Surround Sound Workflow

[wheatgrinder]

Surround Sound Work Flow
To save some others pain and to just capture this learning experience for posterity… here is the work flow Im currently using for surround sound projects.

• Edit in premier pro
• Export sound OMF to Cubase with IO setup for surround, 3 channels left, right and center
• Mix to taste
• In Cubase Render 3 wave files (LR&C)
• Import wave files into premier
• Export VIDEO ONLY from premiere quicktime photo jpeg
• EXPORT audio as a single windows 5.1 wave file
• Run video through handbrake to create h264 file mp4
• Run 5.1 wave file through “WavToAc3” encoder tool to produce AC3 encoded file
• Use “My MP4Box GUI” to “mux” the h264 video with the ac3 audio to final output.

Ok, now why I do it like this way.
The key idea here was to use the tools I had available without purchasing any new stuff to produce a HD video file that would play back on my blu-ray player with surround sound. NOTE: My blu-ray player plays data files from disk or usb, this is not about creating a blu-ray disk.

• Edit in premier pro
• Export sound OMF to Cubase with IO setup for surround, 3 channels left, right and center

I’m not doing a full surround mix, just the basic 3.0 as suggested by APE. This is much more practical for me and so far has yielded as good of results as I can manage.

• Mix to taste
• In Cubase Render 3 wave files (LR&C)

Cubase 6.5 does support 5.1 mixing, but exporting the 5.1 channels as separate wave files is the only way to get the mix out.

• Import wave files into premier
• Export VIDEO ONLY from premiere quicktime photo jpeg

To export ac3\DTS surround sound via PPro you will need to purchase the SurCode add on, at $289 I thought a free method preferable. I have never been satisfied with the h264 encode from adobe, I use handbrake and believe the quality is improved, however, I have used the h264 encoded files from PPro for the rest of this process without issue.

• EXPORT audio as a single windows 5.1 wave file

Though you can’t export a DTS or AC3 file without the surcode plugin, you can export a multi-channel wave file. Handbrake will accept the multichannel wave file as input, but it will not encode it as AC3 or DTS, rather it just becomes a stereo mix down, I did discover that handbrake WILL accept an AC3 file already encoded and pass it on, however, something goes wonky in the channel assignments and I could never get it to work correctly.

• Run video through handbrake to create h264 video only mp4 file
• Run 5.1 wave file through “WavToAc3” encoder tool

This is needed to get the multi-channel audio to playback, now its not DTS, which is a shame, but AC3 is pretty good and sounds good on most any playback system, stereo or surround.

• Use “My MP4Box GUI” to “mux” the h264 video with the ac3 audio to final output.

The use of a muxing program is very handy. Its very fast to combine the audio and video, the muxer does not encode the file, it just crams the two files together in the right way. This is great for producing many alternate mixes without the pain of a new render every time you update the audio, this will be part of my normal process for any project going forward.

 

[Blade_Jones]

I replaced every sound in a movie. Here was my work flow using Nuendo and Wavelab.

I broke the movie up into scenes. Usually I'd have 3 different reverbs per room so doing an entire movie would have over loaded Nuendo with over a thousand tracks.
'Then I did stereo mixes for each scene. Then I chained those scene by scene mixes into one timeline for the whole movie to balance the levels for each scene. There wound up being a few sounds that I dropped in by themselves in this master stereo timeline, such as fussy explosion sounds. Then I mastered the stereo mix in WaveLab.

Last I moved on to my surround sound mix. Same process with multi track project files for each scene, each mixed into surround sound files by scene. Then bring 'em all into one timeline to mix down for the entire movie. The surround sound mix went a lot faster than the stereo mix, since I'd already done the hard work while working on the stereo mix.... levels, EQ, reverbs, etc. BTW I used stereo reverbs for my surround sound mix. No need to spend money on surround sound effect plugins.

One of the most important things is to listen to your sound through a little "Mr. Crappy" speaker to replicate someone's little 3" TV speaker. The lowest common denominator must sound good.
Also cutting out the low end is important. That lower end of the audio spectrum that nobody can hear will only distort the little 3" speaker.
Doing sound the RIGHT way for a 90 minute movie is a massive project!

