How do I montor multitrack audio?
 

Hi All,

Just having some problem dealing with multi-track audio in Premiere CC. I am exporting to an 8-channel mix, and when I try to map my audio to output to anything other than track 1 & 2, I can no longer hear it in my headphones.

The desired audio output is 8 mono tracks (not 5.1 which I though might've been the problem if I'm listening through stereo headphones). I can see the levels in the meters so I know the audio is there. When I export my timeline and then play it back through Premiere or any other software, I can hear all the audio is there.

I just cannot figure out how to monitor audio within Premiere if it is mapped to output tracks 1-6.

Anybody able to help?

Re: How do I montor multitrack audio?
 

New sequence > tracks. Set master track to combine as many as 16 tracks. I think this is what you're after? (You can't change this on an existing sequence, make a new one and copy your clips into it after setting the master track in the sequence setup.)

Re: How do I montor multitrack audio?
 

Hi Vaughan, thanks for answering - yes that is what I've been doing:

New Sequence > Tracks > Multichannel > 8 tracks.

I'd see the 8 different output tracks in my meters, but anything mapped to tracks 1-6 just didn't come through the headphones or speakers.

Thankfully I've finally figured it out (i hope) after plenty of Googling and trial & error. I found plenty of tutorials about how to map multichannel audio, but none of them mentioned how to actually hear your results!

The answer is: the little icons under the meters have to be selected for each pair of tracks. If none are selected (the default), it plays only tracks 1 & 2. So to hear all tracks, I need to have all of these little icons selected (they'll turn blue when highlighted).

Strangely when testing this in CS6 as well (this project has been edited in CS6 but finalised in CC because we need to deliver DNxHD in a MXF wrapper) it will only let you select one pair of tracks at a time. So you can only monitor tracks 1 & 2, or tracks 3 & 4, but never all 4 at once. Looks like it's something they've since fixed in CC though.

Re: How do I montor multitrack audio?
 

In CS6, if you assign each track to tracks 1&2 on the master track, they all speak at once in the monitor, although the level readout will only show two active channels in the master track. This is the "direct output assignment" button on the audio mixer.

Re: How do I montor multitrack audio?
 

Thanks Vaughan. I'll see how that goes in CS6.

And as it turns out I haven't solved this yet after all - in the projects where it was causing a problem, the channel monitor toggle is simply not there. I can start a new sequence and set it up using the exact same process I used to achieve the screenshot above, but in certain projects there simply will not be any of those little toggles. Strange.

Re: How do I montor multitrack audio?
 

John said...
The answer is: the little icons under the meters have to be selected for each pair of tracks. If none are selected (the default), it plays only tracks 1 & 2. So to hear all tracks, I need to have all of these little icons selected (they'll turn blue when highlighted).
=========================================

I am so glad you mentioned this John, I have been battling to understand multitrack audio when editing a multicam sequence. In the multicam source sequence, I needed to widen the level meter window so those little diamonds show, then select the ones I want to monitor. I had several cameras at a wedding reception all with their own sound and a sound track from the DJ's mic for speeches. The mic was a bit dead so I wanted to add one of the camera's sound tracks to liven it up and couldn't work out how to listen to them. Now I know.
Once I decided the best track to add, I just muted all the others and then created the multicam sequence and voila! the 2 stereo sound tracks were there, and the clip mixer allows me to vary the volume of the 2 tracks.

I know this doesn't help your problem, but I just had to say all this after jumping this learning hurdle. Thanks
Saw your show on ONE last weekend too, good stuff...the cows head was the giveaway :-)