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How to edit 5.1 in adobe premiere pro 2019

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I have been editing in premiere pro for the last year and all of my edits have been posted in stereo. But this year I decided to upgrade my home theater from a simple two-channel setup to a 5.1 sound system. But ever since I upgraded my setup I wanted to create an edit in proper 5.1 surround sound. I know in final cut pro you can edit the individual tracks, but in premiere pro 2019 it just shows up as one track. Does anyone know how to edit the individual tracks? I want to have music and some sound effects come out of the back two-speaker dialogue and the main effects to come out of the 3 audio channels. So can somebody help me figure out how to edit premiere in proper 5.1?
 

macmilln

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Here's how I do it:
Right click on a track in the timeline, and click Audio Channels... There will be a grid of buttons (L, R, C, LFE, Ls, Rs) that you can use to enable/disable each channel. The columns represent the source channels, and the rows represent where they are outputted to. (If you had column R enabled in row L, it would output the Right audio to the Left channel).

I guess if you wanted to have all the channels shown as individual tracks in your timeline, you could just copy the track and then enable only one channel for each.

I believe there's a way to separate each channel into an individual track on the timeline. But, I usually use this method, as it's how I taught myself and it looks cleaner in the timeline to me.

Hope this helps!
 

addiesin

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Here's how I do it:
I personally have been using Audacity to export each channel as its own wav file, then I import them into Premiere and line them up with the video. Seems to work well, gives me a lot of flexibility, if you don't want to keep it all as one track. Just make sure your Premiere project audio master track is set to 5.1 when you create it so you don't put a bunch of work into it and have to do weird workarounds when exporting like me.
 

Siliconmaster

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I used addiesin's method, though macmilln's method should work too if you want to avoid splitting the audio manually. And yes, absolutely double check the sequence settings, that has caused me a lot of pain in the past.

An upside of having manually split audio tracks is that it's a lot easier to see the waveforms in Premiere, now that I think of it. One waveform vs a scrunched up 5 on a single track.
 

VortexUnlimited

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addiesin said:
Here's how I do it:
I personally have been using Audacity to export each channel as its own wav file, then I import them into Premiere and line them up with the video. Seems to work well, gives me a lot of flexibility, if you don't want to keep it all as one track. Just make sure your Premiere project audio master track is set to 5.1 when you create it so you don't put a bunch of work into it and have to do weird workarounds when exporting like me.

Trying this out now, are the track types also mono?
 

addiesin

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VortexUnlimited said:
Trying this out now, are the track types also mono?

When you import them, yes they'll be individual mono files. You'll have to tell Premiere you want to use them as surround tracks, here's how:
(First make sure you have them named something that indicates what speaker they're each for)
Import the wav files. Then once they're in your project, right click on the files in the Project panel in Premiere, when you right click each one go to (I think) "Modify" in the right click menu, and set them each to be read as 5.1 files instead of mono, and check the correct speaker's checkbox and uncheck the default checkbox (this is where it's helpful to have the files named descriptively).

Again, make sure you set your timeline master audio to 5.1, don't start editing without checking the audio properties of the timeline, it defaults to stereo.
 

VortexUnlimited

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addiesin said:
VortexUnlimited said:
Trying this out now, are the track types also mono?

When you import them, yes they'll be individual mono files. You'll have to tell Premiere you want to use them as surround tracks, here's how:
(First make sure you have them named something that indicates what speaker they're each for)
Import the wav files. Then once they're in your project, right click on the files in the Project panel in Premiere, when you right click each one go to (I think) "Modify" in the right click menu, and set them each to be read as 5.1 files instead of mono, and check the correct speaker's checkbox and uncheck the default checkbox (this is where it's helpful to have the files named descriptively).

Again, make sure you set your timeline master audio to 5.1, don't start editing without checking the audio properties of the timeline, it defaults to stereo.

Ah okay, gotcha. That solves another problem I had with one of five tracks having two channels, instead of six tracks with one channel. Much thanks :D !
 

