The very early introduction of the Vegas 7 manual chapter 13 "Working with Surround Sound" indicates that a separate 'sound authoring application' is required. This is really where my question is coming from.

I see panning and other effects available in Vegas 7 but no obvious way to create and edit 5.1 audio.

Am I correct in concluding that the only method therefore is to create the audio content with other software, and then use it in DVD Architect to author a DVD? Seems like Vegas does merely panning and special effects, as opposed to providing an creation / authoring environment or tools for 5.1 audio. Am I misinterpreting this?

Thanks,

Larry

The master bus is merely the master volume control for the 5.1 mix.

If you are trying to create 5.1 audio, create a track for each channel and then add the audio for that channel. Use the surround panner for the track to place the channel audio in the spatial position. ie. pan the track to the left front speaker and that will be your left front channel. You can create a bus for each surround track and then map audio track(s) to a bus if you have more than 6 audio tracks.

I think what they mean by 'sound authoring application' is required' is you will have to capture the audio or create it from Cinescore, Acid, Sonar or something else.

You can then render the files in various formats. See the help files in Vegas for more info.

The very early introduction of the Vegas 7 manual chapter 13 "Working with Surround Sound" indicates that a separate 'sound authoring application' is required. This is really where my question is coming from.

I just looked at chapter 13 & the entire chapters covers settings up & doing surround sound. If you bought V7+DVDA you have the AC3 encoder, which is the only other thing you need. Again, the manual completely covers this.

Not sure what you mean by "authoring environment or tools for 5.1 audio". That's what panning/SFX, etc. are. You need to supply the audio yourself.

Seems like Vegas does merely panning and special effects, as opposed to providing an creation / authoring environment or tools for 5.1 audio.

Exactly what kind of tools are you looking for? There's not a whole lot more to "authoring" 5.1 audio than a) having six channels and b) panning between them.

Set your project to use 5.1 surround; use the surround panner to "place" each of your audio tracks where you want when you want; and encode your audio using a 5.1 surround AC3 template. That's about it, no?

Rob

"Am I correct in concluding that the only method therefore is to create the audio content with other software, and then use it in DVD Architect to author a DVD? Seems like Vegas does merely panning and special effects, as opposed to providing an creation / authoring environment or tools for 5.1 audio. Am I misinterpreting this?"

Everything you need to create and author in dd5.1 is in both vegas and dvd architect. Vegas will create the dd5.1, but you can't export and/or burn without dvdA (it contains the 5.1 encoders and such)

Sorry if my terminology isn't entirely accurate, but I expected some method to capture audio, do time line editing, aaply filters, not unlike the video content, and I would consider this sequence of activities very much the same as I do with video content. Indeed I would like to do both video and 5.1 audio on a set of (7 total?) shared time lines, editing them both simultaneously. I now have the impression that I can create 6 audio tracks in Vegas, and do what I stated above, and perhaps the only missing piece is a method to capture 5.1 content to the time line. I guess I have not yet found either the capture or waveform editing features I was expecting,

Are they in Vegas (iuf so they do not show up as part of Chapter 13) or is this the reason why the Vegas manual calls for a separate audio application?

I recognize that many audio tools such as Cinescore exist to create and edit loops, do electronic composing and synthesis of sounds, do wave editing, and all types of elaborate multichannel sound manipulations, filtering, effects, etc. I easily can see the need and use of such other software. But I am still really asking a much more basic question......can I capture and edit audio content in Vegas 7 to this 5.1 time line. I might, for example, want to remove a very brief time slice of only a few milliseconds where an offending tick or pop needs to be deleted, but I just cant seem to find a way to do it with Vegas, even though it is very easy to do in other audio editing software I have used. Perhaps I need SoundForge or some other tool before I can do this type of stuff?

Thanks once again and excuse my ignorance, please.......


Larry

I've never actually tried to import AC3. but apparently vegas will do it if the AC3 is muxed in an mpeg. But it will not directly accept a AC3 file.

If you have a AC3 file, you can always break it into the separate wav files with BESWEET [check spelling]... google for it.

It depends on how you are trying to capture. If you are mixing down from a set of master tapes that , lets say have 8 tracks, you will have to either encode(capture) or import (if in digital format) each track. If you are trying to capture from something like cable TV, I think you would have to get a DD5.1 decoder and then capture each track seperately - but there are likely other ways.

If you layout your tracks, you can cut a frame out of any or all of the audio tracks. It would likely be better to use a noise reduction plugin on the track with the click. Or you use a volume envelope on top of the click.

It might be easier if you tell us what you are trying to do, as far as source audio, and what type of issues you have.

but I expected some method to capture audio

As long as you have hardware that can capture audio, Vegas can do it. If you need 5 channel audio capture (not the LFE since that's normally not captured I believe) you need a sound card with 5 audio in's or 3 stereo sound cards. Rout each sound card channel to a separate track in Vegas. "Arm for Record" each track. Then, hit the record button right below the time line & all the channels start to record. :D

I just tried it with two tracks, one left & one right channel, record at the same time. Works great. Normally you don't record a 5.1 mix on the spot because that is (normally) compressed.

Look at chapter 12: Recording Audio. I don't see anywhere in ch.13 about using a separate audio app either.

The editing is just like video, just with audio plugins, etc.

I finally am beginning to understand..........

I can capture into Vegas with a 5.1 sound card and edit within Vegas.

I cannot import already created ac3 files into Vegas unless they have been muxed into mpg files. Once the mpg is imported as an asset, then presumably the ac3 will show up and can be assigned to 5.1 tracks for editing.

Also, I can individually import each of the 5 tracks from .wav or other sources into Vegas and then edit them within Vegas.

If mny original audio is in ac3 format, I could decode it into the 5 consitutent tracks using BeSweet or some other ac3 to wave decoder, and then import and edit them as above within Vegas.

The rest of the process I think I understand correctly, going through DVD Architect to DVD.

Many thanks.....

Larry

Just when I thought I totally understood this, one more thing has come up that seems entirely contradictory.

The highlighted warning at the very beginning of Chapter 13 in the Vegas mnaual (page 195 top) states:


"Authoring software such as the Sony Media Software 5.1 Surround Plug-In Pack is required to encode 5.1 channel audio to AC3 for use in DVD authoring."


My impression from the little experimentation I have done is that Vegas 7 / DVDA already come with the ability to encode 5.1 surround.

What's the story here?

Thanks once again,

Larry

It's built in. You already have it. There's nothing to worry about.

You're saying that this is a mistake in the manual?

No. That's the VEGAS/VMS manual. the AC3 encoder is included with DVDA. That's the reason it says that. As long as you can render AC3's you're good to go.

Vegas will "borrow" the AC3 encoder from dvda when it is needed. As long as you have dvda properly installed vegas will find it.