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Re-edit of film years later using 5.1 stems


Joe Riggs

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Hello,

 

I was wondering if any post audio pros could answer this.

 

We re-edited a finished film from years back. For the re-edit we used the 5.1 stems:

 

The 5.1 dialogue tracks
The 5.1 background tracks
The 5.1 FX tracks
The 5.1 Music tracks

 

So all 24 tracks were carried throughout the edit. Now my question is
what is the procedure to create new master Stereo and 5.1 files?

 

For the Stereo file is it as simple as
Pan all L and Ls channels to the left
Pan all R and Rs channels to the right
Leave C channels as is and discard LFE
then export?

For 5.1 would you just mute all tracks except the Center channel for each stem,
and export, then repeat that for L,R,Ls,Rs, LFE? 

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Your plan makes sense, except I wouldn't totally throw out LFE on the stereo mix... there might be something important there. 

 

And there might be some level trimming necessary if the scene-to-scene flow has changed. 

 

The unanswered question, of course, is will the new edit disrupt any of those stems? I don't know what cutting they did, but music frequently gets mangled both inside and across scenes, and bgs can have abrupt shifts if there are edits within a scene. That might take some bandaids -- or at least, offsetting the edits -- before you mix.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Are you trying to do this within your picture editing software or sending it out to pro tools?

 

I always clean up all the edits of the stems individually, making the necessary prelaps and post laps.  Anything that doesn't work gets re-edited. Then using all of it,

print new(to the current picture version) stems, print master, and LtRt folddowns using the 5.1 print master as the source.

 

You are basically doing what you did for the original print, but using stems and "new material" as your source instead of all of the individual sound files.

 

 

 

 

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  • 3 months later...
On 3/19/2018 at 1:00 PM, Joe Riggs said:

Hello,

 

I was wondering if any post audio pros could answer this.

 

We re-edited a finished film from years back. For the re-edit we used the 5.1 stems:

 

The 5.1 dialogue tracks
The 5.1 background tracks
The 5.1 FX tracks
The 5.1 Music tracks

 

So all 24 tracks were carried throughout the edit. Now my question is
what is the procedure to create new master Stereo and 5.1 files?

 

For the Stereo file is it as simple as
Pan all L and Ls channels to the left
Pan all R and Rs channels to the right
Leave C channels as is and discard LFE
then export?

For 5.1 would you just mute all tracks except the Center channel for each stem,
and export, then repeat that for L,R,Ls,Rs, LFE? 

 

On 3/20/2018 at 9:37 PM, Jay Rose said:

Your plan makes sense, except I wouldn't totally throw out LFE on the stereo mix... there might be something important there. 

 

And there might be some level trimming necessary if the scene-to-scene flow has changed. 

 

The unanswered question, of course, is will the new edit disrupt any of those stems? I don't know what cutting they did, but music frequently gets mangled both inside and across scenes, and bgs can have abrupt shifts if there are edits within a scene. That might take some bandaids -- or at least, offsetting the edits -- before you mix.

 

I realize this is an ancient post, but I wanted to correct this for any future viewers of this.
Do not simply pan and not adjust channels to Downmix to Stereo!

This simple formula is:
L pan Left, leave at unity

R pan Right, leave at unity

Center leave Center but drop 3dB

Ls pan Left, drop 6dB

Rs pan Right, drop 6dB

LFE -- I never understood why people drop this especially if you properly use it as an EFFECT! Though, I know that the Dolby Stereo (LtRt) auto downmix does drop it. Why not mix it in? but drop it 6 or 9 12dB. To taste! if is only info below 120 for boom and rumble, why not have it in stereo?

"For 5.1 would you just mute all tracks except the Center channel for each stem,
and export, then repeat that for L,R,Ls,Rs, LFE?"

I don't understand this question. After you print the mix, or consolidate stems then export clips as whole files. No export. No need to mute and do 1 at a time.

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