Breaking out Audio tracks to Mono

I am recording with both a shotgun (left channel) and Lav (right channel) microphones and the final product will be delivered as mono using one channel or the other, how do I make one channel mono while stilll retaining the other channel so I can switch back and forth between them on the timeline if needed?
thanks!

Using "Fill Left" or "Fill Right" is kind of a "last resort" effect, that can be useful if you've already done a bunch of edits in a sequence and realize you need to quickly map only one of the audio channels to output. The downside is that if you use any kind of normalizing, the louder of the two tracks will be normalized (even if it is the track you have effectively disabled by choosing the Fill Right or Fill Left effect...the waveform is used here, and it remains in the sequence).
You have also removed one of your audio channels by using this method. You could, of course, cut the clips in the sequence and change the Fill effect as you go along, depending on which channel you want to use. This is rather cumbersome though, and part of why the Fill effects are more of a last resort in a way.
By using "Map Channel" you avoid the waveform/normalizing issue. However, you are PERMANENTLY stuck with only one of the audio channels (L or R, whichever you select) and the clip in the sequence will only be the one channel, just mapped to both L and R channels.
By using "Breakout to Mono" you have a full mono clip that you can use on the timeline. The waveform/normalizing will work correctly, and you'll actually have an easier-to-view waveform on the timeline as well (at any given track height), if that is important to you.
MY BEST RECOMMENDATION for what you need, and assuming you are just starting this project (and not in the middle of the edit already), you could use "Breakout to mono" on your source clip, then create a sequence for that clip (and any other clips that share the same audio properties and destination).
In that sequence, lay the two mono clips on separate tracks. NOW...you can drop this sequence into your MASTER sequence, right click and select "Multicam > Enable" and now you can switch back and forth between your two audio channels as you go along with using either the multicam monitor, or cutting manually in the clip and right clicking to select which channel audio you need.
Hopefully that makes sense...that's the way I'd probably do it, as you retain all the original clip inforamtion in the original sequence if you ever need to go back and apply a global effect to everything...and you don't have to enable/disable the "Fill Right" and "Fill Left" effects as you go throughout your sequence.
Hope this helps!!

Similar Messages

Break in audio track

I have tried three times to compile a DVD of a slide show with two audio tracks made into a playlist. When I preview the completed slideshow before burning it runs as I want it to but at precisely the same point in all of the 3 slideshows (they have a different iTunes playlist which suggests to me that it is not the audio track?) I have burned to disk, there is a momentary break in the audio which spoils the finished product. Each time I have used the same type of DVD, should I use another from a different box in case there is something wrong with the whole lot? Or is it something to do with the iPhoto image that is at that place in the slide show? Can anyone help please?

My problem is that I'm checkerboarding a discussion; lowering the level on the person who isn't speaking when they're silent. Changes to volume aren't likely to be global but to follow the back and forth of the discussion. Someone who's excited might interject at a high volume then lower that volume when they have the floor. That adjustment in volume often spans a cut from one camera to another. Ideally, the audio track would be continuous and not chopped up into little pieces. I'm beginning to think that the only solution is to detach the audio.

Exporting mono audio tracks as mono audio tracks with video tracks

hello,
i'm working with dv pal 48 khz digitized files. when i import the files into fcp7, i have a video track and 4 different mono audio tracks. my plan is to modify each individual mono track, after exporting each as aif, editing them, and then importing them back as aif. the problem is that when i've built a sequence with 1 video track and 4 different mono audio tracks, there doesn't seem to be a way to end up with 4 different mono audio tracks like the original, it appears that the only option is to end up with 2 stereo tracks. can someone help me with this, which i'm sure is a very odd problem?
kind regards,
charlie

If you are editing the audio with Soundtrack Pro you can use the "send to" command. It will send your project as a multi-track file so that each track can be editited independently or you can add elements to all four.
If you have Logic, add it to the "external audio editors" list and you can use it in the same way as STP.
x

