Well, guys.

You have done most of it correctly this far; options, settings, ..etc.

I noticed you guys twigging at the Master surround, ...etc.

I would like to share that you need a 5.1 surround speaker system to actually know what's happenning to your surround audio. (With proper setup, you can preview the audio from the timeline)

And if you are using Creative's Audigy card, you should use their Inspire Series 5700 Digital 5.1 Surround Speaker system (only this one works properly) to ensure compatiblity. (Can always try out other brand BUT no sure thing)

Without the proper surround speaker, the audio on the timeline makes no sense.

Hope it helps in your surround attempt.

Regards

Thanks for the help.

I have the Creative Labs DTT2200 surround speakers which should do the job. I can hear the differences when I make adjustments and play back from the timeline.

I'm still a little confused about the final rendering - why don't I get 6 files?

Cheers.

I think you can only render to an AC3 file directly.

However there is a way around this.

Change to normal stereo and then render each channel out seperately. You can do this by soloing each track in turn (the "!" icon on the track) and then render it out.

I cannot quite see though why you'd want six seperate file though.

Rogueone,

I'm by no means anywhere near en expert on this, but as far as I can see (and tried), you can move the sound/audio on a track from speaker to speaker or around the "room" by simply applying keyframes and setting the "position" at each keyframe within the panner...at least it worked for me...!

Setting the project to 5.1 adds the panning dialogs. You can do anything from stereo with LFE (for 3 speaker) to 5.1. You can also use it simply for the panning controls, producing a stereo or surround mix... Below I talk about muting the speakers that don't apply per channel - you can as easily leave 2 or more un-muted. That way you can have a track where you've recorded the horn section, place it to one side, and still have the sound present in other channels at reduced levels. The possibilities are really near endless.

Setting up the audio for 5.1, if you want to monitor the mix, you need to set up 6 speakers. It's not needed to render 5.1 or anything, just if you want to hear the mix rather then rely on the levels presented in the mixer.

To set up 5.1, first of course set the project that way. Second, you need 6 audio tracks - if you just want to fake it for now, bring in your stereo track 6 times. The format of your audio tracks can be anything you'd normally bring into Vegas 4.

The panning controls are where you assign the track to the speaker. There's one button on the panning dialog that set's that track as LFE. In your project settings you can alter the crossover range to an extent, what will be sent to the LFE channel.

Now this doesn't have to happen in any order, and ideally you'll have separately recorded tracks for your surround mix, but I'll do this using a single stereo track as it's just an example to get you going...

With the project set to 5.1, take the first stereo track for your project, open the panning control or dialog by double clicking the smaller picture of it on the track header area. Click once on all the speakers shown except the left front - this mutes the others, and if you don't do this, audio from the other tracks will bleed in causing level and other control problems. Now move the blue shape in the center of the pan dialog, the one that represents the listener so that you get the db level you're after for the left front channel. [You could as easily control db levels using the mixer, planting the blue thing right on the speaker, but setting this to -5 or -6 should get you in the ballpark for a traditional mix as found on a commercial DVD.]

Do the same for the remaining channels you'll have in your mix - if you have mono tracks for each channel, you'ld probably want to duplicate more then one track for the LFE as this should reflect at least the main stereo pair. It's a mixdown of low freq. to mono and is non-directional, so to get lows from right and left etc., it has to have them as a source.

At this point you can play with the mix and individual tracks. If you use the center channel for enhanced dialog for example, you might want to follow hints posted in this forum or on the Sundance site to enhance dialog. Playing your project back in Vegas, you'll also want to monitor the levels, adjusting them at the mixer or using the track controls. A commercial DVD often has a louder center channel, and of course the rears are going to be lower, so you might want to duplicate that setup.

Time to render, you can output your audio as separate mono files, as Windows Media Audio 9 Pro., or as an AC3 if you have the plugin. Some programs will accept the mono files, like the free Microsoft Windows Media 9 Encoder. Other times you might have to have an AC3 file. You can also store all the channels in an avi file to overcome the wav file size limit, or use a special type of wav file developed by Microsoft that alas SOFO does not handle. You might find a multi-channel wma works well as a container as it can be lossless, and the wav files can be extracted easily enough using a utility from Microsoft should you need to.

Thanks mikkie Lots of stuff in there.

A couple more questions.

If I just have the audio track from the camera surely I wouldn't get any more benefit from adding this to the time line 6 times? Or am I being a bit thick here?

Secondly, in the unstabnce above, how do I make best use of the LFE track?

Sorry - third question; still not sure what the extra track added at the bottom is for. It doesn't seem to do anything. I have read the manual but it doesn't seem clear to me.

Cheers

Thanx PDB & Mikkie, that helped a lot. Vegas seems to be a powerful program, just one of the problems is figuring out how to use everything! :-)

Just tried to add some surround effects using keyframes and I find that if I click on a speaker for a particular keyfram that speaker is turned off for all keyframes on that track rather than just for that keyframe.

What I wanted to do was have a sound effect start from behind and move fowrad to centre+lefdt/right and turn off the two rear speakers so that nothing at that point is heard from them. All this on one track - is this when I would need six tracks for the same audio event?

Any help appreaciated.

Cheers.

Nope. You're confusing tracks with channels. Any single track can be panned through all 5 channels with the surround panner on the timeline.

Double click the surround icon on the track corresponding to your sound effect. This will open the surround panner window. Cue up, on the timeline, where you want the sound effect to be in the rear. In the Surround Panner (SP), drag the little red dot to the middle of the bottom, between the two rear speaker icons. It's now in the back speakers.

Now, cue up on the timeline where you want the sound effect to "land" in the front speakers. Slide the red dot up to the middle of the top, where the center channel speaker icon is. Now the sound is in the front speakers.

Vegas automatically takes care of everything in between.