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lehestro
lehestro
Inspiring
December 19, 2024
Question

Another multicam audio track question – but a different-ish one

  • December 19, 2024
  • 3 replies
  • 1097 views

Lordy me I've tried so hard to get this right with multicams and audio tracks. I'm cutting a film that in any given scene as 1 to 10 actors mic'd up. It is inconsisten which actors are on which channel. Often times the sound mixer would record with 10 channels running, but only 2 actors are speaking, so when building/syncing my clips in a multicam sequence, I'd go through and delete the empty or noisy tracks. I'd even then go to modify>audio channels to make sure the sequence didn't retain 10 channels when I now only had, say, 6 that I needed (I'm using 'channels' and 'tracks' kind of interchangeably here). 

 

So here's my problem: now that I'm editing, my eliminating those tracks in the multicam doesn't seem to matter – they still show up in my edit sequence. Where the audio is in the multicam sequence seems to be irrelevant – when I pull it into my sequence it is referencing the original tracks. So after all that work, every time I splice in a new clip into my edit I have to re-figure out and eliminate the offending tracks/channels. 

 

Maybe it's better with pictures...

 

Multicam: only channels/tracks with audio. Channels 1-4, 7-8, an LR mixdown, and then camera audio (muted). This is how I want it when I edit this clip into my edit sequence. Seems like this would make sense.

What actually happens in my Edit Sequence: Channels 1-8 (including 5 & 6 which are empty and of no use), no LR mixdown.

 

So here's my question: how can I get premiere to treat track 1 in the multicam as track 1 when I edit, track 2 as track 2, etc. The only solution that seems available is to reroute one-by-one thousands of multicam clips so that this is the case. This is ludicrous. Where did I go wrong?

 

I'm really at a loss and demoralized. It shouldn't be this GD complicafted. Grateful to the hive mind. I just want to edit! 

3 replies

lehestro
lehestroAuthor
Inspiring
December 19, 2024

If it helps, to highlight my issue I did a test. It's a multicam that originally looks like this upon initial creation: 8 tracks of production audio + 1 stereo track (which will be broken out into 2 mono tracks) of LR mixdown plus 1 camera audio track that just seems to be ignored for whatever reason, which is fine.

Even if I go in and delete ALL the audio accept the LR mixdown track like this:

it still goes into my edit timeline like this:

What gives? If I had 10 cameras and was to delete all the video tracks but one, it wouldn't still think it was a multicam clip with 10 cameras. I don't know if this simplified/exaggerated example makes me conundrum clearer. 

P
Community Expert
PaulMurphyCommunity Expert
Community Expert
December 20, 2024

You're absolutely right—managing audio in multicam workflows feels unnecessarily complicated, and it’s something Adobe should definitely simplify. The way Premiere Pro handles syncing hasn’t changed much in years, even though syncing separate sources is such a common part of editing, and it's well due for an overhaul.

When it comes to adjusting how many audio clips a multicamera source sequence has or which channels they use, the best way to do this is through Clip > Modify > Audio Channels. This allows you to:

  • Set the number of audio channels for your clip.
  • Enable or disable specific channels by ticking them on or off.


It’s important to make these changes here rather than deleting clips or tracks directly in the multicamera sequence. Deleting them manually won’t update how the sequence behaves when added to another sequence, and it can cause routing issues, especially if you’re combining stereo and mono sources.

As for the [A1]-[A8] labels, these appear on both the multicamera sequence and the clips inside it, but they don’t indicate which source clip is being used for that specific clip, they are just numbering the different clips for that particular item.
 

I hope that clears things up—let me know if you have any other questions.

    R Neil Haugen
    R Neil Haugen
    Legend
    December 21, 2024

    Yes, the method you’re using is causing issues with the channel routing in your multicam sequence. I’ll explain why this happens and provide a workaround for your current setup. Keep in mind, though, that this workaround isn’t a quick fix—it requires manually adjusting each multicam sequence.