Break out to Mono question

Hey all..
I've got a wierd one here...
When i break out a clip to mono, there's two extra .wav files that get created.
When i put these two wave files on the timeline, they are abutted one against the other, rather than dropped down on separate mono tracks.
I stumbled, by accident, that if i drop the original .AVI, which had the mono option applied, then everything's fine..Audio gets placed on two separate mono tracks.
Alright. Everything works backwards. I can live with that.
I get two extra .wav files in the source bin, and the original .AVI can now have 2 mono clips.
But what i don't understand, is why do both mono files on the timeline each play in stereo??
Shouldn't a mono file only play out through one speaker?
Just to give you a head's up, i'm using a Matrox RT.x2 card, and it saves a separate .wav file upon capture...
Thanks...

I videotaped on two separate channels on my XHA1...Channel 1 and 2. Ambient and soundboard direct. You can see by the waveform, after "breakout to mono".
So, again, yes, when i mute any of the audios, they come through as stereo on my speakers. I just find it odd.
And what's even more wierd...
All my .AVI's are now breaking out to mono?
I've created a monster
What i don't understand then, is what purpose does this serve, if i can do it all within the stereo track??

Dead audio tracks generated after subclip created

I've had some issues relating to audio tracks in Premiere Pro CC. I'm currently editing a collection of shorts, shot on Red Epic at 5k, with a stereo guide track recorded to camera. After syncing the audio (4 channels), I removed the guide tracks then subclipped the vision and audio by selecting both, grouping them and then dragging them into a bin in the project window. Here's where it gets tricky.
When I place the new subclips on the timeline they suddenly have around 16 tracks of audio. So one track of sound, followed by 3-4 dead tracks with no sound, then 1 track of audio followed again by another 3-4 tracks of dead air (and so forth). At first I just saw this as a minor nuisance and continued to edit. Once finished I exported OMFs for the sound mixer who brought it into protools. What was a 16 track timeline in premiere has now become a 64 track project in pro tools. It seems again, each actual track of audio has had around 4 dead tracks added to it. Sure the math may be a little off but you get the gist. The issue is on Premiere's end as I've tried a couple of times now to resync the audio, create a subclip but every time it seems to generate a whole bunch of dead audio channels. Really can't figure this one out. Please help.
Working on a brand new iMac, OSX 10.8.4, 3.4GHz Intel Core i7, 16 GB DDR3, GTX 680MX

