(Please help me) Basic question about Stereo and Mono track

[julie1321]

Hi I'm a beginner for Pro tools.

I have a basic question about the difference between stereo and mono track for film post sound.

I'm working on post sound with Pro tools 12 HD for a short film (7min long).

The editor 'locked cut' in Adobe Premiere so I exported audio file as AAF and made a new session with this AAF file.

All the Audio tracks have been made in pro tools, however, it turned out with two audio tracks with L, R. Ex) Audio 01_L , Audio 01_R.
(But the weird thing is, some of them were not, it was still the mono track but didn't divided into two with L, R. If somebody knows about this too, please let me know....)

Since I don't know how to edit the volume form together both L, R at the same time, I would like to make two mono tracks into one stereo track by dragging them into the new stereo track.

Is this ok to do it in Flim post sound?

I mean, I tested in Pro tools and listened to them, It sound just as same (both mono and stereo).

Does it really affect the audio If I make the two L, R mono tracks into one Stereo track?

How professional audio post production people work with all the tracks?
Do they put all the clips into Stereo tracks to make it easier to adjust the volume or mixing? Or just work on with mono tracks with other shortcuts?

It might be too basic to ask.. but please reply to this posting if you know the answer or have any experience with this problem....
desperately want to know the right way to do post sound for film..
Thank you.

[Darryl Ramm]

Not a post person, but: If you have mono tracks why don’t you use them in mono? Are you sure the L/R labeled tracks were really mono? (Are the files actually identical? Difference the signal to see)? Stereo tracks do not help with “ adjusting the volume or mixing”. Only originally stereo tracks (even if mono duplicated on both channels) will be exported as L/R track pairs. Real mono tracks won’t be split like that.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[EGS]

Welcome to the forum, Julie. Next time, you might want to post in the "Post" sub-forum.

Many times when I import OMFs from Adobe Premiere, the stereo vs mono track layout is odd. If I get a VO track that comes in as a "stereo" track, in ProTools I convert it to 2 mono tracks and delete one. Sometimes I get 2 separate mono tracks which are actually L/R elements of a stereo element (like a sound effect or a music bed track). In that case, I combine them to a stereo track. If you are doing the final audio post in ProTools, I suggest conforming as you see fit and get the job done. My 2 cents.

[Drew Mazurek]

Moved.

Hopefully you'll get the help you need here.

[Sonny Keyes]

Originally Posted by julie1321

I would like to make two mono tracks into one stereo track by dragging them into the new stereo track.

Is this ok to do it in Flim post sound?

I mean, I tested in Pro tools and listened to them, It sound just as same (both mono and stereo).

Does it really affect the audio If I make the two L, R mono tracks into one Stereo track?

Yes, this is OK to do, but often the .L and .R tracks supplied by the editor have been panned to the center, and dragging them to a stereo track will not change the panning. You would have to change the panning for both left and right on the stereo track in Pro Tools to even find out if the source material is, in fact stereo.

Editors routinely ignore panning - they're often listening to a mono folddown so they don't notice it. There's a 50/50 chance that even after you've placed the .L and .R clips on a stereo track and panned them hard left and right that it still sounds the same because it was only ever a mono sound!

[trevora]

Adobe PPro has different kinds of timeline tracks: mono, 'standard', 5.1 and 'adaptive'

It allows some crossover between the tracks (e.g. mono in 'standard', stereo in mono).

When exporting AAF or OMF it splits out the tracks, quite sensibly, so if you have mixed sources (mono/stereo) within a timeline track then there will be seperate timeline tracks in the AAF to reflect this.

It also 'splits to mono' so you get .L and .R tracks

So if I edit some mono and stereo sources into 1 'standard' timeline track you'll get A1.L and A1.R with the stereo sources and A2 with the mono sources (I think).

I have got a demo AAF somewhere I'll dig out to show this...