V15 4K Stereo -> XAVC -> Handbrake -> mp4 results in mono audio

rich-macdonald wrote on 1/31/2018, 7:24 PM

I am using XAVC Intra to render 4K stereo video to an intermediate file, then Handbrake for the final mp4 render, then uploading to youtube. Unfortunately, the audio is being converted from stereo to mono, due to the XAVC-Handbrake interface.

The XAVC audio setting is 2 channels. The intermediate file has 2 channels.

Handbrake reads these 2 channels as 2 tracks. It picks 1 track by default and renders it as mono.

I know of no way to make Handbrake make a stereo render out of 2 tracks.

This is a recent approach to get video to youtube. I had an earlier version of Vegas, and the mp4 options were inferior. There were a few years when I used the frameserver megui approach, but I got tired of the management. Then I used avi+yuv as an intermediate to handbrake, but the 500GB-2TB file sizes got out of hand.

When I upgraded to V15, it looked like XAVC was the best intermediate. But I cannot find anything in the XAVC configuration to overcome the mono audio issue.

I'll explore other ways to transfer 4K video from vegas to youtube. In the meantime, any suggestions? TIA

Comments

rich-macdonald wrote on 1/31/2018, 7:57 PM

I am not the first one here. In thread https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/xavc-what-is-it-good-for--97130/ we have:

>I absolutely would be using XAVC Intra for intermediates to Handbrake except Handbrake does not handle multi mon channel MXF audio. It cannot take two mono channels and treat them as stereo.

rich-macdonald wrote on 1/31/2018, 9:30 PM

XAVC S Long does result in a stereo-able MP4 output format. Handbrake can knock down the intermediate file size by 2-4x if one is concerned about youtube upload times.

XAVC Long results in a mono-able MXF output format for Handbrake.

 

So my takeaway is to (1) render the file as XAVC S Long, then (2) use Handbrake to reduce the file size by 3x, before (3) uploading to youtube.

rraud wrote on 2/1/2018, 9:08 AM

I'm not an very experienced HB user by any stretch, so I'm not sure. But I usually render the AAC audio file separately (to whatever config I desire and mux it in to the MP4 video file.