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wav and ac3 in the same project?

TV's Frink

TV's Frink

You Catch On Pretty Quick
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I was planning on working with a center channel track that is a wav file and a 4.1 track (all but the center channel) that is an ac3 file. Do the two sound tracks have to be the same format or can I still export without issue?
 
So long as your editing program allows it, and you have set it up to interpret the tracks correctly, there shouldn't be a problem. The resulting audio will be exported with whatever settings you choose, as one type of audio. I use Premiere CS5 and have combined many various types of audio in the same project. For my edit of Contact, I had 6 mono tracks that I split from the original AC-3 track, and I used about 8 stereo tracks to layer in music and sound effects at various points. For a few scenes I removed the music and replaced the center channel with a mono channel that contained my "musicless" dialog.

So, yes, it will work if everything is set up properly (and your chosen editing program allows it).
 
Womble generally exports both together without significant glitches, but sometimes will forget an entire sound clip if it's mp3 or wav. Not a big problem, though; you can always create an .ac3 export of that sound clip alone, then plug the result back in to the project and it'll almost always work fine. Hope that helps. :)
 
you may export with no issue, but I suggest always going with the same format for both video and audio and no exceptions. Each conversion is done by a different included tool and you hardly ever know what you get in the end. ac3 might turn out to be too quiet, the sync is suddenly off, an mp3 just might sound odd etc.
Thing is, when you don't experiment, where it isn't necessary, you always get the result you want and no unwanted surprises. In other words: trying to save time can be the most time extensive decision you make in editing.
 
Thanks guys.

boon23 said:
you may export with no issue, but I suggest always going with the same format for both video and audio and no exceptions. Each conversion is done by a different included tool and you hardly ever know what you get in the end. ac3 might turn out to be too quiet, the sync is suddenly off, an mp3 just might sound odd etc.
Click to expand...
Any suggestions on what format to use for audio? I have six mono wav files and I used WAV to AC3 Encoder to get the 4.1 track, but I can't use it for just the center channel (a minimum of two tracks are required). I also will probably be looking to add in additional music or sound effects from different sources at certain points.

I suppose I could work with the six wav files but it seems easier to work with a 4.1 track.

I'm planning on using Vegas Movie Studio if I can ever get the damn thing to work.
 
Hmm, if you have the 6 mono wavs (ripped from an ac3, I would imagine) you could use something like Audacity (freeware) to recombine them into a 6-channel uncompressed wav to use in your project. This would spare some audio quality as you wouldn't be recompressing to ac3 until the final output. Audacity will let you silence individual tracks (essentially giving you 4.1 output if you silence the center track). For my recent edit I just used Audacity to export the original ac3 to 6 wavs. I like the ease of having each track with individualy key-framable volume levels. I then output the final audio as a new uncompressed 6-channel wav from premiere, and used audacity again with ffmpeg to convert it to ac3.

I don't use Vegas or any derivative, so I'm not sure of the audio formats it is capable of using. So I guess it would depend on whether that particular program can work with 6-channel uncompressed wavs.
 
Ultimist said:
Hmm, if you have the 6 mono wavs (ripped from an ac3, I would imagine) you could use something like Audacity (freeware) to recombine them into a 6-channel uncompressed wav to use in your project. This would spare some audio quality as you wouldn't be recompressing to ac3 until the final output. Audacity will let you silence individual tracks (essentially giving you 4.1 output if you silence the center track). For my recent edit I just used Audacity to export the original ac3 to 6 wavs. I like the ease of having each track with individualy key-framable volume levels. I then output the final audio as a new uncompressed 6-channel wav from premiere, and used audacity again with ffmpeg to convert it to ac3.

I don't use Vegas or any derivative, so I'm not sure of the audio formats it is capable of using. So I guess it would depend on whether that particular program can work with 6-channel uncompressed wavs.
Click to expand...

I do something very similar using Sony Sound Forge and loading the uncompressed 6ch wav onto the Premier editing time line - it is just very critical to keep in mind sync issues .... i have gone back and forth between Premier and Sound Forge to eliminate hard audio edits when I am editing a scene
 
I just use the audio crossfades available in premiere. Sometimes a situation requires that I manipulate the audio using keyframes as well. That's one of the reasons I prefer using the 6 mono wav files (each assigned to the appropriate channel) in premiere, so I have more control over the volume of each channel. I never bothered to figure out how to use premiere's mixer, so I just do it all with keyframes.
 
One of the reasons I wanted to work with a 4.1 track was so I didn't have to deal with five separate tracks. But it just occurred to me that I can group the five tracks together...I think.
 
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