5.1 Audio....how to do it?
 

I've got a 2mins short film project. Plan to do the audio completely at post (ADR, Foley, SFX…).
Now, I’ve got an idea. Because every piece of audio is done in post, so that would be possible for me to put different audio in 6 different tracks to make it 5.1.

However, it seems all my audio program and video program haven’t got this function. I remember I saw something online is call audio authorization. Is that the function to do 5.1? is there any program to do that or support that? Any web site or article I can read about?

If you use Premiere Pro and have the Surcode plug-in, create a project with a 5.1 master sound track and use the audio mixer to create your soundtrack. Should be similar with Vegas.

Thx for your answer.....so is the edit program will do the job.....

I am using premiere pro at the moment....but havn't got that plug-in, I will go look for it.

How about Final Cut studio? I have access to final cut pro and sound track pro. will they support 5.1?

Sort of. If you generate five or six AIFF files (5 main, plus 1 for the LFE) for the discrete audio channels, compressor can combine those into an AC3 audio file. The tricky part is creating the six AIFF files, for neither FCP nor Soundtrack Pro allow you to pan an audio track in space. However, for a project as short as yours, you could probably simulate that by putting a sound on multiple channels and then adjusting the volume of those channels over time, for example to make a sound move from the back to the front. Not great, but it works.

For the LFE channel, if one of your five main channels contains all the bass intensive sound, just drag that onto the LFE dropzone in compressor. Compressor will then use filters to extract just the low frequencies. Otherwise, you can or course create an AIFF file for the LFE channel manually and use that file.

I am not endorsing this as a great way to create 5.1 surround sound, but it works. A step up would be Logic Pro, which - to my knowledge - is currently the only Apple software that allows panning of sound in space for 5.1 mixes.

- Martin

Or since he's got Premiere Pro, if it's a current version which has a surround sound panner (at least in does in the current and last couple of versions - forgot just when it was introduced) he can easily do it there. All he needs to do is set the project's audio properties to 5.1 Surround and to set the output file type accordingly when rendering - I think AC3 is "standard issue" amongst the render target file types and I don't remember it requiring installing any additional plugins. More of an issue is having a multi-channel sound card - you need at least 6 channels - and surround speakers to allow for monitoring etc.

Vegas has had surround panning for ages. I take it for granted.

Anyway, the way it works is that you take all your audio tracks, and keyframe the positions in the audio stage. The editor then collates all the tracks and generates the six channels for you. In other words, one track does not have to correspond to one channel. The LFE channel is special, though; it is generated by taking the other five channels and running them through a lowpass filter, so you generally do not explicitly send information to the LFE channel, though it is an option (in Vegas, at least).