This exact same thing is happening to me. This "feature" is exponentially duplicating empty tracks. Clearly this is a bug in the code designed to break merged stereo tracks out into individual mono tracks. These are not empty stereo tracks. They are recorded as mono tracks with audio in them but being "split" into multiple tracks, one with audio and the rest are blank. The problem is that Premiere is treating ALL tracks as stereo and creating a number of new, empty tracks for EACH track equal to the total number of tracks when you use the Merge Clip feature.
i.e. If I have 3 tracks of audio that I merge into a clip, it creates 3 tracks for each of those three tracks, resulting in 9 total tracks (3 with audio and 6 empty ones). 4 tracks in a merged clip creates 16 tracks, 5 tracks creates 25, etc.
I have tested this with stereo and mono tracks in a merged clip and the results are the same. I got interesting results when I merged stereo and mono tracks into the same clip. I had a single stereo track and 5 mono tracks. "Merge clip" turned this into 27 tracks. 5x5 mono tracks plus the original stereo track that was split into 2 mono tracks, making 27.
HOWEVER
This phenomenon has not occurred on every single clip in the film I am currently working on; rather, it has only occurred on most of them.
Specifically, this only seems to be occurring when merging clips including multi-track .wav files. There were a few scenes where the sound guy only recorded the two actors with lavs onto a single stereo track, with the actors split between the L and R channel. When the stereo track is merged it correctly makes two mono tracks out of the L and R channels. But every single clip I have come across since then where he also added the boom mike or a channel for a third actor, I get exponential track city.
The conclusion I have come to is that Premiere is recognizing these multi-track .wav files as separate mono tracks when you drop them on the timeline, but the "Merge Clip" feature is mistakenly reading each track in a multi-track .wav files as a "single multi-channel track" that needs to be broken up. I say "single multi-channel-track" because there isn't a word for it that I am aware of. A single track with two channels is called "stereo" but it is like Premiere is reading the four mono tracks as a single track with four channels, but then making it worse by thinking EACH track has a number of channels equal to the number of "channels" it thinks are in the track.
So again, it reads each track in a four track clip as a single track with four channels, then breaks each "channel" into four separate tracks, thus creating the exponential increase in the number of empty tracks. (3 tracks become 9, 4 becomes 16, 5 becomes 25, etc).
Going into "Modify -> Audio Channels" is a lame workaround because I shouldn't have to painstakingly go through every clip in a movie just to manually turn off tracks that shouldn't exist. Presets, as suggested, are only somewhat useful because the positions of the real audio isn't always placed on the same tracks. Their location is also dependent on the number of tracks being created. When four tracks are merged, the audio is located on tracks 1,6,11, 16 while the audio for 5 merged tracks is on 1, 7, 13, 19, & 25, with 6 tracks it is placed on 1, 8, 15, 22, 29, & 36. So the only way for me to know which tracks to suppress on any given clip is for me to open up the clip and visually determine how many actual tracks there are and which ones to delete. This is crazy. To go back and fix this after I've synced everything will probably take me days of work. If I had known about this before I synced everything it wouldn't have been as hard to determine how many tracks each clip had as I synced it. But I shouldn't have had to in the first place. This shouldn't be happening.
This is not a feature, it is a bug. Period.
Clearly, this could not have been intentionally designed, but it is a serious and crippling error in the way the program is interpreting the tracks with the code that was intended to just break out stereo channels into mono. Perhaps it is a miscue between the way the recording device encodes the multi-track .wav file and the way Premiere reads it. I don't know. I do know that the audio I am working with was recorded on two separate professional recording devices by two different pro sound guys in Hollywood so this isn't some amateur mistake. It is easily doubling the amount of work I have to do with my footage/audio before I can start to work with it.
Somebody needs to take another look at that code and fix this as soon as possible.
(Does this make any sense or do I need to clean this up for clarification?)
Damon Mosier

Stereo vs. Mono Audio Tracks - Why?

I tink one of the most annyoying features of Premiere is the way it handles audio tracks. I'm curious if this is just me or if anyone else out there is bothered by the same thing.
I work on a kids' show that has lots of music, sound effects and often 4 different mics for the actors at the same time. Since I record 2 mics on each cam (R and L), I like to import everything as mono clips so it breaks up my audio and I can label who's on what layer/track.
Sometimes I end up with 20 different audio tracks. Not because I NEED 20 layers, but because some of my SFX and music come in as stereo and others as mono and I can't put a mono-clip on a stereo clip or vice versa. This is the part that drives me crazy. I might need to add a 1-second swoosh SFX for some text coming in and I've got to go to layer 12 (scrolling way down), when just below the video there are 11 empty layers "available" but can't be used because they won't accept placement of that track because it's in stereo when the clip is mono. Make sense? So, really, instead of needing 20 tracks, I could EASILY get by with 10 IF Premiere had a way of not being so picky about whether a track is stero or mono and could just handle whatever you dish at it.

Maybe I have just used PrPro long enough, that I accept the Audio Tracks and channel-count. It makes perfect sense to me, but then maybe I am missing something important. If one does not have the necessary Audio Track, PrPro will create one for you.
This ARTICLE goes into much more detail.
Only thing that I would like changed, is the ability to drag Audio Tracks up/down, like on many DAW's. Otherwise, there is a little "dance," that needs to be done, to organize Audio Tracks.
Good luck,
Hunt

How to delete 4 out of 6 audio tracks that were captured into FCP?