    Why This Happens

    Multicam sequences rely on audio channel routing that links each track to a specific channel. For example:

    • Track 1 maps to Channel 1
    • Track 2 maps to Channel 2
    • Track 3 maps to Channel 3
    • And so on...


    When you delete tracks from the multicam sequence, the track numbers are updated, but the channel routing doesn’t change. For instance, if you have 10 tracks, and then delete Tracks 3–8, Tracks 1 and 2 still map to Channels 1 and 2, but Tracks 3 and 4 will map to Channels 9 and 10 (because they were previously Tracks 9 and 10). You can confirm this by checking the Audio Track Mixer for the multicam sequence—the routing information is displayed below the panner knob.

    Now, if you use Clip > Modify > Audio Channels to reduce the number of audio channels to four (Channels 1–4), Channels 3 and 4 won’t contain any audio because their source is empty. To fix this, you’d need to change the Media Source Channels to 1, 2, 9, and 10.

    Workaround

    To avoid manually rerouting each track in every multicam, here’s a slightly simpler approach:

    1. Create a new multicam sequence with the maximum number of audio tracks you need (e.g., 10).
    2. Duplicate this new sequence for each multicam you need to fix.
    3. Copy and paste the clips from your old multicam sequence into the new one.
    4. Use Clip > Modify > Audio Channels to adjust the number of channels as needed. In this case, you can leave the Media Source Channels as-is.

    Recommend Workflow in Future

    To adjust a multicam's number of clips and source tracks, only use Clip > Modify > Audio Channels.


    This is one of many things in post production where some time spent on organization/setup saves an immense amount of time later. And maybe a job.

     

    But is not obvious unless you find someone like Paul who can teach how to handle doing the thing.

    Everyone's mileage always varies ...
    P
    Community Expert
    PaulMurphyCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    December 19, 2024

    Can you share a screenshot of your Audio Track Mixer and Audio Channel Format settings for the multi-camera source sequence?

    Here are a couple of important points to consider:

    • The [A#] labels on your audio clips in the editing timeline do not correspond to the [A#] labels within the multi-camera source sequence. For example, [A3] in the timeline does not necessarily use the clip labeled [A3] in the source sequence—it simply indicates it’s the third clip of the multi-camera source sequence.
    • Multi-camera source sequences can only use one audio channel format for their audio clips (e.g., Mono, Stereo, 5.1, or Adaptive). If your audio channel format is set to Mono, a stereo mixdown will be split into two mono clips—one for each channel.
    lehestro
    lehestroAuthor
    Inspiring
    December 19, 2024

    Hi Paul. Attached is a screenshot of the track mixer and audio channel format settings.

    I understand and am aware of your second point, but your first point is confusing and seems to be where the problem lies. I think? Could you elaborate? And what should I have done/still hopefully can do to have it work so that what's in the multicam is what ends up in my timeline? And if the answer is to re-route every single track in every single clip, well – is there something I missed when I made the multicam that would have this not be the case? this just all seems terribly counterintuitive to me as it stands right now. I'm laughing out loud at how extraordinarily frustrating Premiere seems to operate in this matter, but am hoping it can be fixed. 

    When I first made the multicam clip using the Create Multicam Source Sequence process, it had 10 tracks. 8 for the ISO.wav file, 2 for the LR.wav file (stereo file broken into two mono files); it didn't seem to account for the A cam audio and B cam audio in the modify>audio channels setup. I deleted the two bad tracks from the ISO.wav file (5 & 6) in the multicam sequence, deleted the now empty tracks from the sequence, and then went to modify>audio channels, and knocked the # of tracks from 10 to 8. I thought this would leave me with channels 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 8 and the LR mixdown tracks, as that is what exists in the multicam sequence. But upon bringing the clip into my actual edit, that is not the case. 

    lehestro
    lehestroAuthor
    Inspiring
    December 19, 2024

    I should note, I did not reassign/reroute and tracks/channels.

    R Neil Haugen
    R Neil Haugen
    Legend
    December 19, 2024

    @PaulMurphy  @Warren Heaton10841144 @Richard M Knight  ... ideas?

    Everyone's mileage always varies ...
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