 

[wheatgrinder]

Blade,
great idea that "pre mixing in stereo" very streamlined and intuitive.
I'm very interested in the tool chain you use to get an actual playable file?

 

[Blade_Jones]

Blade,
great idea that "pre mixing in stereo" very streamlined and intuitive.
I'm very interested in the tool chain you use to get an actual playable file?

You mean effects used in WaveLab?

 

[wheatgrinder]

no,
I mean you have a video file and you've mixed the 5.1 sound,
how do you you produce a video file with the 5.1 sound encoded?

If your preparing for blu-ray \ dvd what tools do you use to assure that your disk will playback with surround sound?

If your delivering just final audio to someone else to create the disk from, what exactly do you deliver? Separate wav files, or an encoded DTS\AC3..

 

[Blade_Jones]

After I rendered my stereo and surround sound mixes from WaveLab it was on to DVD Studio Pro.
DVD Studio Pro comes bundled with Final Cut Studio. I rendered it out in Dolby format.
It's been like 5 years since I did this movie.

 

[AudioPostExpert]

Wheat: Seems like you've got a handle on how to create a 3.0 mix on the cheap. To be honest though, I'm not sure I really understand why you don't just create a stereo mix for DVD/BluRay, unless of course you are using the BluRay as the exhibition media to screen your film in a cinema. BTW, with BluRay there is no need to encode the mix into AC3 or DTS, you can just use the raw wav files!

Blade: I can't decide if you are just completely ignorant about audio post and believe you are giving good advice or if you actually know something about audio post but are deliberately trying to mislead indietalkers? If it's the former, it's incredible that you seem able to provide such inaccurate and bad advice so consistently!! Either way the result is the same.

I don't even know where to start with your first reply to this thread, pretty much every single sentence is plain wrong and/or bad advice:

The 2nd paragraph: Do NOT split your audio into scenes!! Let's say you have one scene where the dialogue is too loud, so you lower the level of that scene but now you've also lowered the level of all the SFX, music and whatever else was in the audio for that scene. I can't think of a more time consuming or inappropriate workflow suggestion or one more likely to give inconsistent and poor results! Wheat, if you or anyone else have limited track/computer resources, do what the film industry has done since sound was part of the film industry: Work on and record individual stems one at a time. For example: Dialogue, Foley, spot effects, backgrounds and music. Then import only the recorded stems into a super session and you can balance them against each other for the whole film.

3rd Paragraph: Ridiculous! 1. Levels for a surround mix are totally different to stereo mix. 2. So you are going to have stereo only reverb in a surround sound mix? In other words, what you are creating is a stereo mix with the occasional dry sound in the surround channels, how is that a surround mix?

3rd Paragraph: Do NOT cut out all the low frequencies of your mix so it sounds good on a crappy 3" speaker!! What you will end up with is a mix which sounds OK on a crappy 3" speaker but crap on everything else! All those people with at least a reasonable sound system, those people with a crappy sound system but with a sub or those listening with headphones will all wonder why your mix sounds so thin, tinny and crappy compared to every other mix they are used to hearing! BTW, I've seen Blade suggest this before and I explained then why it was such terrible advice. So Blade cannot use ignorance as an excuse, meaning he must be deliberately trying to mislead and troll indietalk!!

G

 

[Blade_Jones]

Wheat: Seems like you've got a handle on how to create a 3.0 mix on the cheap. To be honest though, I'm not sure I really understand why you don't just create a stereo mix for DVD/BluRay, unless of course you are using the BluRay as the exhibition media to screen your film in a cinema. BTW, with BluRay there is no need to encode the mix into AC3 or DTS, you can just use the raw wav files!

Blade: I can't decide if you are just completely ignorant about audio post and believe you are giving good advice or if you actually know something about audio post but are deliberately trying to mislead indietalkers? If it's the former, it's incredible that you seem able to provide such inaccurate and bad advice so consistently!! Either way the result is the same.

