1 Correct answer
You set how much of each track should go to the LFE channel with this knob:
1) If you turn them all full CCW (Left) than you will have an empty LFE channel.
If you want to add effects only to the LFE channel then do it in Audacity, or buy Audition. Premiere and Soundbooth won't let you do that.
2) No matter what you do in Premiere, mixing, setting hardware settings, etc., Premiere will output the file correctly. All the tracks will be interleaved in the proper order. Premiere just doesn't displ
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I think the problem is you have an option checked in the Audacity Preferences that shouldn't be.
Go to Edit>Preferences>Import/Export and uncheck "Show Metadata Editor prior to export step"
You don't need to edit Metadata in Audacity, unless you want to for some reason.
Look at this picture:
Even if you do leave this checked and don't want to edit the Metadata in Audacity, you can just click "OK" when you see this:
This will bring up the "Export File" dialog.
(You must be pressing "Cancel on the "Edit Metadata" screen. That cancels your file export.)
Pressing "Ok" should bring up this:
Set "Save as type:" to "AC3 Files (FFmpeg), then press "Options" to bring up the Bit Rate setting. 448 for 5.1 audio is good.
That should work bring up the "Advanced Mixing Options" screen:
If you didn't mess with the order of the tracks in Audacity (L,R,C,LFE,LS,RS) then you don't need to remap the channels in the exported file.
Press "OK" and you should have your AC3 file.
I noticed on your Premiere > Preferences > Audio Output Mapping setup screen the speaker order is incorrect.
It may play correctly with your computer surround system, but on mine that channel order doesn't work.
Look at the center column "Tiles" that show the speaker placement on mine:
If your sound doesn't come out the correct speakers then re-arrange the tiles.
Remember this order: L,R,C,LFE,LS,RS.
That is the "Correct" order that many programs, including Audacity, use.
I don't know why Adobe does it differently.
Just so there is no confusion what Audacity is showing you, I've labeled the tracks that you exported from Premiere.
Looks like you have alot on the "LFE" channel. Not to be picky, experiment away, but remember what I said about the "LFE" channel not being a subwoofer channel. It should only have extra "oomph," I think I called it.
Let me know if you got it working.
Good Luck.
For an example of what is done commercially, I loaded "Iron Man" (the movie) into Audacity. Specifically "VTS_03_1"
Look at the "LFE" channel for the first aprox. 22 minutes.
It's blank, most of the time, except for the AC/DC intro, explosions, etc.
Okay, good you got the Audacity to export correctly. I think.
1) Encore will only show a single track when you drag it to, for example, "Audio 1."
2) You don't need to replace the audio in Encore if you don't export any. If you go to File>Export>Media in Premiere and set your output format to "MPEG2-DVD" and uncheck "Export Audio" then you will only have an ".m2v" file with no Audio. Drag it to the video track in your timeline in Encore, then drag your "ac3" file to the Audio track.
3) Setting the speaker tiles the way I showed you will only make Premiere play the surround sound mix on your computer correctly. You have to, of course, have a surround sound system attached correctly to your computer. That doesn't change the way Premiere outputs the audio in your interleaved Wave file.
4) I'm not sure how you exported the file to an .mp4, so I can't answer that without more info.
5) The audio on the LFE channel is created by Premiere. In the 5.1 mixer (6 Channel) you will have a Bass Clef Knob with every audio track. That knob is like a volume control for each track for the LFE channel. The problem is, This Mixer is flawed. Look at my mixer layout:
I layed out the tracks in Adobe's "incorrect" order, because if you don't you're gonna get confused by the volume meters on the Master. They are also layed out incorrectly. See my labels. So when working in Premiere, just stick with Adobe's layout.
Why is the mixer flawed? Because if you have a dedicated LFE track and you put your effects there, and dial up the Bass Clef knob, sure your LFE track will go to the LFE channel in your audio file, but it will also go to other speakers. There is no where to put the little black circle "Puck" that locks that track into only the LFE channel. I don't know how adobe missed this. Each track needs a checkbox or something, so you can assign that tracks audio to only the LFE channel. That's why, in my tutorial, I said you'll have to use Audacity, or Audition to put your LFE effects only on the LFE channel.
Another quirk; you'll see I included a Stereo track, but I put the little "Puck in the center channels's "Pocket." That's where you need to assign a stereo track if you only want the stereo audio, from that track, to come out the left and right front speakers. Doing this preserves the stereo audio, and no it doesn't put anything on the center speaker channel.
