Export 5.1 surround + stereo audio

[Guest]

I work as a video editor at a video production company. Despite a lot of effort and consulting with many people, I have a problem in Premiere Pro that I can't solve. The issue is that I need to have both 5.1 surround sound and stereo sound simultaneously. Afterward, when I place it on the timeline in the program, it should have a layout like the image I shared below. Could you please help this poor soul? I'm really on the verge of losing my mind.

[Guest]

After exporting, when I drag the video onto the timeline, it should look like the one above

[R Neil Haugen]

@Jarle Leirpoll , @Warren Heaton  ... a couple others ... have the best help on this sort of thing. Maybe @Matt_Stegner could pop in also.

[SwindlerCave]

After importing your 5.1 file into Premiere Pro, right-click on it in the Project pane and choose Modify > Audio Channels...  In the window that appears, change the number of audio channels to 2, and select just the R and L channels for the second clip like this:

Click OK, then drag the file onto an empty Timeline to create a new sequence and you should end up with something that looks identical to your provided screenshot:

Hope this helps!

[Guest]

You're welcome for the explanation, but I couldn't achieve the desired result after exporting. I think I need to make some adjustments in the track section while setting up the sequences.

[SwindlerCave]

Sorry that didn't help; I'm not sure I understood your problem fully.  If you are looking to export a single file with 5.1 and stereo I know that many container formats support this but I'm not sure if Premiere or Media Encoder can do this.  Hopefully one of the experts @R Neil Haugen suggested can help if so.  Otherwise, you should be able to export both separately and stitch them together using third-party software, for example ffmpeg; here's a link demonstrating how to do this:

ffmpeg: Add a New audio track to existing file 

[R Neil Haugen]

This is not the first thread asking about exporting both 5.1 and stereo audio on one file. Premiere does do this correctly with at least a couple different formats. But you need to know how to setup both the sequence and the export settings.

It's one of those things with 50 picky things to set, and if you miss any of them, well ... flooey.

Jarle covered this in his excellent and massive (1400 page) tome, "The Cool Stuff in Premiere Pro". Available both as an ebook, and in printed form, and I have both ... happily. A relatively cheap and massively timesaving reference work.

Jarle’s Book “The Cool Stuff in Premiere Pro”

I was hoping that some of the others might hop in. But do search the forum for audio, especially 5.1 and stereo exports.

Neil