I don't even know where to start with your first reply to this thread, pretty much every single sentence is plain wrong and/or bad advice:

The 2nd paragraph: Do NOT split your audio into scenes!! Let's say you have one scene where the dialogue is too loud, so you lower the level of that scene but now you've also lowered the level of all the SFX, music and whatever else was in the audio for that scene. I can't think of a more time consuming or inappropriate workflow suggestion or one more likely to give inconsistent and poor results! Wheat, if you or anyone else have limited track/computer resources, do what the film industry has done since sound was part of the film industry: Work on and record individual stems one at a time. For example: Dialogue, Foley, spot effects, backgrounds and music. Then import only the recorded stems into a super session and you can balance them against each other for the whole film.

3rd Paragraph: Ridiculous! 1. Levels for a surround mix are totally different to stereo mix. 2. So you are going to have stereo only reverb in a surround sound mix? In other words, what you are creating is a stereo mix with the occasional dry sound in the surround channels, how is that a surround mix?

3rd Paragraph: Do NOT cut out all the low frequencies of your mix so it sounds good on a crappy 3" speaker!! What you will end up with is a mix which sounds OK on a crappy 3" speaker but crap on everything else! All those people with at least a reasonable sound system, those people with a crappy sound system but with a sub or those listening with headphones will all wonder why your mix sounds so thin, tinny and crappy compared to every other mix they are used to hearing! BTW, I've seen Blade suggest this before and I explained then why it was such terrible advice. So Blade cannot use ignorance as an excuse, meaning he must be deliberately trying to mislead and troll indietalk!!

G

I don't even know where to begin with this troll who drinks the engineer coolade (I hate compression, etc). No computer can handle a thousand tracks including a hundred effects. Maybe you cut corners but I put time and effort into designing my rooms with usually 3 different rooms. And when you have 3 reverb types to work with you can spread them differently across a surround sound spectrum. Maybe you're trying to sell software for Waves.
You don't mix everything on a 3" speaker. You have a selection of different speakers. The only thing inaudible low frequencies do are foul up a mix. If you want to leave it in just to say that it's there then have fun screwing up your mix.

 

[AudioPostExpert]

You haven't directly answered the question Blade but you're implying it's the first choice namely; you are completely ignorant of audio AND are incredibly unlucky in that every single piece of advice and information you provide is wrong. Just the law of averages would suggest you'd occasionally get something right but your last post proved again that you can't get anything right!

3 different stereo reverbs panned around the surround sound field, you've got to be joking? And, low frequencies which may be inaudible on a 3" crappy speaker will not be inaudible on other sound systems but you go right ahead and remove them anyway, good luck with that! And lastly, your statement about a 1,000 tracks and a 100 effects simply proves you don't have even a beginner's understanding of the basics of film sound workflow. So I ask the question one last time for fear of "feeding the troll": Are you trolling or are you seriously that ignorant of film sound (and incredibly unlucky)?

G

 

[wheatgrinder]

APE..
I'm trying to create an MP4 file that will playback with surround sound. My bluray player will playback data files not just bluray disks. (seems most will do this, who knew)

My first goal is to produce something for a private cast\crew screening at home that will playback on my bluray player and surround sound system.

Ill try muxing my video with a multi-channel wav\pcm file rather than AC3. Might work for bluray encoded disks but not a discrete file, but easy enough to test.

Thanks

EDIT:

Dudes, take it easy, I appreciate you both..

APE, I don't feel its right to accuse Blade of intentional misleading me. Everyone is in a different place and coming from their own perspective, I appreciate the intent to help, if not the information itself.

BLADE, APE has been helping me with this 3.0 thing for awhile, its taken some time to get the feel for his doctoral thesis approach to sharing information, yes his is prickly, condescending and a know it all, trouble is it might be "true" the hes does indeed know it all..

 

[AudioPostExpert]

No Wheat, I don't know how to do it to an MP4 file, I was talking in terms of an authored BluRay disk rather than just using the BD as a data disk.