Cnemi

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I recently got access to Premiere Pro 14, so I'm playing around with it.  I've done a little editing with CyberLink PowerDirector years ago, so I'm sort of able to fumble around in Premiere.

Starting small to practice- I loaded a movie, cut out a scene, and exported.  But the source is 5.1, the export was downmixed to stereo.  How do I maintain the 5.1 of the source?

I figure addieson's warning to set the timeline master audio to 5.1 must have something to do with it.  It looks like it's set to 5.1, all the audio tracks are set to 5.1.  But the sound's all in A1 and not in Master.  Is there something I should have done before loading the source?  Again, I don't want to edit or remix the audio, I simply want to preserve the source's 5.1 in the output.

OI2uGkN.jpg


This is just playing around and practice, so if I have to scrap this and start over, no biggie.  Thanks for any tips you can give this newbie.
 

addiesin

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Cnemi said:

The screenshot helps. Looks like your timeline's audio master track is set to 5.1, that's good.

When you export, click on the audio tab and it should allow you to select 5.1 output in one of the drop-down menus. I can't remember exact wording but if you know what you're looking for it should be easy to spot. If you don't see it I'll go in and take a screenshot of where to find it.

I have seen that sometimes Premiere has trouble with LFE tracks, so after you get it figured out, make sure to check your exported file in Audacity or by reloading it into Premiere. If your LFE channel looks empty, you might need to look up some workarounds on YouTube. I'm not well-learned that far into the process yet, enough to help that particular issue.

I'm planning on exporting my 5.1 mix as mono wavs and assembling them outside Premiere, then muxing the final surround audio track to my final video along with a stereo option, so I'll hopefully bypass any problems in that area on my current project.
 

Siliconmaster

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Cnemi said:
It looks like it's set to 5.1, all the audio tracks are set to 5.1.  But the sound's all in A1 and not in Master. 

FYI that master track is for overall volume level editing, it never has any actual content on its own. In most cases the master track will remain at 100% volume all the time, and fine tuning is done on the individual audio tracks (A1, A2, etc.).
 

Cnemi

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addiesin said:
When you export, click on the audio tab and it should allow you to select 5.1 output in one of the drop-down menus. I can't remember exact wording but if you know what you're looking for it should be easy to spot. If you don't see it I'll go in and take a screenshot of where to find it.

Not finding this. :huh: Everything is showing stereo with no option to select anything else.
 
Siliconmaster said:
FYI that master track is for overall volume level editing, it never has any actual content on its own. In most cases the master track will remain at 100% volume all the time, and fine tuning is done on the individual audio tracks (A1, A2, etc.).

Ah OK, thanks.
 

Siliconmaster

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Cnemi said:
Not finding this. :huh: Everything is showing stereo with no option to select anything else.

Hm, addiesin, you may know more about this than me, but wasn't 5.1 ac3 export removed from 2017 versions onward? Dolby Digital licensing or some nonsense. How do you export your 5.1 mixes these days?
 

addiesin

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Yeah Dolby support was removed but you should still be able to export surround in some way.

My test exports I think I used AAC, which allowed 5.1. It's very lossy even at its max available quality but I think would be fine for a digital file (mp4/mkv), though you'd want a less lossy solution for something intended to be burned onto a disc. I'll experiment a little more tonight. If I find what I'm talking about I'll post a screenshot.

I'm hoping to find a workaround or free solution for my project but I may settle for AAC if my research and experiments fail to produce practical results. I'm going to look deeper into other software if needed.

My old busted computer has Premiere CS5 from my college days. The computer doesn't function well enough to edit video, it overheats quickly, but I think it would maybe be able to do something like importing wav and exporting surround audio with no video involved. That's my backup plan for my current project, though I don't know if it'll work, just turning on that computer is a gamble.
 

Siliconmaster

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Yeah, makes sense. For the record, CC2017 was the last version of Premiere that supported full-quality 5.1 ac3 export- I just kept that installed until I finished my RotS edit. There has to be a more lossless way of exporting than AAC, but sadly I don't have the time to research it right now.
 
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