Dear Fellow Sony Vegas Users,

I am about to export a file that is supposed to go to the sound lab for mastering, for use in a DVD for a national release. The Sound Engineer masters with Pro tools and said to give him a file on a thumb drive or DVD that contains .mov that maintains seperate audio tracks for his mastering expertise. I looked at my .mov export options in version 9, and do not see a multiple track audio option or even a 5.1 setting. Can I do this out of Vegas Pro 9? Or is there a work around that I could do another one of the encoding softwares such as Sorenson Media Conveter?

Thank You

PS. I should indicate it has to be a video file, for the mastering guy watching the video while he works with the sound. And it also has to be a .mov for he works with Pro Tools.

Quicktime doesn't support 5.1 in MOV... or if it does it's Mac only. You'll have to make 2 files.

1) Render the MOV using Sorenson3 codec, quality doesn't matter, set the keyframe to "1" (every frame) or it'll stutter on playback in the PT timeline. Set the audio to uncompressed 16bit, stereo.

2) render the 5.1 audio to WAV preset (probably a 48kHz, 16 or 32 bit setting)

he'll use the MOV for the video, use the WAV for 5.1, and confirm sound sync a/b'ing the stereo audio in the QuickTime with the 5.1.

I have not talked this over with the audio guy, can he load two files into PT?

And if so, I suppose I could bump the quality up for a bit,since he is watching it to work with it.

He has a full HD Pro tools setup with hardware to boot.

Thank You.

"can he load two files into PT? " :)
1) yes... crash-prone tho it is, PT is industry-standard for audio-post. it can play lots of files simultaneously... think of it as compositing for audio.
2) u don't have a choice. there is no support for 5.1 audio in QT.


beware bumping up the quality unless there is a need! they'll need a file that plays smooth, not one that looks pretty... keep his CPU happy. :)

even 50% quality (assuming Sorenson3 recipe listed earlier) is more than enough for sound design work. you'll see what i mean after it's rendered: won't look great, but everything needed is clearly visible... and it plays in PT with no troubles.


forgot to mention last time: pick a frame size not-too-large; we use square pixel 640x480 (for 4:3) or 720x405 (16:9) format.

Rob ,

Thank You for your kind information and knowledge on this subject. I will give it go....

:)

np.

lemme how it goes, especially if you use different solution... always interested in this topic. thx.