Hi. I have a picture locked film. The sound re-recordist has produced a final mix in 5.1. I need to import the audio back into Avid Media Composer, lock it to the picture and then export with the 5.1 audio. I am really struggling to find any meaningful tutorials online, does anyone have any tips, links, workflow guides they could share?

The audio has been supplied as both discrete and interleaved. My understanding is that I will need to work with the discrete version ( L,R,C,Left Surround,Right Surround and LfE ) as I will ultimately need to create a DCP for film festivals.

Any help greatly appreciated. Thanks. Tim

Hi Tim

You should read the following thread that appeared on these forums a couple of months back.

https://community.avid.com/forums/t/234258.aspx

To recap, there are various problems with the way MC handles exporting 5.1 which results in improper/missing audio tracks and allocation.

Avid support are aware and have been able to reproduce the problem. It's logged as MCCET-5709 5.1, but there's been no word about any fix and I couldn't see any mention of the bug being fixed in the 2024.10 release notes.

Even if you managed to output a proper 5.1 master from MC, you'd still need separate software to encode a DCP (something like DCP O Matic).

My advice would be to make your DCP in Davinci Resolve. There's the inbuilt Kakadu output module which seems to produce perfectly good DCPs. I believe you need to have the studio version of Resolve to do this.

I've verified a couple of Kakadu exports with Dolby CineAsset player and it reported no errors.

There's a number of people who have produced tutorials about creating DCPs in Resolve, (eg. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maYUkyjI1x0) which should help.

 

Hi

Thanks for the advice, much appreciated. Disappointed to hear Avid MC is problematic handling 5.1 exports. I will look at the Davinci option.

Tim

That issue concerns creating a sequence with mono tracks panned across 5.1. Regular 5.1 handling seems fine.

You just need to make sure you set the proper channel order for the imported mix and all should be easy and fine.

Hi. Thanks for your input. When you say 'regular 5.1' are you referring to an interleaved file rather than discrete audio tracks? Please forgive my ignorance, despite being a film editor for 30 years on Avid, this is the first time I have had to deliver a 5.1 project myself.

Job ter Burg:

That issue concerns creating a sequence with mono tracks panned across 5.1. Regular 5.1 handling seems fine.

That's not what I found in some of my tests.

For example, using an interleaved, 5.1 track in a sequence, this was correctly exported as a ProRes file, but not using OP1a exports. These ended up being exported as 6 mono tracks (in the correct SMPTE order) instead of one, 5.1 interleaved track.

If this is your first time working with 5.1 MC, it may be good to find some help, as it can be tough to get your head around how 5.1 is handled inside MC. 

With "regular" I mean that you have a sequence with (a) 5.1 track(s) and (a) single 5.1 element(s) added to those tracks. It has little to do with the format of the file you have received. But it is crucial that during or after the link or import into MC, you tell MC what the channel order of the source clip is. Sometimes that can be a bit tricky. Generally, if you received a single 5.1 WAV, that will be in SMPTE order, so you would tell MC it is in SMPTE order. If you received 6 monophonic files (L.wav, R.wav etc), linking that into MC will make MC add the files in Pro Tools order, but you would still have to tell MC the clip is in that channel order.

As soon as MC knows the channel order, it can properly route and pan under the hood, and you can simply export a 5.1 sequence. The channel order of the exported file is largely determined by the file format you choose. You may not be able to influence that.

Bruno M:

Job ter Burg:

That issue concerns creating a sequence with mono tracks panned across 5.1. Regular 5.1 handling seems fine.

That's not what I found in some of my tests.

For example, using an interleaved, 5.1 track in a sequence, this was correctly exported as a ProRes file, but not using OP1a exports. These ended up being exported as 6 mono tracks (in the correct SMPTE order) instead of one, 5.1 interleaved track.

I'm not sure but I was under the impression that the Op1A format only carries monophonic channels.

Also, you mention that the track inside MC is "interleaved", but it isn't. It is merely a clip container pointing to multiple monophonic source files. The track format in the timeline has no influence on the output format; I think that is largely determined by the chosen output format/container. 

Many thanks, really appreciate this advice. Tim

 

I wish to second Bruno's suggestion to use Resolve's built in DCP creation. There is a learning curve as DCPs are not straight forward with many things to consider. But I have made several DCPs with Resolve for theater projection and they have all worked very well. There are some limits as to some of the more esoteric DCP features but in general it good. Jef

Making a 5.1 output from Avid is not difficult at all.

Bring in your picture

Bring in your 6 separate audio files.

Put them on the timeline in the order of L,R,C,Lfe,Ls,Rs

Export your timeline as Direct out.

This works for Broadcast 5.1 requirements as well.

To be honest, before i switched to Easy DCP , i would find it easier to bring the audio in separately into Resolve for a DCP creation, although using the direct out master from Avid will certainly work as well.