Assigning Audio Roles

So I noticed something goofy. I am swapping out some shots in an existing 15. The spot was mastered for broadcast in 5.1. It was delivered to me as a ProRes 4444 file with L,R,C,LFE,LS,RS,ST mapping for the audio. I drop it down into the timeline and break apart the clip items to edit video separately from the audio. However when I try to map the surround setting properly in the inspector, it says Audio Channels Config is unavailable for the selected clips. Its seems that if I use the detach audio command it will keep the original mapping but i found it odd that the config could be adjusted from the mono clips made from the break apart clips command. Has anyone else run into this?

Seems like you're confusing Roles (organizational labels) with the actual audio channel configuration. When you use detach audio, it keeps the surround components, with whatever the original mapping was, in a single clip. Now, you can open the clip in it's own timeline and assign Roles to the components so you know whats what, and can mute/solo things in the index. The Role doesn't change anything about the component as far as panning etc. But once you break apart the components they all become straight up mono. The only way to adjust them would be to use the panning settings on each clip. Channel config won't do anything because you've only got one mono channel for each clip. If you want to preserve the surround clip settings, just detach it, don't break the components apart...

Yea I might have misspoke. I use Roles to export the final spot with the surround audio. However when you bring in mono audio you can map it to either L,R,C,LFE,LS,RS in the audio config inspector. I expected it to behave the same after breaking apart the clip.

DSvoboda356 wrote: Yea I might have misspoke. I use Roles to export the final spot with the surround audio. However when you bring in mono audio you can map it to either L,R,C,LFE,LS,RS in the audio config inspector. I expected it to behave the same after breaking apart the clip.

Gotcha... The screenshots are the clips after being broken apart? You're right, seems like you should be able to remap them... I wonder if there's something in the clips settings that "lock" it?

Those grabs are from another spot. In that scenario I received the splits from a mixer as 8 mono channels. I was able to drop them all in and assign the mapping in the audio config inspector. I wonder if this is a bug?

DSvoboda356 wrote: Those grabs are from another spot. In that scenario I received the splits from a mixer as 8 mono channels. I was able to drop them all in and assign the mapping in the audio config inspector. I wonder if this is a bug?

I dunno, I'll track down a surround clip and see if it does the same here...

Looks like, if the clip is contains surround components, even if you break it apart you can't use the configuration to assign it. You can change the panning though, by setting each clip to basic surround and then adjusting it using the surround panner. As I'm sure you found, even if you copy the mono channels from within the clip and paste them into a project they still behave this way. And a normal mono channel does let you use the configuration tab.

In the settings, a surround component has "mono" as it's config, and a regular mono file has "1mono" as it's config. No idea if that has anything to do with it, but my guess is that since the component from a single 6ch surround audio clip doesn't really exist on it's own except in the X UI, it's configuration is sort of locked. You can change the panning, but not the actual info about what the clip is, since the mono source file is part of a multichannel clip. Don't think it's a bug, just the way X has to deal with broken apart audio.

If you took the 6 ch surround clip, opened it in it's timeline (panned everything center?, dunno if you'd need to do this...), assigned roles, exported the Roles as a multichannel QT movie, and reimported it, I bet you'd be able to use the Audio config on the components. Anyhoo, without doing that you can use the panner on the broken out components...

Yea thats pretty much what I had gone through. I did see that I was able to pan the audio using the panning interface. I am hesitant to do that just don't want any funny business with a distributer like Extreme Reach. I have had goofy hiccups with audio before. I may just use the export roles workflow you had mentioned, i tried that earlier and seems to work more like how I am familiar. Thanks for your help though!

No need to break them apart. Place the clip in your timeline, Right-Click and select Expand Audio Components. Then selecting the video part, you can configure the channels. Selecting each channel in the Timeline, you can gain/pan each individually. Just be sure the Project is set as 5.1 audio.

If this isn't doing the trick, then I'm not understanding the issue.

I need to either break the clip apart or detach the audio because I need to cut out sections of the video without effecting the audio.