I accidentally left all the mono tracks setting on while capturing video and audio media files. I would like to know how to get rid of 4 out of the 6 tracks other than when the clip is cut into a sequence then I delete the extra tracks.
PowerPC G5 4x 2.5 GHz Mac OS X (10.4.6) Kona card

I've never tried this, so I'm not sure of the gotchas you might need to overcome, but if you open the media file in QuickTime Player (Pro), and go to Window > Show Movie Properties, you can delete any of the audio tracks you care to, by dragging them to the Trash, or click Delete, or choose Edit > Cut, or press Delete.
I'm thinking that if you go that route, you might need to delete the clip in the Browser first, make the changes in QTPP, then Import that media file into the Browser. Otherwise, FCP might complain about the track deletions.
Or maybe after making those changes in QTPP, Export as a different filename and Import that file into the FCP Browser, keeping the original as is. Just guessing.
But I repeat: I've never tried this.

Audio tracks mysteriously go out of pitch

This relates to my earlier question:
My operating system and Logic Pro application are on my iMac and, my project/songs are on my external hard drive.
I found that when I connect my external hard drive to a different computer; Mac G4,at another studio, my audio (vocal) tracks have gone out of pitch however, on most occassions are still in correct original pitch.
I have also found that when I reconnect my external hard drive back to my iMac that the audio tracks are out of pitch on some occassions but, still in original pitch most of the time.
I compensated using a mono plug in set at -97, this corrected the problem to some degree.
Quite mysteriously, the audio tracks re set themselves back to the original true pitch without any logical reason.
I note: I did not adjust the tempo of the project as Im aware this would cause this type of problem.
So far, this is a mystery, quite worrying if Ive taken my external hard drive to another studio and found I can not use my tracks because of this unusual problem.

If I burn a CD I usually change from 44.1 to 16 bit, not sure if this caused the problem ?
a simple explanation of what's sample rate and bit rate:
http://www.tweakheadz.com/16vs_24_bitaudio.htm

One song in audio track breaking up

I have an entire video complete. One song in particular that I have imported keeps giving me problems. It's breaking up (almost sounds like a cell phone). It's downloaded from iTunes. I put it in as an audio clip and shortened it. When I play the video, the first time, it does okay. After that, the first time the song starts, but then starts cutting out and eventually you hear nothing, then it will come back in. If you try it again, you may not hear anything, then it the audio will come back at a different point than last time. I've tried deleting the song from the audio track and bringing it back. Same problem. No other song has this problem. When I share the movie to iDVD, it does the same thing.
Any ideas?

Only one audio file can be used in a Lightroom slideshow.
You'll have to combine multiple songs into a single audio file (e.g. using Audition) then use the single audio file in the Lightroom slideshow.
For more flexibility, you can use commercial software such as ProShow Web, Gold or Producer which comes with a free Lightroom plugin
ProShow Gold - Create Fast and Fun Photo Slideshows
ProShow Web - Instant Photo and Video Slideshows from your Mac or PC
Plug-ins for ProShow

Using MONO sources on audio tracks, is anyone else seeing buggy performance

When recording guitar or vocals they are mono tracks so I try to bring them in as mono into L8.
I am noticing a few different problems that happen VERY regularly, and I was wondering if anyone else was seeing these issues. I know that the word 'bug' is frowned at if it is user error, and in this instance, they clearly are behaving as bugs.
1) Sometimes when I create a new mono audio track, it does not come out of both speakers, EVEN THOUGH the output track is showing it going out of both.
2) If I click the little stereo/mono button on the track to switch back and forth, many times it stops playing audio altogether, and doesn't switch between the single meter or the dual meter. It gets stuck on the dual.
3) If I create a mono to stereo plugin, audio many times just comes out one side OR not at all processed, like it is bypassing the effect altogether. iZotope seems to have this problem the most.
I never know which problem I am going to get. The worst is when the audio just stops coming out altogether, but it is very frustrating for using MONO sources.
I have tested and tested and tested this to make sure I was not doing something stupid. Has anyone else experimented with this? Are you seeing this as well?

