Edius Neo and AVCHD with native Dolby 5.1

[jkoch]

Some Sony and Panasonic AVCHD videocams capture sound in 5 channels. Unfortunately, few consumer NLEs import the sound properly. Usually, they downmix to two channels. Even products that claim DD 5.1 support generally refer only to fade and balance tools within the editing platform.

Can Edius Neo "out of the box" import an AVCHD clip shot with one of these videocams and preserve the full DD 5.1 structure? Can one then tune each channel discretely?

If one also has a separate multi-channel sound recorder, can its files be imported to another sound track in NEO with all 4 or 5 tracks also preserved?

Or, for either of these tasks, is it first necessary to transcode, import the sound separately, or obtain plugs or tools that work only with the full Edius 5?

Thanks.

[rob stowell]

All I can think is OUCH! 5 channels of native surround-sound for the simplest effects would be a kind of hell. But then I have trouble with stereo mics... :)

[jkoch]

Sorry, but it's no joke. Several Panasonic and Sony videocam models have 5 on-board mics and capture in Dolby 5.1.

Can NEO import, edit, and export the sound, preserving the discrete tracks, and yield files or discs that will play as "surround sound" on a home theater with DD 5.1? My understanding is that CS4 and Vegas Pro can, but PE8 cannot.

Or might this not be possible with NEO, but only with Edius 5.1, perhaps requiring a supplementary tool too?

Or would the tracks have to be split up in another application, and then imported manually to individual tracks?

Or would this not matter, since any export to file or disc creation function would still compress the 5 to 2?

[bluprojekt]

Sorry, but it's no joke. Several Panasonic and Sony videocam models have 5 on-board mics and capture in Dolby 5.1.

Can NEO import, edit, and export the sound, preserving the discrete tracks, and yield files or discs that will play as "surround sound" on a home theater with DD 5.1? My understanding is that CS4 and Vegas Pro can, but PE8 cannot.

Or might this not be possible with NEO, but only with Edius 5.1, perhaps requiring a supplementary tool too?

Or would the tracks have to be split up in another application, and then imported manually to individual tracks?

Or would this not matter, since any export to file or disc creation function would still compress the 5 to 2?

And this is important for what reason??? If you look at professional broadcast workflows, they usually work in PCM 2 channel stereo. Who's your client? Do they have surround sound to take advantage of the technology? Why are you using a "consumer" NLE to produce a finished product that is usually the domain of Pro NLE's?

[pjsssss]

I am not sure about Neo. Edius can import up to 8 discrete channels. Exporting to 5.1 can be done but it is a pain and pretty much a mystery. Much easier to do in another sound app. This may well change with the next major version.

[rl2008]

5.1 audio in Edius flow?

Does anybody know a way to maintain 5.1 audio throughout Edius flow to DVD (or BR) burn.

Some cameras (like my HDR-CX500V) capture 5.1 sound, and there are standalone mics that will capture that. It would be nice to keep that in edit.

I supose it is possible to convert to 8 channel HQ before edit, and to carry more than two audio channels on the timeline. But what then? Output tool only has a choice between mono and stereo, no surround options. Third party DVD creation tool? Which one?

Or is that 5.1 encoded in the regular stereo, and you just need to edit stereo?

Someone must have figured this out, that's not a new problem. I tried a few quick searches, but found no matches.

[rl2008]

And this is important for what reason??? If you look at professional broadcast workflows, they usually work in PCM 2 channel stereo. Who's your client? Do they have surround sound to take advantage of the technology? Why are you using a "consumer" NLE to produce a finished product that is usually the domain of Pro NLE's?

Cliff, don't jump on the guy for asking a question. Offer an answer if you have one. Much more useful. Maybe this just hasn't come up in your work. Ignore it if it is not of interest.

I just posted a virtually identical question in the Edius forum (before I found this thread). Happy to address some of your points.

"And this is important for what reason??? "
Well, if it is only curiosity, what's wrong with it?

"If you look at professional broadcast workflows, they usually work in PCM 2 channel stereo."
That might be, but apparently some people don't do broadcast workflow.

"Who's your client?"
Me, and myself. And anyone I would make a DVD for (never mind a BR). Broadcast clients would not perhaps care, but I don't seem to have any.

"Do they have surround sound to take advantage of the technology?"
Hell yes. Most people I know have some form of surround sound at home. That's just how a lot of people buy home theater nowadays, all bundled, screen and all. And without any effort they can get a very different ambience from your event recording, if you give them the 5.1 sound.

'We view this as the next revolution in audio technology. Just as the video recording market moved from mono to stereo, it will make a similar shift from stereo to surround sound. Cascade Audio is the only company that can provide true surround sound with this simple solution for camcorders,” said Iredale. “Surround sound is now available in virtually every home receiver sold today. Consumers want to take advantage of their home theater’s full capabilities. Videos recorded with Vive will fill the back and center channels with clear, realistic sound, bringing the movie theater experience to their own living room.'

