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stereo vs surround, your views.

I edit in 5.1 for the resources it offers with regard to having isolated dialog and being able to mute dialog during edit points to easily make a natural sounding audio transition.

But I release in dolby surround/pro logic 2 compatible 2.0 for several reasons. It doesn't give the total discrete sound of a 5.1 mix but it does still at least give the surround experience, but also by the nature of it automatically fills in the gaps if I've done specific channel edits or added music, it will automatically fill in the gaps and smooth it over. And it will sound perfectly natural in stereo, while also giving the surround channels the activity they are supposed to have if they are equipped for it.

It's obvious why professionally releases went over to discrete surround, and its a good thing and I'm glad because it gives a lot of resources for editing. But for fanediting i think it's a viable release format that allows for the ease of use and freedom of editing in stereo (since you can easily add music and edit individual channels without having to cover your tracks, so to speak) but people that do want surround can still get it, provided they don't mind a little channel bleeding.

Maybe not the absolute best option but it does eliminate a lot of headaches and let's you at least somewhat satisfy both crowds.
 
That’s a very interesting approach or shortcut, Possessed. When you export a project with six discrete channels to stereo in this way, do you find that the end result is something that a decoder/receiver upmixes about as well as it would have the original primary source? (Or as well as a professionally mixed Dolby stereo mix for the movie in question?)
 
@Hal9000 , good thread bump. I had missed this before.

@tremault , as others posted earlier, this is really two questions: on input and output.

Input: yes, absolutely use a surround source if it exists, that way you have a MUCH easier time separating sounds. Whichever output you choose, working in surround will make the audio transitions easier to do cleanly.

Output: More important than surround vs. stereo, especially in films heavy on sound effects, is that the audio is rendered at a good bitrate. I'd rather listen to a 384kbps stereo track than a 192kbps surround track. E.g. if Iron Man or the Millennium Falcon fly by, I know that should be accompanied by a very low rumble from their engines. If I don't feel that rumble, I notice it's absence. For audio bitrate the same as for video bitrate: too low makes the loss of information noticeable and therefore distracting.
 
One thing I am wondering…

Say I have a 2.0 Dolby Surround source, with its matrixed stereo and all that jazz. If I rip that to 2 discrete channels and edit it, if I author the final product to 2.0 Dolby Surround or ProLogic II or whatever… will it also be matrixed or encoded to properly upmix in the viewer’s 5.1 setup? As good as the original source? Or when I rip the source have I broken the magic matrixing that it had?
 
As many have said already, I like to edit with surround so that I have access to different channels. I like to have both included in the export, but if I made an edit and had no intentions of uploading it for others to watch I'd probably just export it to stereo since I only have stereo devices.
 
Stereo is just fine for 98% of viewers. Surround is nice when possible, but by no means needed
 
Bodrick, I wish more people thought this way. I got a lot of pressure from some viewers when I first released stereo edits to put out a surround-sound version. Their rationale was that since my original content had surround sound, there was no reason not to do a version with it. Even after I mentioned that I did not have a surround-sound system to test with, I had people pushing for it. With my home setup, stereo is just fine.
 
I always prefer surround, but it can be a lot more work to ensure an edit works for that format. If the editor doesn't have a surround system to test their work on it's definitely a better idea to put out stereo. Better a seamless stereo track than a surround track that reveals a ton of edits.
 
Editing in surround makes sound work 100 times easier with MUCH more possibility than editing in stereo. This is because you do not need to separate the surround tracks at all in the NLE. Just keep them all together as one one big 6 channel track. All channels are can be edited (cut) at once and all crossfaded at once. They don't need to be individually monitored or processed. You don't need surround speakers to edit a movie in surround. If for some reason you need to work on just the center surround channel, for example to remove some dialogue, just that limited portion of the audio can be separated out so track 1 is everything except the center and track 2 is just the center. And then you can hear what only the center sounds like if necessary by muting track 1.

One thing that will really take some extra time is if you plan to mute portions of the center channel. This can sometimes lead to major ambience loss and require adding it back in using something like:

Freesound - Search

Freesound: collaborative database of creative-commons licensed sound for musicians and sound lovers. Have you freed your sound today?
freesound.org freesound.org

I suggest whenever you mute the center channel you try and gradually fade in and out of the muted part. And fade the newly added ambience in and out in a similar way. You can accomplish wonders by tricking the human ear with gradual audio changes.

The other thing that will take some extra time in a surround mix is if you are recreating any audio from scratch, you will need to add a LFE track yourself. This is as simple as copying a track with some low end and applying a 120 Hz filter.
 
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Honestly Surround is overrated for the most part for me personally. I mean it's great, but only when handled properly. That said I can send you a VERY easy to manage tutorial for surround sound in premiere pro.
 
Speaking as strictly a viewer, not having surround sound can be a dealbreaker for me. It isn’t these days as we only have a three channel system. But we used to have a home theater and likely will again. And for me, I’d probably keep to the official release rather than watch an edit reduced to stereo. Honestly, as someone hard of hearing, even lack of subtitles can be a big turnoff for me with fan edits.
 