Yep, just fired up my feature film that I went through and perfected the audio levels a couple weeks ago and now they are all screwed up. The levels are not what they were two weeks ago.
Maybe this is a Limiter effect bug.

In logic Pro, when I open up an audio track and load an audio file, there is no sound. I will finally get a sound out of one of the audio tracks after opening at least 5 of them alternately. Is anyone familiar with this kind of bug? It's really frustratin

In logic Pro, when I open up an audio track or software track and load an audio file/loop or software file loop, there is no sound. I will finally get a sound out of one of the audio or software tracks after opening at least 5 of them alternately. Is anyone familiar with this kind of bug? It's really frustrating as this takes much time to complete work.
os x, Mac OS X (10.6)

I'm not sure I follow your words Fuzzynormal. You've helped by offering the insight that my issue in Logic Pro 9 is not a bug but a feature. But fell short of enlightenment by being a judge of character and of how one should interact in this forum. You insinuate that I haven't tried to solve the issue on my own when in fact I have. These forums are always my last resort. You further suggest that I am complaining. This is not a complaint. It is a genuine issue that I cannot figure out. Then you think that Brazeca is holding my hand and being a nice guy. Brazeca is helping people like me who might not be as adept at using Logic Pro as probably you are.This community forum was established to raise questions, answers and dicussion to help Apple's customers better undertand their operating systems and related issues. You are doing a disservice by not contributing positively and by trying to make this forum what you want it to be. You may have all the time in the world to try figuring out stuff but we are not all like you. We all have different schedules and different levels of understanding. And that is what this forum is for - to help people move forward. If you can't contribute positively then keep silent. And by the way, you say to "read the words that are printed down to explain to you how that works" what words are you talking about? Why don't you be of some help instead of trying to own this forum.

Global changes on an audio track or between in and out

I've come over from Avid and on Avid I could set an in an out point on an audio track and then changes the values of volume and pan which would then be changed between the in and out points. I'm editing an interview and the radio mic channel has flipped over to one side and I want it in the middle and cannot get it to stay there. I know that I can "write" in the audio mixer and just hold it there for hours, but I'm assuming there is a simpler way. I know about paste attributes but it's not clear what I'm copying and where I'm pasting those attributes. It would be far simpler if I could just select the audio track, set it the way I want it and tell it not to change for the duration. Any ideas?
Thanks

At the lower left of the timeline, there's a button that looks sort of like an upside down V. Click it- the clip overlays. You'll see red lines appear on your audio tracks. Grab the pen tool. Using it, you can click on the red rubber band lines to place key frames where you want. in your case, click once where you want your audio to begin fading out, then click again where you want the fade to end. On this last point, drag the keyframe all the way down, vertically.
As mentioned earlier, you can do this in the viewer as well - using the pen tool.

Audio Tracks Out of Sync?!

I opened up one of my projects today and started playback and everything was all over the place, out of sync.
the project consists of acoustic guitar, electric guitar and two vocal audio tracks plus a b4 organ track and an ultrabeat drum track.
i shuffled things around to get them back to normal, moving my audio regions around a bit until it sounded right. i ended up messing pretty much everything up so i used the command to move all audio regions to original location.
the drums were still out of sync and off tempo, even. i wondered if i had messed with the tempo and not remembered so i started playing with it trying to get it to match.
i quickly discovered that if i adjust the tempo at all, my audio tracks/ regions fall out of sync again. this makes no sense to me whatsoever, and i'm kind of worried i may have a corrupt project or something.
does anyone know what this may be and how to fix it????? thanks.