'There are approximately 60 million camcorders in use in the US Market alone, 15 million new camcorders sold each year and 100 million residential surround playback systems worldwide.'

http://videomaker.com/community/blogs/videonews/2008/03/1965-cascade-audio-introduces-surround-sound-mic-for-under-100/

Quite a few cameras on the market have a pretty decent 5.1 audio capture built in. Then there are add-on products like the above, and for better quality, this

http://www.videomaker.com/article/14526/

"Why are you using a "consumer" NLE to produce a finished product that is usually the domain of Pro NLE's?"
What are you calling "consumer" NLE, Neo specifically, or the entire Edius product line? I imagine GV guys might take some exception to the latter... Are you implying that Neo (the "consumer" version) is unable to handle this type of workflow, but Edius ("pro") can? Can you describe how one would do this in Edius? Or in a combination of tools?

On a more serious note, I'm not even clear if 5.1 audio actually shows up as 6 tracks in AVCHD material. Note that those "plug-in" mics I referenced above plug into stereo mic jack on a regular camcorder, and they feed a Dolby-encoded material. Chances are, AVCHD contains the same sort of encoded material, two tracks only. It is quite likely that as far as Edius (Neo or otherwise) is concerned, it is all stereo, and even if you first transcode to HQ with 8 channel audio selected, it will not do you any good, you will have two Dolby-encoded tracks as stereo, and... I don't know what in the remaining six tracks. It might be necessary to first Dolby-decode to discrete tracks to be able to do anything with specific channels. After that you would need a Dolby encode step (beyond just the AC3 currently available) to package it back into 5.1 and that would require a different license GV would need from Dolby.

One could be tempted to say that if we are really dealing with Dolby-encoded material, then we will preserve it through Edius edits, and simply copy it out to the DVD at the end. I suspect that it is not quite so simple. I don't know if Dolby-encoded contents are correctly preserved under even simple cut operations (one would expect that level adjustments should be OK), and especially if some more advanced audio filtering or effects are applied. Then when it comes to export, and transcoding to a different bitrate, I think all bets are off, and there is a good chance that the surround encoding will be lost (that's your benign scenario) or turned into something really weird.

There might be a way to handle all this in a separate tool chain doing audio only. If someone knows how to do it, I think it would be a fascinating story to share. I cringe at the thought. Issues of syncing video and audio material through two different tool flows are not simple. And I don't even know specifically what audio tools would be good for this type of work, and how you would then merge the two timelines to make a disc. Maybe it could be done in Edius, if you got encoded material back, assuming again that the final bitrate transcoding is not going to wreck the encoded material.

If anyone out there has experience doing this sort of stuff and could share some tricks, I think it would be of interest. Someone mentioned CS4 and Vegas. Do they actually work well with surround sound material?

Thanks,

Roman

[SoundFreak]

Sorry, but it's no joke. Several Panasonic and Sony videocam models have 5 on-board mics and capture in Dolby 5.1.

Indeed this is no joke, they are capable of capturing this, but be honest, have you hooked this cam up to a THX or other proper multichannel capable sound system and where pleased with what you heard ?

These features in the cam's are just sales and marketing tools, nothing more lots less.

I do however agree with you that on a lot of marketing material related to Edius (not sure of Neo) there are statements of 5.1 / Surround sound / Multichannel audio support, and I have to agree, it's very poorly implemented in Edius and better described as a mystery.

If you want any professional results, do proper 5.1 recording with dedicated microphone set up.
If you want any professional results use a third party dedicated audio app.
If you want any near professional results use your 5.1 camera mic recorded surround sound, mix it down to 2 channel stereo, or only use the 2 channel L+R and forget about the rest, unless you don't mind to make a fool of yourself with a substandard audio end product :)

p.s. if it's just for family / holiday movie just use L+R most of us work that way.
The video coming from these mostly smaller home use / semi pro kind of cam's is usable right next to the high end cam's with proper lighting and good shooting technique it can be used / mixed together, however this can't be said about the tiny onboard mic's.

Just my 2 cents .................

[rl2008]

I have. Not once have I thought "man, this is Academy Awards material", but a few times I was nicely surprised. Certain clips had quite a bit of surround presence, especially those shot in a crowd. You are certainly correct that such material will not compare to properly recorded stuff, but even thought not THX, it is not completely useless. Besides, pretty much the same problem exists with plain stereo recordings as well - small handheld unit will not give you the same stereo track as properly microphoned rig. But we use that material.

Well, given a choice, I would prefer to retain the surround (such as it is) than to lose it. This does not seem to be a choice (a you point out it is hard to figure out what really is or is not provided in Edius).

