Revisiting Surround Import Problem DP 7.24

[Tripi]

I hate having to drag up old posts, but I have to figure out a solution to this. Some days, I just wonder how DP can continue to be a professional level DAW for surround work when this sort of stuff happens.

I'm remixing a cue for a soundtrack release, got all of the surround stems from the mix engineer and imported them into a clean DP session. I have Broadcast Wav 32 bit selected as my audio preference. Always copies files to the working folder on import, and always converts any non-project formats to match.

I pull in the 5.0 stems (L R C Ls Rs) into 5 different mono tracks. I see the file copied in the Soundbites list, and I can see it in the Finder with the 'reveal in finder' command. All extensions are correct, everything looks great in the waveform overview.

Hit play........ all five tracks sound identical. Meters show exactly the same levels for each one, even if the LFE channel clearly has no info on it. They are all playing the same channel. To prove this, I can merge the soundbites.

Here are the before and after screen shots:

Before merge:



After merge:



I just don't know how to account for this, and it makes using DP for surround work very frustrating. Problem is, I have all of the remix parts in the cue already, so I can't just go and pull out PT or something else. I wanted to avoid using AIFF or SD2 audio formats. Seems like I shouldn't even need to be thinking about solving this problem, but here I am.

Anyone have an idea..... I'm out of them.

thanks

- Tripi

[Dan Worley]

Are you dragging them into DP from the desktop or using Import Audio? I'd try the latter just to see if it makes any difference. I had the same trouble a few weeks ago. Wasn't 5.1 files, though.

c-ya,

Dan Worley

[James Steele]

I just got off the phone with a friend who does surround projects all the time in DP with no problems. I sent him a link to your post. He is under a deadline for a film he's doing at the moment, but he called me and tried to convey to me the problem as best he could, so I will attempt to relay what he told me while it's still sort of fresh. Keep in mind, I do no work with surround, so I'm only trying to convey what was told me.

First off, it appears you're not using "surround tracks" within DP, right? Surround files that come in a group of six have specific filename extensions that would appear just before the ".wav" extension. For example:

surroundaudio.c.wav (center)
surroundaudio.l.wav (left)
surroundaudio.r.wav (right)
surroundaudio.ls.wav (left surround)
surroundaudio.rs.wav (right surround)
surroundaudio.lfe.wav (low frequency effects or "sub")

This is much the same as how deinterleaved stereo files are linked and if you drag one of the files with a ".L" onto the Track Overview, it should automatically import the other file with the ".R" as well and create a stereo track.

In theory, if you had a surround bundle in your bundles, and you dragged the file "surroundaudio.c.wav" onto the left half of DP's Track Overview (TOV) it should create a surround track, with all six channels of audio appearing in one lane, and import the other channels of audio into that surround track automatically.

From your screenshot, it looks as if you are importing each audio channel into a separate mono channel, each I assume being directed to a discrete output on your interface dedicated to the corresponding channel in a surround setup. Much like people trying to break apart linked deinterleaved stereo files into two mono tracks, you usually have to break this linkage by altering the file extensions. You may not have done that and that might be what is confusing DP. I'm not saying there may not be a bug here. The bug might be that it shouldn't have let you import a single channel of a surround grouping into a mono channel to start with unless you first altered the file extension thus breaking the "link" between the group of files.

My friend suggested you perhaps consider adding a character like "x" to each of the file names in the example given above before importing them, so the files look like this:

surroundaudio.cx.wav (center)
surroundaudio.lx.wav (left)
surroundaudio.rx.wav (right)
surroundaudio.lsx.wav (left surround)
surroundaudio.rsx.wav (right surround)
surroundaudio.lfex.wav (low frequency effects or "sub")

What may be happening, and again this is the best I can communicated it based on what was relayed to me by a guy under a big deadline in just a few minutes and having myself no experience with surround, is that even though DP let you bring it into a mono track with perhaps all or one of the files still adhering to the surround file extension convention (which perhaps as I said, THAT might be the problem, perhaps it should disallow this?), upon merge, DP is confused and it is merging all six channels due to the file extension linkage between the mono audio in the mono track and the other channels that are a part of that surround grouping.

Bottom line: try altering the file extensions as shown above and THEN import the audio into separate mono tracks and then see if that doesn't fix it. He also suggested you could possibly go into the Soundbites window and rename the parent soundfiles, changing the extensions as shown, and then try the merge again. The problem apparently is leaving the file extensions intact despite breaking the channels out into separate mono tracks.