BTW, take Blade's advice/info if you wish, you'll find out the hard way but at least you'll be convinced. I'm being harsh on him because he has an annoying habit of hijacking audio related threads on indietalk, contradicting on subjects he obviously knows little or nothing about, spouting a whole bunch of misleading and incorrect nonsense. This isn't me just being "prickly", it's me getting annoyed at repeatedly having to go through the same thing with the same person for the same reason and it's certainly of no benefit to the average indietalker!

G

 

[Blade_Jones]

You haven't directly answered the question Blade but you're implying it's the first choice namely; you are completely ignorant of audio AND are incredibly unlucky in that every single piece of advice and information you provide is wrong. Just the law of averages would suggest you'd occasionally get something right but your last post proved again that you can't get anything right!

3 different stereo reverbs panned around the surround sound field, you've got to be joking? And, low frequencies which may be inaudible on a 3" crappy speaker will not be inaudible on other sound systems but you go right ahead and remove them anyway, good luck with that! And lastly, your statement about a 1,000 tracks and a 100 effects simply proves you don't have even a beginner's understanding of the basics of film sound workflow. So I ask the question one last time for fear of "feeding the troll": Are you trolling or are you seriously that ignorant of film sound (and incredibly unlucky)?

G

You are a complete idiot lost in your school book coolade and a troll and you don't know what you are even talking about. I suspect you have never even dealt with a project that required replacing all of the dialog in the studio. Also a stereo mix can't be compared to a surround mix. People with surround sound systems don't have 3" TV speakers. Troll on troll....

 

[wheatgrinder]

I hate it when the grownups fight.. cue music: Pat Benatar "Hell Is For Children"

Blade Your working your self up, and I think your not READING what your posting or writing..
Ape, settle down, being right isn't the only important thing in a relationship.


Blade, in your first post you did say:

Also cutting out the low end is important. That lower end of the audio spectrum that nobody can hear will only distort the little 3" speaker.

To which APE said:

Do NOT cut out all the low frequencies of your mix so it sounds good on a crappy 3" speaker!!

And now you say:

People with surround sound systems don't have 3" TV speakers.

Your last statement seems to agree with APE, I suspect there is a misunderstanding here, and since you two are having way too much fun slinging names at each other neither of you are unable to find it.

sigh,family counseling session over. Please resume your regularly scheduled bickering.

 

[Blade_Jones]

When mixing stereo you want to have a variety of speakers INCLUDING a little "Mr Crappy" speaker. Most idie filmmakers who do it themselves only use a pair of expensive reference monitors. What sounds good through studio reference often does not sound good through little 3" speakers. Mr Crappy will be the fussiest of them all, especially with low end inaudible frequencies. For DVD's you want to mix for what CONSUMERS will hear through various TV sets and home theater systems -- not just what you hear through your high quality reference monitors.

When it comes to surround sound consumers will not have little Mr Crappy speakers. Two different conversations.

 

[wheatgrinder]

See, now thats more useful.. though of course in an odd ironic twist, my home theater speakers are indeed 3" drivers! (consumer Yamaha bass managed system with sub, I can set the speakers to "full range" or roll off the low end to the sub)

Seems to me that there are a few distribution targets..

1. DVD\BluRay stereo
2. DVD\BLueRay surround.
3. Internet Stereo
4. Theater Projection Stereo
5. Theater Projection Surround

Each requires its own mix.

Using AC3 encoded sound for BluRay\DVD does result in sound track that most anything can automatically down sample to stereo if the consumer doesn't have a surround sound setup (or doesn't have it setup right) In addition the MPEG4 protocol does support multiple audio tracks, so you can have a DTS surround mix(presumably a PCM too) and a stereo mix in the same disk.

Few people have their internet devices hooked up for true surround sound, sure there are a few, but its not really the norm. This is also the distribution where you are likely to have the crappiest speakers, so a mix target for internet, if I understand you correctly, would benefit the most from a mix that rolled off the very low end. Anything below 30hz??? That said most "systems with small speakers" are sorta self limiting in that respect, the amps dont put out that low of signal in the first place.. etc..

Theater projection in stereo is the what we get at the low end local film festivals. Your lucky to get that!

Theater projection surround is the most varied and issue prone. Chances are each festival will have a little bit different setup and getting details about the sound projections systems used is a must.