It might be that the answer is out there, and by asking questions we may tease it out into open.

You make references to "third part dedicated audio app" - could you provide some examples of such? Does ProTools handle 5.1 encoded material?

I believe that by "just use L+R" you mean to set camera to cature only stereo, not 5.1, correct?

Thanks,

:-)

[SoundFreak]

I assume that protools or any fully developed audio editor would have no problems with surround sound, otherwise holywood feature films would still be in stereo only ;)

The problem is that your audio is wrapped inside the avcdh file and not many apps, being it audio or video apps can use it and decode it into seperate streams of usable audio.

You are not the only one having this issue, I also encountered this issue and the client wanted (insisted) to use 4 of the 5.1 channels.

My workaround would be to split the audio and video on seperate V and A tracks, then copy audio track 1&2 to track 3&4, then choosing track A2 changing the properties from channel 1&2 playback to channel 3&4 playback, you could even copy the first A track to thr 3rd A track and select playback track 5&6, to have full 5.1

At this point is where the trouble starts in Edius, the playback from the time line is always mixed out as 2 channels.
Edius doesn't support multichannel playout through ASIO so even the 24 channels of discreet analog outputs I have in my audio interfaces will only
playout channel 1 & 2, not a left and right Mix only but a down mix of all 6 channels into L & R if you will.

As you see there is no, I repeat, absolutely no way in Edius to monitor the surrund sound mix, this makes mixing, adjusting levels etc impossible.

Having said that, Edius is able, when the audio mapping is set correctly, to export 8 discrete channels of audio with certain output formats.

2 problems again, you need to find the spec of surround sound authoring, you need to know exactly where L, R, Center rear etc is placed (channel no)
not a big issue, google and you shall find, to me the idiotic thing is that there is absolutely no way to make any usable level ballance between front audio, side or rear and center.

Edius is specified to be able to do 5.1 and yet it can be referenced to any thing, usefull or not ? Why don't you decide !

One statement is correct, Edius can ingest, edit and output multichannel surround sound and preserve this in the final burn to disc.

This is not my 2 cents, these are the facts (sadly)

[Jerry]

Does anybody know a way to maintain 5.1 audio throughout Edius flow to DVD (or BR) burn.

Some cameras (like my HDR-CX500V) capture 5.1 sound, and there are standalone mics that will capture that. It would be nice to keep that in edit.

I supose it is possible to convert to 8 channel HQ before edit, and to carry more than two audio channels on the timeline. But what then? Output tool only has a choice between mono and stereo, no surround options. Third party DVD creation tool? Which one?

Or is that 5.1 encoded in the regular stereo, and you just need to edit stereo?

Someone must have figured this out, that's not a new problem. I tried a few quick searches, but found no matches.

When I do my 5.1 soundtracks I make 6 seperate files and export them individually to Adobe Audition at which time I do whatever audio fixing I need to do on each track. Then I use the surround sound option and spit out 1center, 1 sub and then the fronts and rears in .wav format. I then use AC3 tools Pro to create my final single file DD 5.1.
Yes, this is a work around, but it does work and works well. I then import my 5.1 AC3 files into Encore and off I go.
You can map your audio files so that you have access to your files with more ease.
To a search for audio mapping on the forum.

[Ron Evans]

I do my audio in Vegas and just open the AVCHD file to get all the audio. I convert to HQ stereo for editing in Edius and just as a guide track for use in Vegas for audio mixing to be in sync with the Edius edit ( together with all the other cameras audio and separate audio recorders). I use my XR500 as a full stage fixed camera with the Bluetooth mic so just extract the center channel. Works great so far.
I just export audio from Vegas and into Architect for Bluray.

Ron Evans

[rl2008]

Well, the existence of 5.1 tracks does not prove that encoded material can be freely cut and filtered and transcoded. I'm sure Hollywood does its thing with individual tracks until it all gets encoded.

There are some good comments in the other thread I started recently In the Edius area.

http://ediusforum.grassvalley.com/forum/showthread.php?t=14851

[rl2008]

Thanks for your comments guys. It does not look fun. Maybe the next version of Edius will clean this up. Maybe this should be put in features request area.

My thinking is that if you start with 5.1 material (even if not exactly THX grade :-) you would want to preserve it. There is no downside, it plays stereo fine. On the other hand, on a home theater system, it might sound better, if only a bit. If you don't, someone else will. Got to stay in the race. And if your tool makes it hard, tell the tool maker. He also wants to stay in the race.

FYI, I also found a virtually identical thread on the Neo area.

http://ediusforum.grassvalley.com/forum/showthread.php?t=14737

[SoundFreak]

2 threads, same question ? Do we have new forum rules I'm not aware of ?
I think I missed the memo.