Question about importing video from my camcorder

Question

Getting back into shooting & editing after a 16-year absence from TV news (I now work for a government agency)
I have Premiere Elements 2019.
I shoot w/a camcorder: Channel 1 is the onboard shotgun mic...channel 2 is for interviews w/my stick or lav mic. Both channels are "on" while shooting. When I import my video, the audio in each mp4 clip is a blend of both mic channels. How do I pot-down the channel 1 shotgun mic...in order to isolate the lav-mic audio w/o the background shotgun mic noise? I haven't found the answer after searching the internet. Someone I know thinks that this is not possible in Elements--only in Premiere Pro--and that the solution is for me to simply turn down the shotgun mic when I shoot--thus, only shooting CH2 audio. Is this true? Or is there a way to pot down that shotgun mic audio in my imported mp4 clips?

Bill Sprague · Answer

I agree with Steve (and I've learned it is best not to disagree with him!). But there may be alternatives.

First might be using separate recorder. A few weeks ago I borrowed a Zoom H6 six channel audio recorder to shoot a couple of musicians. It will simultainously provide a mixed feed to the mic port on my camera and record all the channels separately on an SD card. I can import all of the tracks into Premiere Elements and work with them.

The significant limitation is the lack of automatic syncronization of the audio tracks. It has to be done manually. If a track is off by a fraction of a frame, it becomes even more difficult. A solution for that comes from a Chris Hood on YouTube where he uses the (shareware) program Audacity. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2kLOnOnx9c

Second might be easier. Using the same Audacity program you could put the camcorders stereo track into Audacity. Audacity has the tool to separate stereo to two mono tracks. The two monos could them be added back to the video project. Synchronization would not be a problem because the lengths would match. This YouTube shows the stereo to two monos technique. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejz3Hck0COo

To Steve's point, multi camera and multi track audio is a very good fundamental tool in Premiere Pro. It just costs more!

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