Best multi-channel audio workflow?

Hello,

I'm relatively new to AVID and am trying to work out the best way to cut a show with 4 cameras and 8 audio channels.

putting to one side the issues with shooting and acquiring the footage/audio, I'm interested in any ways I can keep my timeline tidy while editing and not have 8-16 tracks of audio taking up my screen.

Is there a way I can nest the tracks into a stereo mix, cut that, then expand them all back out before sending it to the dubbing mixer? Maybe that's too much to ask, but anything that can help me achieve something similar would be really appreciated.


Thanks,
Chris

Does the audio file only consist of 8 ISO tracks or is one of them already a mix of 7 ISOs? If the latter, then Media Composer's Autosync can use just the mix track as part of the process. I would autosync that to one of the cameras, then take the new .sync clip and group that and the other cameras as a group.

Michael

An ISO is a track that is ISOlated to a single mike, be it the boom, or a lav on a particular actor/subject. Typically you would have an ISO of the boom and a lav on each of the actors, depending on how many actors and such are in the scene. Most modern audio recorders will also let you take the sum of the ISO tracks and automatically create a mix track or tracks at the same time. So for an 8 track recorder you could have up to 7 ISO tracks with a single mix-down track (sum of the 7). In editorial, the mix track is synced to dailies and should the editor need a particular track, they can match back to the original BWF and grab it as needed.

It would be a great feature for Avid to provide this as a virtual mix when doing AutoSync, but there would be lots of steps involved to create one manually and preserve all the metadata from the original BWF file.

But perhaps your multitrack files already have a mix track. Ask the mixer or open a file in Sound Devices Wave Agent and see if there is any metadata in the track info provided by production audio.


Michael

There is, if planned for ahead of time, but it starts with the production audio mixer doing the mix track on set, usually TRK1, then only selecting that track when doing AutoSync.

Michael