5.1 Surround Sound (Vegas to Architect) Help

wilka26 wrote on 9/11/2007, 7:46 PM
Okay, a lot of my questions are for both Vegas and DVD Archictect but since a majority of take place in Archictect, I'll post them all here

I'm a bit dumb on the whole 5.1 surround sound capabilities of Vegas and DVD Architect. What needs to be done and how do things need to be rendered to work. How should I render out the audio track in Vegas? As just one track? As several? What format? .wav?

Also when I get into Architect, how do I have it so I can both my stereo and surround sound tracks (because not all entertainment centers are hooked up for 5.1 surround)? Is there a way to make it in Architect to recognize if the system is not 5.1 compatible to automatically go to stereo?

I also want to add in a commentary track and a subtitle track but for some reason either I'm not doing it right or Architect won't let me.

Comments

TheHappyFriar wrote on 9/12/2007, 7:02 AM
to do 5.1 in vegas:
*change the project to 5.1
*change the audio track to 5.1
*render out to AC3 5.1 (you can also do WMA 5.1 & in Vegas 8 output 6 WAV files, one for each track)
*if you want the audio in stereo too, render out a stereo version of the AC3 (or WAV)

in DVDA:
*change project to 5.1
*put in your video & audio
*put in the extra audio (commentary, stereo track, etc) as other audio tracks.

That's it. The online help has more details on how to do this buti i's THAT easy! :)
wilka26 wrote on 9/12/2007, 10:05 AM
Okay, here's another question...

If I am in 5.1 in vegas, and I take my sound fx track (which is a stereo track), how do I get it to come out of both left and right speakers but not the center speaker since I want to use that for just dialogue?
TheHappyFriar wrote on 9/12/2007, 6:39 PM
when you have the audio on the track & you have a surround project, double click on the "surround pan" box (lets you position the sound). It opens a new window. There's a slider that says "center". Move it to the left to -inf. Then it ignored the center channel for that track. Move the little speaker "center" to where you want it (all the way to the top for left front left/right).
MPM wrote on 9/12/2007, 8:17 PM
Maybe this will help?...
If you're creating fake 5.1 you're better off using 3rd party freeware. Once you have your project set to 5.1, use the pan controls to basically set each track where it belongs, muting other speakers & choosing LFE for LFE track. Preview watching your levels -- might be a little hot -- and render to ac3. For speech out of center, if you have real center track that should work. If you have stereo track you *might* try software &/or plugins to isolate speech & mix into whatever you're using for center track. To make speech more obvious, play with audio levels, and set ac3 parameters in custom dialog before render.

Most every stand-alone player will down-mix 5.1 to stereo, as will *most* software players. There are some OEM-type software players that will not down-mix though. If you're using fake 5.1, just encode stereo track. If real 5.1 you can downmix in audio software, & think I saw something about it in version 8, but personally I prefer what's probably by now an ancient method: I use Graphedit & DS filters from Power DVD... Guides are posted on-line. My reasoning is the Power DVD down-mix colors the audio a little, more closely matching a hardware down-mix so one doesn't sound drastically different than another.

Edit: forgot rest of your ?

I believe that DVD players will select the default track and play it. Software players that won't downmix I think automatically go to stereo track if it's there. Switching audio tracks can be done by the remote (if not prohibited) or optionally a menu. DVD players allow the viewer to also select how audio is output in their set up.

To add audio tracks just insert an audio track below the default and either drag or use properties menus to add next file. Commentary track is just another audio track. If you want it mixed with regular audio, mix it before encoding to ac3.

To add subs, add a sub track, import your sub text file (in Mac DVD studio Pro format), close project & re-open (bug), adjust timing, color etc... If you're starting from scratch, I'd strongly suggest creating the subs in one of the specialized apps available (see videohelp.com).