Find Your Center (panned bwav)

[Ben]

Something has been bothering me for a while.

 

So I have done some crappy, quick turn around jobs. You know the type - A Simple Boom and Lav shoot. The turn around is quick and the editor doesn't even bother with a simple sound mix, because it was shot on a 5D and they spent all their time syncing.

The final videos sometimes don't have the audio tracks center panned. The boom is on the left and the Lav is on the right and it just sounds ridiculous. It makes me ashamed to have my name in the credits.

 

I remember that I got a complaint about this a few years ago from an editor. He didn't like that when he brought my sound into his NLE (FCP7 at the time) he had to manually pan the audio to the center.

 

Is there any way of fixing this?

Is it a problem with the way FCP and other NLE's see the audio? A 2 track BWAV is assumed to be stereo?

Audio from most cameras isn't interpreted in this way. Is the only solution to deliver Mono wav tracks?

 

It is bumming me out.

 

I use a Nomad 10. Is there a menu option I don't know about?

[old school]

Do a one track mix.

CrewC

[Derek H]

Yeah, and maybe send your mono mix to both camera tracks. Fool proof that way and they won't ask why there's only sound on one track. Often I just send the best mic, which is usually the boom.

They always say that want boom and lav but rarely really need that lav.

I assume we're talking about shooting interviews here.

[Doug Beatty]

Summing the boom and lav tracks would only sound worse than using a mono mix. Pick one and forever hold your peace!

 

Also, introduce your editor to a program called Pluraleyes so he can save time on synching and have more time at the end of the day to complain about his job to whoever will listen.

[Philip Perkins]

You can record as 2 (or etc) mono channels if you want, but then the editor has to deal with twice as many audio files separately.  How the NLE places and pans a 2 channel poly (stereo) file in the edit timeline is down to how that NLE works, prefs etc.--there is nothing you can do from the field about that.  I often encounter editors who are very lazy about the diffs between real stereo files and 2 channel mono, and as you say monitor so indifferently that they can't tell (or don't care) that they are dealing with the audio from 2 different mics or two different mixes.  THAT falls under the category of things you can't change, beyond suggesting that they pay better attention.

 

phil p

[Marc Wielage]

I once was told by a post client that they were having problems with a mix (done by the editor). They sent me the OMF's and I was horrified to see that the editor had taken five or six channels of the exact same track and summed them all together!

 

Once I simplified the track assignments and muted the unnecessary tracks, it sounded a whole lot better, plus it was now at the right level. Allowing picture editors to do final sound mixing is a horrific mistake a lot of cheap producers make. (Ditto with letting picture editors do any color-correction.)

[Mirror]

As everyone has already stated.  That is why I always have the mix track as the #1 track.  It is the preferred track.  Even if I have a lav and a boom on ISO tracks and the lav sounds best, I will put the lav as the mix track and still ISO it on track 3 (Boom is track 2).  The mix track is the one I think is best.  

 

By the way, I haven't used a pan on tracks in ages. What's the point when you have ISOs?

[Ben]

As everyone has already stated.  That is why I always have the mix track as the #1 track.  It is the preferred track.  Even if I have a lav and a boom on ISO tracks and the lav sounds best, I will put the lav as the mix track and still ISO it on track 3 (Boom is track 2).  The mix track is the one I think is best.  

 

By the way, I haven't used a pan on tracks in ages. What's the point when you have ISOs?

Best track always on 1, naturally. However, track 1 is usually interpreted as Left in most NLEs. Even if you give your editor an ISOs in BWAV form they will still sometimes default as a panned stereo track. Panning in this day and age on most recorders has little effect on the BWAVs.

[Wandering Ear]

"Panning" in our field recorders these days is more accurately output routing.

You cannot solve the problem of post not finishing the job from the field.

A lot of nle's have an option on by default that auto pan's odd and even tracks. You can advise your editor of this preference in their system if they are asking about it, but it's really outside of your control.

I would personally send a polite email to the producer and editor, then worry about my next job.

[Philip Perkins]

The "stacking clips" thing is a cheeseball editor trick to raise the level of low volume audio.  In older systems they only had 6 db of additional gain, so if they got something really under-recorded they would resort to this as a quick fix.

 

philp

[John Blankenship]

Second to a good dialog with competent post, the most foolproof method is to put your mix onto both tracks one and two, with the same thing on each. This way if an editor just does a quick no-brainer import that results in a left/right split, you'll be okay. Be sure to leave sufficient headroom so the 3dB boost won't cause clipping if they pan both to center.

Of course, when you make something more "foolproof" you will soon encounter a more adept fool.

[Jan McL]

A "...more adept fool." Ja, ja, ja.