X-man is correct. This behavior isn't unique to Logic either.
Let's say your sequence is at 60 BPM. That's 1 beat every second. You record 4 tracks, each with an individual hit of a drum and nothing else:
Track 1: Kick on beat 1 - heard at zero seconds
Track 2: Snare on beat 2 - heard at 1 second
Track 3: Kick on beat 3 - heard at 2 seconds
Track 4: Snare on beat 4 - heard at 3 seconds
Now you change the tempo to 120 BPM. That's 1 beat every 1/2 second. Because you've got these individual sounds recorded on separate tracks, their playback will occur more quickly. In fact, twice as fast:
Track 1: Kick on beat 1 - heard at zero seconds
Track 2: Snare on beat 2 - heard at 1/2 second
Track 3: Kick on beat 3 - heard at 1 second
Track 4: Snare on beat 4 - heard at 1 1/2 seconds
This is not time compression. Changing the tempo from 60 to 120 simply causes the individual recordings to play back sooner relative to bar 1/beat1. In this case, half as much time elapses between the playback of each sound.
IT'S A WHOLE DIFFERENT STORY if this kick/snare pattern is contained in a single audio recording, because the spacing of the kicks and snares is frozen in time within the recording.
Let's say you record kick/snare/kick/snare as a single piece of audio at 60 BPM...
a) if the recording is made at bar 1/beat 1, no matter what the tempo of the sequence is changed to at a later time, this recording will be always be 'anchored' at bar 1 beat 1.
b) if the recording was made at bar 4/beat 1 (that's 4 seconds in from bar 1, beat 1) and then you change the tempo to 120 BPM, the timing of the drum sounds in the recording won't move relative to one another, but what will move is WHEN IN TIME that recording is triggered to play back. In this case, doubling the tempo is going to make that region trigger still play back on bar 4, but you get to bar 4 twice as fast at 120 BPM than you do at 60 BPM!! So the region will play back after 2 seconds have elapsed (from bar 1).
HOW TO GET AROUND THIS:
There's a key command called "Lock Regions to SMPTE Postion" (do a search for "SMPTE" or "Lock" in the key commands window). When you select regions and apply this command they'll be locked at the time of their original recording. This way you could record tracks that don't all start together, like this:
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
...then change the tempo at a later time but NOT have the tempo change affect the position of the regions relative to one another.

Audio tracks go out of pitch then return mysteriously

Quite a mystery: for some unusual reason I found when I booted my Intel iMac duo core and started Logic Pro 7, then played a project; the audio tracks (vocal's) were out of pitch.
I adjusted them using a manual plug in and found a reasonable pitch at -97.
For some strange reason the audio tracks later readjusted themselves back to their original pitch.
I note: I did not change the tempo of these tracks as Im aware that would put the audio tracks out of pitch
iMac Intel duo core Mac OS X (10.4.7) It cost a lof of $$$

If I burn a CD I usually change from 44.1 to 16 bit, not sure if this caused the problem ?
a simple explanation of what's sample rate and bit rate:
http://www.tweakheadz.com/16vs_24_bitaudio.htm

Audio Tracks and Video Out of Sync!!

I am having a problem with not only the video and audio being out of sync, but the audio tracks, left and right, are out of sync with each other. I know it isn't the camera or tape because I watch the footage while it's capturing and it is fine, plus it happens all the time, with different tapes and different cameras. What would cause this and how do I fix it? Also, how do I set my preferences to automatically start the camera when I click capture? I have it set on my iMac but I can't find it on my G5.

I am having a problem with not only the video and audio being out of sync, but the audio tracks, left and right, are out of sync with each other. I know it isn't the camera or tape because I watch the footage while it's capturing and it is fine, plus it happens all the time, with different tapes and different cameras. What would cause this and how do I fix it? Also, how do I set my preferences to automatically start the camera when I click capture? I have it set on my iMac but I can't find it on my G5.

Breaking out Audio tracks to Mono

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