Hope that helps.

[Tripi]

Hey James, thanks for the good investigative work. I've been through this a few times, and changing the file extension does work. Although, when I get a cue with 10 different stems of surround tracks, it would take a lot of typing to adjust them all.

The main reason I'm importing them 1 mono track at a time is because when I drag the surround stems (or even 1 file from it) in to the Tracks Overview area, DP creates a quad track and a stereo track. I can't find anyway of telling which channels are on which tracks. I'm assuming it does it correctly.... but I can't just guess on things for this project.

The other reason I wanted to do it this way was so I could change my audio prefs to WAV format, and just drag the files and use them, without writing a new format and taking up double the disk space.

Another problem is that I need to be able to switch takes on different channels, and having them all together in one surround track won't let this happen. It's just a real shame that what I'm hearing, and what I'm seeing displayed in DP don't jive. It makes me nervous that things are being reported incorrectly. I wouldn't want to use any other daw besides DP for this project.... just means taking a lot longer to do.

Someday I'll figure this all out. Just don't tell any of my clients I'm winging it in the mean time.

[James Steele]

Hey James, thanks for the good investigative work. I've been through this a few times, and changing the file extension does work. Although, when I get a cue with 10 different stems of surround tracks, it would take a lot of typing to adjust them all.

I hear you. it's just what you gotta do unfortunately. As a workaround however, I suggest you check out Rename. It's free and it should be able to do the file extension renaming for you. Especially if it's just inserting the "x" character just before the ".wav" part of the file name. There's a preview window in the app that shows you how it will change the files. It would spare you all that typing.

http://www.pathossoftware.com/Rename/Rename.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The main reason I'm importing them 1 mono track at a time is because when I drag the surround stems (or even 1 file from it) in to the Tracks Overview area, DP creates a quad track and a stereo track. I can't find anyway of telling which channels are on which tracks. I'm assuming it does it correctly.... but I can't just guess on things for this project.

Well that's interesting. As I said, I've never worked with surround so I'm only taking a guess at this. I wish my friend had more time to answer directly. One thought would be that you might try creating a surround track first, then drag one of the surround files (other then the .L or .R files) to the the surround track and see if that doesn't prevent the creation of a quad and a stereo track, but all six channels remain in the surround track.

Again, I don't know anything about working with surround, but I'm assuming if you have created a surround bundle and correctly assigned each channel in the bundle to the intended discreet output on your audio interface, you could test that this has then imported correctly. Certainly someone has made a nifty surround bundle that has soothing female voice going one at a time through all the various channels, saying "left" through the left channel, then "right" through the right channel, "center" through the center channel and so on so that you can verify correct placement?

The other reason I wanted to do it this way was so I could change my audio prefs to WAV format, and just drag the files and use them, without writing a new format and taking up double the disk space.

Does WAV not support surround extension like that? Are you not receiving the files with the correct naming conventions? I don't understand. Again, caveat, I don't do surround.

Another problem is that I need to be able to switch takes on different channels, and having them all together in one surround track won't let this happen. It's just a real shame that what I'm hearing, and what I'm seeing displayed in DP don't jive. It makes me nervous that things are being reported incorrectly. I wouldn't want to use any other daw besides DP for this project.... just means taking a lot longer to do.

Someday I'll figure this all out. Just don't tell any of my clients I'm winging it in the mean time.

Well then as my friend suspected, you have a specific reason for breaking them out into individual mono tracks, thus I think you really have to just bite the bullet perhaps and break that implied "link" by altering the file extensions. Try Rename. I think it will save you a lot of typing. It could be that you're just using DP in a way the programmers hadn't envisioned (i.e. switching "takes" on just one channel of surround audio) and perhaps in the future there's something they can do to make this usable. I could see something like this being useful on stereo tracks as well, as people working in stereo have run into this issue. Perhaps some sort of command like "Explode audio channels to separate tracks" could be invoked that would unlink stereo or surround audio and break them out into individual mono tracks?

Again... if you know changing the file extensions works, I'd maybe give Rename a shot.

[Tripi]

Thanks James. Your idea about dragging all six files on to a pre-existing surround track was a good one.... unfortunately it didn't work. DP wouldn't let me drop them. When I drop those six tracks on the soundbites window or the TOV window, it actually makes 2 quad files, and 2 stereo files. Very odd.