Obviously you don't need a complete remix between dvd stereo, internet stereo and projection stereo, however, a mix of the stems for each of these might be a good idea...

For surround sound the difference between home theater and real theater projection are just too great to risk a one size fits all approach..

 

[AudioPostExpert]

Few people have their internet devices hooked up for true surround sound, sure there are a few, but its not really the norm. This is also the distribution where you are likely to have the crappiest speakers, so a mix target for internet, if I understand you correctly, would benefit the most from a mix that rolled off the very low end. Anything below 30hz??? That said most "systems with small speakers" are sorta self limiting in that respect, the amps dont put out that low of signal in the first place.. etc..

In one respect the internet is the biggest problem distribution channel of them all because of the wide variety of playback devices used. There are in fact quite a lot of people with surround systems hooked up to their computers, the gaming community is of considerable size and very specifically catered for with very big and expensive surround sound game releases. This group, though large, still represents a relatively small percentage of internet users. There is a much higher percentage who use cheap 2.1 systems with their computers, poor quality but able to reproduce low frequencies. Many watch internet content on a tablet or smartphone, the internal speakers of which represent the poorest quality playback of any device but listened to with in-ear-monitors (IEMs), which is also very common, can actually provide good quality full range sound reproduction (though only in stereo of course).

With such a large range of playback devices, there is no fixed point of what constitutes "inaudible" low frequencies, except from the point of view of the limit of human hearing which is about 20Hz. Some laptops and pretty much all smartphones won't reproduce much frequency content below roughly 150Hz and a crappy 3" or TV speaker is not likely to produce much audible content below about 80Hz or so but headphones, IEMs and those with a sub (2.1 or 5.1 systems) can reproduce frequencies up to two octaves lower than the roll-off point of the average TV speaker! So, it's perfectly safe to say you can remove anything below about 20Hz or so but removing all the frequencies much higher than that needs to be a considered decision. I personally and no other professional I know or have ever heard of would consider removing all the frequency content below the level of inaudibility of the average TV or crappy 3" speaker (say 80Hz). By all means though take Blade's advice, remove everything below this point and see for yourself what it sounds like compared to other commercial mixes on your system and with say headphones.

When you say "Theater projection surround is the most varied and issue prone." I would actually say the opposite! Theatre projection easily represents the most standardized audio playback of any distribution channel but that of course depends on what you mean by "theatre projection". If you're talking about an ad-hoc theatre, say a venue which is usually a school hall, gym or some other room, in which the festival organisers have setup a screen, projector and sound system to turn it into a temporary theatre then yes, it's essentially the wild west out there as far as sound reproduction is concerned! But if we're talking about a real theatre (a commercial cinema) then it has almost certainly been built and equipped to conform to strict acoustical "rules" and providing it's been decently maintained is therefore highly standardised with very little variability (relative to other distribution channels). The difficulty, as I've mentioned in other threads, is that creating a mixing environment and therefore an actual mix which works well on the highly specific and standardised playback systems found in cinemas is near impossible for the no/micro budget filmmaker. Added to this difficulty is the fact that the playback media, except in the really major film festivals, is also not the standard cinema media type so there can be additional issues interfacing consumer media playback devices with commercial theatrical projection/audio systems. I realise you know all/most of this already Wheat and that's why you're going down the 3.0 route but this is for others who may still be following this thread.

While I have no wish to continue the argument with Blade, his last post demonstrates even to those indietalkers who are audio newbies that his info is ridiculous. I doubt hardly any DIY indie film makers "only use a pair of expensive reference monitors", let alone "most". The vast majority either won't have reference monitors in the first place or will use low budget monitors probably costing less than $1k a pair. There may be some, although I don't personally know of any, who use mid-priced reference monitors (say $2k - $8k a set) but I would bet the number of DIY indie filmmakers who use expensive reference monitors ($10k - $30k+ a pair) is way lower than 1% and certainly nowhere near "most". Also, it goes without saying that the better the monitors and monitoring environment, the more "fussy" the speakers become because they reveal more detail in the sound than a crappy 3" speaker. This is true throughout the frequency spectrum but especially true in the frequency range where the crappy 3" speaker won't reproduce anything!