Moe_Syzlak said:
Speaking as strictly a viewer, not having surround sound can be a dealbreaker for me. It isn’t these days as we only have a three channel system. But we used to have a home theater and likely will again. And for me, I’d probably keep to the official release rather than watch an edit reduced to stereo. Honestly, as someone hard of hearing, even lack of subtitles can be a big turnoff for me with fan edits.
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Hear, hear about the subtitles. Subtitles for me are a big plus because my girlfriend has trouble watching shows entirely in english without it. So english subtitles help us pick us the things we dont hear well easier. (like for example moments where people talk simultaniously.)
 
lapis molari said:
More important than surround vs. stereo, especially in films heavy on sound effects, is that the audio is rendered at a good bitrate. I'd rather listen to a 384kbps stereo track than a 192kbps surround track. E.g. if Iron Man or the Millennium Falcon fly by, I know that should be accompanied by a very low rumble from their engines. If I don't feel that rumble, I notice it's absence. For audio bitrate the same as for video bitrate: too low makes the loss of information noticeable and therefore distracting.
Click to expand...

I second this. And for those of you who might be intimidated by the almost limitless number of bitrates you may find, let me break it down.

Most DVD Dolby Digital 5.1 surround audio is compressed at a bitrate of 640kbps. DVD DTS 5.1 surround audio, however, is at 768kbps. Since I tend to edit in 1080p, I like to compress my 5.1 track down to AAC 5.1 with a 960kbps bitrate via Handbrake. Trying to acheive blu-ray audio bitrates is hard, because the bitrates are usually 1536kbps at worst. 😬 So, I stick with 960kbps, since it's still better than DVD quality. As for stereo, most DVD's have survived on 192 kbps just fine. However, I like to ramp up the bitrate in stereo anyway, because the more the merrier. I watched some blu-ray special features the other day that were in DTS-HD 2.0 Stereo, and the bitrate was 256kbps. That's become my default bitrate for 2.0.

Also, it's worth talking about sample rates too. In most cases, your best bet is either 44.1khz or 48khz. 44.1 is the sample rate of most CD's, and is more of a standard of the music industry. However, most DVD's and Blu-Ray discs have the higher quality 48khz sample rate. Most people can't hear the difference, but 48khz is considered studio quality and is the default sample rate for most feature films.
 
Moe_Syzlak said:
Speaking as strictly a viewer, not having surround sound can be a dealbreaker for me. It isn’t these days as we only have a three channel system. But we used to have a home theater and likely will again. And for me, I’d probably keep to the official release rather than watch an edit reduced to stereo. Honestly, as someone hard of hearing, even lack of subtitles can be a big turnoff for me with fan edits.
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I hope subtitles begin to be more commonplace. I've started doing subtitles for all my edits ever since my brother started having trouble with his ears.
 
Eyepainter said:
I second this. And for those of you who might be intimidated by the almost limitless number of bitrates you may find, let me break it down.

Most DVD Dolby Digital 5.1 surround audio is compressed at a bitrate of 640kbps. DVD DTS 5.1 surround audio, however, is at 768kbps. Since I tend to edit in 1080p, I like to compress my 5.1 track down to AAC 5.1 with a 960kbps bitrate via Handbrake. Trying to acheive blu-ray audio bitrates is hard, because the bitrates are usually 1536kbps at worst. 😬 So, I stick with 960kbps, since it's still better than DVD quality. As for stereo, most DVD's have survived on 192 kbps just fine. However, I like to ramp up the bitrate in stereo anyway, because the more the merrier. I watched some blu-ray special features the other day that were in DTS-HD 2.0 Stereo, and the bitrate was 256kbps. That's become my default bitrate for 2.0.

Also, it's worth talking about sample rates too. In most cases, your best bet is either 44.1khz or 48khz. 44.1 is the sample rate of most CD's, and is more of a standard of the music industry. However, most DVD's and Blu-Ray discs have the higher quality 48khz sample rate. Most people can't hear the difference, but 48khz is considered studio quality and is the default sample rate for most feature films.
Click to expand...

Many years ago (perhaps 20 years ago now) I started to convert my vast CD collection to drives. I had a listening party with some of my more music-obsessed friends and we did a blind (deaf?) test between various bitrates. Everyone could hear a noticeable difference between the then standard 128 vs. 256. I have a congenital hearing disorder that causes me to hear high highs and low lows better than average at the expense of midrange. That makes me particularly good at noticing the frequencies cut off by mp3s. I could hear a difference between 256 vs. 320, but not consistently. In other words it depended on the source. Only a few of my friends could ever notice that difference. I decided to rip at 320 nonetheless. Unfortunately, my hearing has deteriorated even more and I doubt I could still hear the difference. Plus now I wear hearing aids, which sorta flips my hearing to get it closer to normal audiogram. I don’t know how (or if) any of this relates to dealing with movies and fan edits. But I thought I’d share some anecdotal evidence if it helps.
 
Our @Possessed recently clued me in to the wonders of Dolby Pro Logic II.
I used this for my Terminator Duology. I'll be re-releasing all of my earlier edits in an updated DPLII track.

(edit: just saw his post at the top of this page lol)
 
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Could you say more about it? Don’t you essentially build a surround mix and encode it down? Curious about how DLII actually works, and how one would make it.
 
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