio merge.

S002-1.MOV – Video File with embedded audio which I will be throwing away (already in my merged audio file)
S002-1_5CH.WAV – Merged 5 channel audio file

ffmepg -i S002-1.MOV -i A_S002-1_5CH.WAV -channel_layout mono -vcodec prores -acodec copy S002-1_mc.MOV

This results in the merged file called S002-1_mc.MOV

When this file is imported into premiere it is correctly interpreted and the adaptive setting is available.

This has been the only way I was able to reliably create merged video clips quickly.

Declan Smith
https://www.madpanic.tv
After Effects CS6/ FCS3 / Canon XLH1 / Canon 7D / Reason / Cubase

“it’s either binary or it’s not”

[Declan Smith]

I would need to see a screenshot of your channel assignments (the right click Audio Channels window). The only left & right I ever see is when I set the channel format to stereo, but this still allows me to change the source channel from say 1&2 to 3&4 on the left hand side.

Try setting one of your source audio files as below

drag it to the timeline then see if the right -click Audio channels function shows the same as above (it should do)

Declan Smith
https://www.madpanic.tv
After Effects CS6/ FCS3 / Canon XLH1 / Canon 7D / Reason / Cubase

“it’s either binary or it’s not”

[Declan Smith]

Hi

There are a number of things going on. To be able to have a single adaptive track with multiple audio channels you will also need to make sure that your sequence is set to multi-channel. This can start to make things a little odd, and how to set up your audio mix will depend on your desired workflow.

Lets start with the basic setup, to be able to drop a single multi-channel audio file on the timeline and have access to all channels simultaneously.

1. Ensure that the audio channel setup for the clip is set to adaptive. The example I have used is an audio file with 7 channels.
Before – Audio file has 7 channels but if dragged to the timeline, would cause 7 separate audio channels.

After – Select Adaptive, the rest of the settings should be automatic.

2. Now create a sequence that will use multi-channel audio. When creating the sequence, select the tracks tab, then change the Audio Master from stereo to multi-channel. Select the maximum number of channels you expect (you can change this later if you really have to, but it’s best to do it now)

3. Now drag your file onto the timeline. If you right click it, you will see all your channels. You will notice that when you play the timeline, multiple channels are displayed in the mixer windows. If you only have a stereo sound card you will only hear what is on channel 1&2 (stereo) and the other channels ail simply light up like a pretty christmas tree.

4. If you want to hear all your channels at the same time on the same left and right, then click on the channel assignment button then in the drop down select the channel(s) you want to output:

The main problem with this approach is that you don’t have separate control over each of the channels, they all act as one unit. So any effects you apply apply to all the channels, and volume you change applies to all channels. I prefer using two channels (standard) and specifying exactly which ones I want to use. If I happen to need more then I make a copy on the timeline and select the additional channels.

e.g.

Initially setup as two channels, defaulting to 1 & 2

Now drag it on the timeline and you will have a single stereo pair. Let’s say you want tracks 5 &6. Right click and change the audio channels as below:

I also tend to use mono tracks because generally speaking when you come to your sound mix, each file will need to be treated discretely, such as gain / volume, perhaps EQ etc which is why I tend not to use the adaptive setup.

Declan Smith
https://www.madpanic.tv
After Effects CS6/ FCS3 / Canon XLH1 / Canon 7D / Reason / Cubase

“it’s either binary or it’s not”

[Declan Smith]

Alex,

Copy and pasting attributes between the clips does work. You can even select multiple clips and change the channels together. Changing channels later is trivial. In practice for example, one of the tracks could be boom and the rest LAVs so choosing which ones would be done at the audio mixing stage. This workflow would expect that the selection of the channels would be done within the premiere pro session however. Any clips that may require more than one of its audio channels should be copied and assigned (as I pointed out by right clicking in the timeline) so that they are available as independent channels.

In general though this method allows for a simpler timeline, particularly while assemble editing, and for a large part through fine cut. I tend to only duplicate the audio if I need more than one channel from a clip.

It’s not clear from the question whether the audio mixing is intended to be done within Premiere or not. If external using OMF exporting, premiere renders out the selected channel that is assigned so in effect, you get what’s needed in the OMF export (with the caveat that channel selection is done first in premiere).

Of coarse, another way of doing this is to change the channel type to adaptive. This still gives the simpler timeline whilst keeping all channels enabled and available for export to OMF. It would also mean you would hear them all in the edit unless you specially changed the active channels per track, or disabled them in the assignment (when that is done, they also would be silent in the export). The issue with a single adaptive track is that plugins / attributes will affect all the channels contained in the adaptive track which is why I tend to select mono track with the assigned channel and duplicate if necessary.

I have found with adaptive tracks that some of the behaviours can be inconsistent. For example exporting adaptive tracks to Audition, one of the integrated applications, results in just one channel being used but exporting to OMF and then opening with Audition is similar to using say Logic Pro and does work as expected!

Generally my preferred approach is to set the channel type to mono and select the source per clip as described during the edit, but the workflow does depend on the editing / audio post workflow that is utilised and to some extent, the source material. Multichannel working, at least in CS6, does require some management upfront.

Declan Smith
https://www.madpanic.tv
After Effects CS6/ FCS3 / Canon XLH1 / Canon 7D / Reason / Cubase

“it’s either binary or it’s not”

[Declan Smith]

I would suggest that on your source clip, right click then select modify->audio channels.

This will bring up a configuration dialog box showing all the existing channels.

Set the number of channels to 1 (I assume you are working mono), and channel format to Mono. Then in the lower pane, you will see a drop down selection for the source channel. Set this to whatever channel you wish to use, this can be changed later. Click ok, and you’re done here.

Now drag the clip to the timeline and it should only take up one channel. If you need to change the source, right click on the clip in the timeline and select “Audio Channels”. This will bring up the selection dialog as before and you can now choose any of the four channels.

e.g.

If you later decide that you want two of the channels for a particular clip that is already on the timeline, then make a copy of the audio clip and then change the source channel of the copy to the desired other channel, hence providing two independent tracks.

Declan Smith
https://www.madpanic.tv
After Effects CS6/ FCS3 / Canon XLH1 / Canon 7D / Reason / Cubase

“it’s either binary or it’s not”