For the record, I tested the renaming with the X at the end of the channel, and it does work to force DP to import all channels as seperate mono files. I could rename easily with Audiofinder. Also for the record, James is getting a banana sticker for his hard work.

thnx

[James Steele]

Thanks James. Your idea about dragging all six files on to a pre-existing surround track was a good one.... unfortunately it didn't work. DP wouldn't let me drop them. When I drop those six tracks on the soundbites window or the TOV window, it actually makes 2 quad files, and 2 stereo files. Very odd.

What about just dragging just one of the files instead of all six? If that works for stereo when you drag just a .L it might work if you drag just a ".c.wav" file and bring along the other five with it automatically... again, similar to what happens with deinterleaved stereo. ???

[martian]

if u dont have the lfe channel - maybe nake a "blank" one..

and make sure you have the file extentions named right..

the other weirdness I do get is where I get 6 copies of the 5.1

just drag one file DP will find the rest

see the link here.

[stephentayler]

Does it make a difference if your file is set to interleaved or non interleaved files? (not in front of DP right now.....)

Stephen

[stephentayler]

Does it make a difference if your prefs are set to interleaved or non interleaved files? (not in front of DP right now.....)

Stephen

[James Steele]

just drag one file DP will find the rest

Yep... that's what I was trying to say before. That might work.

[magicd]

When you import audio into DP, DP looks at the file extensions to see if the files are part of a multi-channel group. For example, if DP sees a file named "bass.L", it looks to see if there any other files in the same directory named "bass" with some sort of channel file extension. If DP finds a bass.R, it groups the two files a stereo pair. If it also finds bass.LFE, bass.C, etc, it will see all of those files as part of the same channel group.

If one of those files is placed in a different directory, it won't be seen as part of a channel group.

If you want to import separate stems as mono files, you have to either get rid of the channel name extension, or you have to hide the files in different directories.

I advise changing the file name extensions if you want to import surround files into mono stem tracks.

Dave

[Tripi]

I really appreciate everyone helping with this. I see this as a definite grey area in DP that could use a lot more documentation (DP8!).

Here's the thing....... dragging a single track to a pre-made surround track does not work. Neither does dragging all 6 channels at once. Although, if I make a STEREO track, it's happy to let me drag the L or R channel in, and it will pair it with the missing side. If I make a QUAD track, it refuses to drag the L or R channel to it, but any of the other 4 will drag on to it, and create a 4 channel track....... using C, Ls, Rs, and LFE (!). Not a very traditional Quad setup (it's usually L, R, Ls, Rs).

I realize renaming extensions is probably the most direct way of making mono tracks for all 6 channels, but what if I really wanted to use a surround track? Besides, I'm still lost on why DP displays all 6 channels with seperate names and seperate waveforms, but still plays the same audio from each mono track. That's the original problem I was trying to solve.

thanks

[martian]

Does it make a difference if your file is set to interleaved or non interleaved files? (not in front of DP right now.....)

Stephen

i guess thats what I was showing in the video.. ( altho maybe too low res.. )

if you turn off the auto conversions in the preferences. it doesn't matter DP will import as is.

if sample rate is correct it will play them..

totally understand the not copying audio files for this kind of thing - I'd end up with a gazzilion gigs else.

Personally I find it a pain that protools and DP use different extention names.. unfortunatly "slowtools" is the bigger slice of pie at present, so better invest in some renaming software, I did use the one james suggested, but since I have audio finder I find the "power renamer" is closer to hand...

[Tripi]

I don't think that the naming conventions matter between DP and ProTools. The only difference I can see is that it calls the LFE (in DP) Lfe (in PT). I did a test in Logic to see how it handles the files. If you drag the surround channels in to the arrange page, it creates a stereo track for L and R, and then mono for everything else. If you add them to the audio bin (Logic's Soundbites window), then it will recognize the surround format and can be dragged in to the project as is.

Funny thing is, I tried another test where I recorded a surround file in DP, then exported it as de-interleaved. I can drag it back in to DP and it works exactly like you would expect it to. One file will re-create the entire surround stem, or dragging all 6 will do the same. So what I'm thinking now is that DP just has some trouble recognizing whatever ProTools did when exporting these tracks. I did try renaming the LFE to Lfe just for S&G..... no dice.