And, it's not really an "ironic twist" Wheat, the vast majority of surround systems bought by consumers are based on relatively crappy 3" (or so) speakers but with a sub to reproduce the low frequencies which the crappy 3" speakers can't. I saw somewhere a couple of years ago that 30 million of these relatively cheap bass managed surround systems had been sold! BTW, although your amp might have a "full range" setting you shouldn't use it! Somewhere in the information for your speakers should be the recommended crossover point, which in all likelihood will be at either 80Hz or 120Hz.

G

 

[wheatgrinder]

Your exactly right, for cinema projection Im talking festivals, ala the wild west, anything going for real distribution is going to be an entire different ball of wax beyond my ken, though others may breath in that rarefied air.

You mean to say $500 (each) for monitors is not "high end?" ( I joke)

 

[Alcove Audio]

Most indie filmmakers who do it themselves only use a pair of expensive reference monitors.

Oh, come on now... Audio is the last thing that most indie types consider. It's a battle to get many of them to even to think about proper production sound procedures, much less audio post. Those few who spend $400 on a pair of speakers consider it an outrageous expense. Of those few who even bother to purchase even budget speakers 99.99% of them do not treat their room and speaker calibration is a completely foreign concept.

When mixing stereo you want to have a variety of speakers INCLUDING a little "Mr Crappy" speaker.

I do this, but I'm not an experienced rerecording mixer. Experienced rerecording professionals have the ears and abilities to create mixes that translate across a variety of platforms without having to reference on a variety of speakers.

No computer can handle a thousand tracks including a hundred effects.

Correct; that's why they use Avid (formerly Digidesign) Pro Tools systems that take the CPU load off of the computer(s). PT Legacy systems could "only" handle 256 channels, so they would sync five systems together - one for dialog, one for Foley, one for sound effects, one for score/music and one for sub-busses & processing/effects. They still use this multiple computer/hardware set-up even though the new computer/hardware combination can handle 512 channels per computer & interface.

I did stereo mixes for each scene...

Why? Nuendo can handle surround.

Then I mastered the stereo mix in WaveLab

Why go into WaveLab at all?

Last I moved on to my surround sound mix.

How do you manipulate individual sounds into the surround field out of a mixed stereo file?

No need to spend money on surround sound effect plugins.

Right.

From Nuendo literature: Complete Set of Surround Effect Plug-Ins. So there are already surround reverbs included when you purchase Nuendo.

And if you have already spent $1,700 on Nuendo a few more dollars on additional plug-ins is to be expected. As I have mentioned frequently, I'm primarily an editor who frequently gets stuck with mixing, but even I have a few "high end" plug-ins like Altiverb (which does surround reverbs) in my arsenal; some plug-ins like that are practically a requirement.

Oh, Nuendo has a downmix processor (MixConvert) as part of the package, so you can convert your surround mix to other mix formats (7.1 to 5.1, or 5.1 to 3.1, or 5.1 to stereo, etc.). It's not a magic button, but if you do a down-convert all you need to do is listen, make your notes and the stereo (or other format) mix then becomes a matter of a few tweaks, not a complete remix.

 

[AudioPostExpert]

Your exactly right, for cinema projection Im talking festivals, ala the wild west, anything going for real distribution is going to be an entire different ball of wax beyond my ken, though others may breath in that rarefied air.

Just for the record, I was talking about film festivals too rather than actual distribution!

We're not in any disagreement, it just depends on the festival, some festivals screen in ad-hoc venues, as we've mentioned and as you're mainly talking about. Some festivals are held in real, albeit quite small, commercial cinemas but often don't have anyone present/available with real technical expertise and therefore you frequently encounter problems with how the BluRay or other media player/s are hooked-up to the cinema's projection/sound system. The really major international film festivals also screen in real cinemas (sometimes big ones) but usually require a standard media type for exhibition (35mm film or DCP) and also usually have excellent tech support, often supplied by Dolby themselves and for these two reasons technical issues are minimised.

G