5.1 Meter

[smurfyou]

Originally Posted by devinemke

@smurfyou : i have no reason to doubt your claim, but i am genuinely curious: how have you been able to determine this? have you been able to inspect the MetaData of a PT outputed 5.1 interleaved Broadcast WAV file in some other app outside of PT to see that it is in fact SMPTE ordered?

and likewise check a PT outputed 5.1 interleaved AIFF to verify that is Film ordered?

again, just curious to see if this is in fact the current default PT behavior.

thanks.

Fair question!

Yes I've looked at them in every program I can find. The simplest is to use something like Wave Agent that will just open the channels as they're ordered. It doesn't know it's a 5.1 mix, it just sees 6 channels and you can verify the order by listening.

PT doesn't seem to write much useful metadata. At least not much universal, certainly no iXML. I think there is some PT specific stuff there. Here I'm attaching the metadata viewer in Basehead. It shows the basic BWF info but in the Format chunk it shows the Channel ID's.

Another screenshot from Reaper - it shows an identical mix in WAV and AIFF. You can see by the waveform the WAV is SMPTE and AIFF is Film. Also viewable in an editor like Acoustica which displays the channels in the order of the file.

This issue was a long standing question mark because it was simply undocumented by Avid. PT10 and earlier would create an interleaved 5.1 WAV in Film order. It changed to SMPTE in V11 but I don't believe that was in any release notes. If it was it was buried because it has caused a lot of confusion.

[smurfyou]

Also to further confuse matters, if you bounce multiple mixes using the "Single File" option it seems to put the 5.1 in Film order... so for example if I want to create a single 8 channel file with 5.1 and Stereo - PT will do 5.1 Film Order on 1-6 and Stereo on 7 & 8. Which is not what I want because every delivery calls for SMPTE....

In this case PT will write iXML info to identify the channels... in SMPTE order! So the labels don't match the channels... But it also writes BEXT Track names in Film order. So something seems real screwy with this method.

I reported this to Avid when "Single File" was introduced but either I'm the only one having the issue or they lost track. Maybe my template has something screwy. I'd love to hear if someone uses this successfully.

[danyg]

thank you for your research work - unbelievable !!! as a technician we should be sure about what we are doing and what our tools are doing. what a mess

[JFreak]

For those who want to be 100% sure that channel order is what you want it to be, bounce multi-mono and then use something like this to create your interleaved deliverable.

[its2loud]

Originally Posted by devinemke

@smurfyou : i have no reason to doubt your claim, but i am genuinely curious: how have you been able to determine this? have you been able to inspect the MetaData of a PT outputed 5.1 interleaved Broadcast WAV file in some other app outside of PT to see that it is in fact SMPTE ordered?

and likewise check a PT outputed 5.1 interleaved AIFF to verify that is Film ordered?

again, just curious to see if this is in fact the current default PT behavior.

thanks.

Hi Devin,

This very topic about exported channel order was discussed way back in 2019.

http://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=404932&page=5

It’s a lengthy read but it might provide some very useful information regarding 5.1 and above channel orders when either bouncing or e porting out of Pro Tools.

Enjoy.

[its2loud]

Perhaps this should now be a different thread but I’m curious how Pro Tools handles the channel order now since you can do a multi buss bounce mix into a single BWav file. For example when bouncing I can choose the following paths:

Prinmaster 5.1
Printmaster 2.0

And have the option to combine them into one interleaved file.

So. Does this create a file in
LCRLsRsLfeLoRo
Or
LRCLfeLsRsLoRo

[smurfyou]

Originally Posted by its2loud

Perhaps this should now be a different thread but I’m curious how Pro Tools handles the channel order now since you can do a multi buss bounce mix into a single BWav file. For example when bouncing I can choose the following paths:

Prinmaster 5.1
Printmaster 2.0

And have the option to combine them into one interleaved file.

So. Does this create a file in
LCRLsRsLfeLoRo
Or
LRCLfeLsRsLoRo

FYI I answered this in my second post above... For some baffling reason it exports the 5.1 in Film order so
LCRLsRsLFELoRo

But the iXML Metadata says SMPTE order. BEXT Track metadata says Film Order.. I'm going to report this again to Avid since nothing ever got fixed.

Pretty sure I was a part of that earlier 2019 thread. And another one before that. This has irritated me for a long time.

[its2loud]

So. I think I remember some discrepancy between bouncing and exporting. They produced two different results if memory serves correctly.

[JFreak]

Originally Posted by its2loud

So. I think I remember some discrepancy between bouncing and exporting. They produced two different results if memory serves correctly.

Maybe yes or no.

Have you tried print-to-track method? Meaning route your final to audio track which you record, and then use that file?

[devinemke]

Originally Posted by its2loud

So. I think I remember some discrepancy between bouncing and exporting. They produced two different results if memory serves correctly.

after re-reading both this thread and the old one from 2019 (my own posts included) it got me thinking about the obvious difference between bouncing vs exporting:

* bouncing is through a defined bus/output/path (in the i/o setup)
* exporting is not

therefore one might expect that an interleaved bounced file might honor the defined channel order of the chosen bus/output/path (they would be wrong, but again, they might expect that). with an export, Avid had to choose a channel ordering and went with Film.

also i gather this page on Avid's site was updated to make the default behavior more clear: 5.1 BWF will be SMPTE ordered when exported/bounced. all other formats, or WAVs with more than 5.1 channels will be Film ordered.