I recorded a parade today using a shotgun for channel 1 and the internal mic for ch 2 and then turned off the internal due to police sirens. I did this during recording and I am trying to either: 1) turn the volume all the way down on ch 2 and copy the shotgun's audio to the other channel or 2) split the audio (because Premiere CS4 sees it as stereo and not 2 mono tracks) and copy to the other channel.

I have downloaded other people's XDCAM EX files and they show up as 2 separate mono tracks - did I miss a setting in the camera or what?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks

XDCAM (all variants I know of) inherently records as two mono channels so I suspect the issue must be in your Premiere settings.

I figured part of it out. Those files I downloaded were MXF whereas I am using the MP4 files. Once I converted the MP4 to MXF, Premiere shows both mono channels separately.

I would prefer not having to convert all these files. Both Sony and Adobe tout Premiere as the only NLE capable of editing XDCAM EX natively but I guess that's not completely true.

I'm using Calibrated Software EX MP4 import plugin with Final Cut Pro. That allows FCP to edit EX MP4 directly. Those come in stereo whereas MP4 rewrapped to MOV come in with two mono audio tracks.

So I guess I'm seeing the FCP equivalent of what you're seeing in Premiere when it comes to MP4 direct import.

Well, I was wrong. Not only does ClipBrowser make a 3.5GB clip into 5.6GB going from MP4 to MXF, but it also does something funky with the audio tracks. When I move the MXF to the sequence timeline, a total of 4 mono tracks are included and tracks 3 & 4 are empty. WTF?

This works for now but I don't understand why the file size is so much bigger. I have 6TB coming this week but at the rate I'm recording, that will be gone in a month.

Craig, so do you see the MP4 audio as a single stereo channel?

FCP doesn't have single stereo tracks in the sequence.
With EX MP4
In the Viewer window it's a single stereo pair.
In the sequence it's channel 1 panned left, channel 2 panned right.
The channels are linked as stereo

With EX rewrapped to MOV
In the Viewer window it's two mono channels
In the sequence it's channel 1 center panned, channel 2 center panned
The channels are linked to the video but not linked to each other.

MXF normally has 4 channels so what you're seeing is correct. If you were shooting with XDCAM F355 for example you could record on 4 separate channels. EX does not have 3rd and 4th channel but if you rewrap to MXF they'll be there as empty.

Craig, thanks a bunch for your help. I finally figured it out. In Premiere's Project folder, I can select the MP4 clip and either designate it as Mono or extract each Mono track as their own within the Project window.

There is an option in the top menu to split the audio as well or change it to stereo