However, if you put a mono track's "Puck" in the same center pocket, it will only come out the center channel.
The mixer design is more than a little confusing.
And they really need to fix that LFE oversight!
What the mixer does well, is let you place your mono track audio in exactly the desired virtual space. And the animate feature let's you move it around well.
You set how much of each track should go to the LFE channel with this knob:
1) If you turn them all full CCW (Left) than you will have an empty LFE channel.
If you want to add effects only to the LFE channel then do it in Audacity, or buy Audition. Premiere and Soundbooth won't let you do that.
2) No matter what you do in Premiere, mixing, setting hardware settings, etc., Premiere will output the file correctly. All the tracks will be interleaved in the proper order. Premiere just doesn't display the order visually, the same way as other programs, or the way the file format dictates. The hardware settings in Premiere ONLY make the sound come out your speakers correctly, they don't affect file creation.
3) YouTube does have surround sound files on it, but I can't get them to play with surround sound in my browser on my system. I'll try and see why.
Elevator music........pause........hmmmm.......I'm hungry..........ahhha!!!
When you export from premiere to make a surround file for YouTube, you don't have to use the Audacity workflow, unless you want to add something to the LFE channel. Simply Output the file from Premiere in the H.264 format and select, for example, "YouTube widescreen HD" as the format. Make sure you set Output Channels to 5.1. Premiere will export an mp4 file.
Now you may have noticed that you are no longer in AC3 format, but in AAC. That's why you don't need the SurCode plug-in.
Well, as they say in Italy "Now we have a whole 'nother tomato to think bout."
The track order for an AAC file is not the same as an AC3 file. As a result, the track order displayed in Audacity will change depending on what kind of file it is. The format of an AC3 and multi-track Wave are the same, but an ACC file is a different format.
Remember the "Correct" track order for an AC3 file, L,R,C,LFE,LS,RS
The LFE track is the fourth from the top.
Here is what Audacity will display for an AAC file: C,L,R,LS,RS,LFE
That is the top to bottom order of the tracks.
So if you want to add effects to the LFE channel of an AAC you need to put them on the bottom track (track 6).
Now, optimally, we would like to export our LFE modified file uncompressed out of Audacity and import it back into Premiere, throw it on the timeline, mute the other tracks, and make our final mp4 file output from Premiere.
However, Premiere doesn't like the Audacity uncompressed wave file. I've tried multiple formats and I can't get Premiere to accept it as 5.1 surround file. It will import it, but it sees it as 6 mono tracks. So it will lay them all out on the timeline in 6 different mono tracks. That won't work because now we are back where we started with an LFE track with no way to assign it only to the LFE channel in the mixer. Again, that's because Adobe designed it wrong.
So what to do?
Unless I can figure out a way to export an uncompressed surround file from Audacity, in a way that Premiere will accept it as a 5.1 surround file, you are going to have to export from Audacity in the AC3 format, import that into Premiere, drop it on a timeline, mute your other tracks, and make your mp4 file.
That will work, but you are compressing twice, not the best thing to preserve quality. One thing you can do is export the AC3 file from Audacity at the maximum bitrate (640) to minimize the loss of quality, then set whatever final compression in premiere to your liking. It will probably sound fine that way. It's really the only solution for now if you want to modify the LFE channel.
We don't have this dual compression problem when we make a DVD because we put the AC3 file right into Encore, we never have to take it back into Premiere.
Have I earned my 10 points yet for the correct answer?
I wrote:
Now, optimally, we would like to export our LFE modified file uncompressed out of Audacity and import it back into Premiere, throw it on the timeline, mute the other tracks, and make our final mp4 file output from Premiere.
However, Premiere doesn't like the Audacity uncompressed wave file. I've tried multiple formats and I can't get Premiere to accept it as 5.1 surround file. It will import it, but it sees it as 6 mono tracks.
I found out how to do it. Yay!
Drop the Audacity exported uncompressed surround wave file in the project tab. Make sure it's selected, and click Clip>Audio Options>Source Channel Mappings..., then select 5.1 under "Track Format," and arrange the channel tiles in this order:
Now when you drop this file onto a timeline, it will be seen as a surround file.
You have now round-tripped the audio, uncompressed, through Audacity and back into Premiere.
No quality lost.
As I said earlier, now mute your other tracks and you are ready to export your file.
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