How to convert false (dual mono) stereo files ?

Question

I imported an enormous amount of regions from a Final Cut Pro project, and because the cameras each had mono mics but were recording audio in stereo, all the audio files are technically stereo, but contain only mono information.
So I've got hundreds of stereo-interleaved files in my Logic session, but each file contains only mono information, so my project is twice the size it needs to be.
Can anyone suggest a way to remove all that redundant information ? What I want to do is split all the interleaved files, then select all the .R files and delete them, but I don't see any way to accomplish this in Logic, other than file-by-file (I have 500 of them...)
Anyone been down this path ?
Thanks!
-James

Answer 1

Hey, thanks for all the suggestions, Seeren!
I'm not sure how your method is generating only .L files for you--when I split interleaved, I always get both sides... but not a big deal. It's easy enough to delete half the audio.
The real problem is getting the files replaced without losing all the arrange work: your method requires manually replacing the old stereo files with the new mono files in the arrange, which would be a ton of work in large projects like mine...
But... I did find a solution to this--it's not exactly elegant, though, because it requires some filename hacking:
Turns out if you have a reference to a stereo interleaved file in your project, and you replace it with a mono file of exactly the same length and filename, Logic will happily accept the substitution without a complaint. So the way to replace all the stereo files with the .L files is:
1) Copy the stereo interleaved files into split stereo, then remove the new split stereo files from the audio bin (but leave them on disk)
2) Close the project
3) Remove the original stereo files from the "Audio Files" folder, and delete the .R files.
...that's all easy... then...
4) Rename all those .L files, removing the .L so they have the same names as the original stereo files
5) Reopen your project--Logic will now refer to the new mono files, not the original stereo files
Step #4 requires some hacking to do efficiently: I used the command line to rename all those files quickly. There are probably utilities out there that could have done the job with a GUI, and AppleScript could probably do it, too.
Anyway... this works, if it's helpful to anyone else.
But ultimately I guess this is a feature request: it's cool that Logic makes it so easy to manipulate split stereo files as a single unit. But there are occasional times when you need to manipulate stereo files individually. There should be a track command in the arrange that takes a stereo track and replaces it with two mono tracks... rather surprising this doesn't seem to exist (it's one mouse click in ProTools [ducking])...
-James