mixing two lavs together in CS5
 

I'm trying to figure out how to take a timeline's worth of clips and export all the audio into SoundBooth so that I can mix the tracks as a group. Is this possible? If so, how?

I'm fairly sure it can be done, but I'll be darned if I can figure out how. I'm new enough to the Adboe Production Premium CS5 package, and it's complex enough... I'm clearly not using the right search terms or I could find it; please nudge me in the right direction. I hate being yet another newbie climbing the learning curves, but the alternative is to miss out on the fun!

What's the application? I'm editing a video of a class. More like cutting 3 hours down to 5 minutes so the client can put it up on YouTube so other venues can reference it to "get a flavor" of what the class is like. IOW, the final product is a marketing tool. I'm good with this. Client and I are on the same page and she's happy with the video so far.

Now I'm working the audio. I taped the class using two lavs since there were two teachers. One teacher on right, one on left. IOW, two mono tracks. Listening to them together is, um, not the best. Each one individually is fine, but they clearly need to be mixed together. Mostly I want the stereo equivalent of a 5.1 "center channel" since it's all dialog. Maybe with a bit of stereo effect to sweeten it. I was thinking about overlapping the two tracks about 80%, but I don't know if that explains what I want to do -- I don't have the jargon yet to be able to explain it to an experienced hand I guess.

Questions:

1) Can I export the whole audio time line (about 12 clips) into Soundbooth and mix it once? Or do I have to import the clips individually and mix them individually? Doable, but a PITA. And if I can do it all at once, how do I export the entire time line's audio over to Soundbooth? And how do I get the audio back to Premiere Pro? I did say I was a newbie didn't I?

2) How would you more experienced hands suggest I get to the center channel ideal, with a hint of l-r "stereo" effect?

I'm sure there's a way, I'm just not able to find it yet.

One way is to go 'Edit>Edit in Soundbooth>(and in your case I believe) >render and replace, would work.

Im using CS4 so it's possible that they've added a new link function you can use by going to File>Adobe Dynamic Link>Soundbooth.

Otherwise, the other easy way is to make sure your timeline is selected and use Control/Command (Pc or Mac)>M. Control M is the 'export movie' command and you can use the export dialog box to single out the audio in whatever intermediate format you want, work on it, save the new audio file and then re-import it back to PPro.

Sorry, I forgot about the other thing. Go to 'Window>Workspace>Audio'. You'll see the audio mixer displayed and you can use the pan nobs of the source track there to get the mix you desire. If you are trying to use only one side of a stereo source, i.e. just the left or right channel, use the 'fill left' or 'fill right' effects under stereo audio effects to isolate that side.

Bruce,

I would imagine that you can do everything you need within Premiere. For example, you can easily keyframe the panning of each lav left and right if the teachers move side to side. The other thing you can do is turn each lav's volume off when not in use.

Because its only two people talking, editing the audio should be fairly simple.

I have made this work, but only for a clip at a time. What I can't figure out is how to make it work for all the clips on the time line, at the same time. It may be that I should do a clip at a time anyway -- got some noise to clean up (clothing rubbing on body mic, etc.). Still, it would be nice to learn how to make some "global" edits to the entire audio track without having to do each clip separately. I'd hate to have to do that with hundreds of clips (should I ever work a project that size).

Sounds doable, but I'm hoping for a more seamless way to do this -- I'm worried (maybe needlessly) about rematching the audio to the individual clips if I do it through a manual export/inport like this.

Perhaps. But I've got the learn Soundbooth any way -- got some noises to try to remove (the odd clothing rustle on the body mic, the old jingling of a necklace, etc.) so I thought I'd use the opportunity to learn.

Soundbooth has a great noise removal tool that lets you lasso an area to remove a noise. I saw a demo where duck quacks were removed without affecting the rest of the audio.

Use the Audio Mixer. One (1) filter gets added to all clips at the same time.

Next time, use Source Channel Mappings when you use two lavs to avoid Fill Left/Right and copy/paste to all clips. When you use Source Channel Mappings you can "tell" any two channel clip to be two individual clips that both play out from both speakers, without Fill Left/Right. Source Channel Mappings is a huge timesawer! :)

Source Channel Mappings can *not* be used when the clips already has been placed on any Timeline. However, in the Preferences there is an option to set it to be used on *every* clip you import. When you discover Source Channel Mappings you will never ever touch Fill Left/Right because it is to cumbersome.

I'll look into this.

Cool. Part of the learning curve a newbie such as myself faces is the jargon. I never would have thought to look for something like this under the name of "source channel mappings". So I would never find it when searching for it. Which is what makes forums like this so bloody valuable. Thanks for your help.

Bruce,

You're welcome! :)