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Question

Export Multichannel Audio in Premiere Pro with an already existing sequence

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
June 27, 2023
2 replies
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Hi, I am looking for a solution to the attempt of exporting mutlichannel audio.

Important detail : From an EXISTING SEQUENCE. Everything I find on the web is from New Sequence.

I have 2 to 5 audio tracks under my video clip. When exporting, I want to import the exported clip back into PP and have each individual audio track. I have made multiple attemps. I am not seeing this option?

Can someone help me? Is it something I should modify in the audio clip mixer? Track mixer? Modify > Audio channel?

I would really appreciate a solution.

Thanks

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Remote Index

Hello Naima5EAF,

Premiere Pro can do what you have outlined above. Unfortunately, it's design is fairly convoluted and requires some special set-up to acheive this, and if you do not have multi-channel hardware monitoring that will create further wrinkles.

It's also worth noting that Adobe documentation on this pretty near useless.

In any case, it will require you creating a new sequence and configuring all the audio clips you have used in it - what is the issue you are having with the instructions you have already found on the web?

R.

N

Naima-NaimaAuthor

Known Participant

Thanks! After many hours of researching it all out, between

1. sequence settings and mutlichannel track type (standard, mono, etc...)

2. rendering setting in the audio tab (mono, stereo, 2 channel, number of tracks, etc) I have somewhat figured it out.

One remaining mystery is when I am on a sequence that was created back then, before I had the need for multichannel export, from what I understand, I can see that some of my sequences already have multichannel settings, like the photo shows

But, when I go in the Audio Track Mixer and Set Output Track Channel Assignment

One Audio track is shown that way,

which the one of the 2 music mono tracks (or I thought it was mono...if it isn't mono, why?)

While all of the other ones are shown that way

With different mix track and audio track channel selected

I think I am missing something that would help me understand Audio better.

Any tips @Remote Index and others?

Thanks

Remote Index

Hello Naima-Naima,

I'm glad to hear you are working your way through this.

From the screen caps you have provided, it is possible to say:

Your sequence is set up with Channel Format set to "multi-channel"; currently you have "number of channels" set to 8.

Tracks A1, A2, A3, and A5 have been set up as "adaptive" in this sequence.

Track A4 has been set up as "standard" in this sequence. In practice this means it's a stereo track (mostly). But standard tracks can accept either stereo clips or mono clips. It treats mono clips as "dual mono" and will simply output the mono audio in both the left and right channels.

In the "Track Output Channel Assignments" dialogs, these two kinds of tracks give you different options - as you have noted.

From your screen caps:

The horizontal list (Labeled "Audio 3 Track Channel" and "Audio 4 Track Channel") is listing the audio channels that are available on that track (and thus in the clips that are placed on that track).

In the case of track 3 you have 7 channels available, which implies to me that this is a screen shot from a timeline with a different set-up than the 8 channel sequence.

In the case of track 4, you have 2 channels (left and right stereo) available.

When I say these channels are 'available', I mean simply that they must be assigned to mix channels - channels in the "master" or "mix track". This is the vertical list in these screen shots.

The check boxes under the horizontal list correspond to which "master" or "mix" channel they have been assigned to on the vertical list.

Further, you can set-up your hardware (under Settings > Audio Hardware > Output mapping) to assign which "master" or "mix' channels go to which hardware channels.

Finally, in the export dialog, you can activate or select the number of audio channels (from the "master" or "mix" channels) which get exported. This will vary depending on the video codec (only some codecs will allow multiple channels) - and I have less experience and less guidance to give here.

The other piece to all this is that you can modify clips to assign audio channels in the original clips to specific track channels. (But perhaps that is one too many details here.)

I hope that this assists you.

This convoluted design will acheive what you have sought, but it's non-user friendliness is compounded by poor and non-existant documentation by Adobe. I hesitate to refer you to the official documentation on audio - it is incomplete, poorly written, and contains inaccuracies. (one example: "Clips can contain one audio channel (mono), two audio channels—left and right (stereo), or five audio surround channels with a low-frequency effects audio channel (5.1 surround)." ... which completely ignores multi-channel production audio clips with 4, 6, 8, channels etc.)

https://helpx.adobe.com/ca/premiere-pro/using/overview-audio-audio-mixer.html

I have attempted to draw attention to the design of this audio functionality before in the hopes that Adobe would improve it.

R.