Premiere Pro ignores surround channels in 5.1-channel wav

[Asterra]

It never ends. It never ends, seriously. I got a 5.1 wav, I give it to PPro CS4, I look at the waveform in the timeline, and poof: No surrounds. Fuuuuun stuff. I'll get to render two mono versions of each of my 5.1 audio clips (about 100 of them), replace all 100 one by one in Premiere Pro (twice), and export the edited results.

What's another few hours down the toilet at this point?

[Asterra]

Looks like this bug has been documented before:

http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/3/866254

This poor fellow hasn't identified precisely why "all forward-backward movement of sounds away from the center is just the volume fading down", but that description is certainly a perfect match for the phenomenon of Premiere Pro failing to recognize/process the surrounds in an imported 5.1 audio file (most likely .wav).

[poisondeathray]

There are different types of wave, CS4 behavior can be different

For example, little endian signed (wave format extensible) will import as a single 5.1 track , but Wave PCM will import as mono tracks (even though it's a single wave) . In the latter , the channels should be preserved

[Asterra]

That sounds like it should enable a much more convenient solution to this bug, after I've re-rendered everything. I'll do some experimenting, but I don't suppose you'd know which -acodec among these I might choose in order to force correct behavior in CS4? (Bearing in mind I'm needing it to be raw (to avoid PPro's AC3 bug) and 16-bit to match the source.)

http://www.ffmpeg-activex.net/formats.html

[poisondeathray]

No I don't , not from ffmpeg. I'll play around with it, but I think ffmpeg and ffmbc only use wave format extensible for multichannel wave

The short summary is there are variations on "wav" , and some programs "expect" a certain version of "wav" (even though they are all uncompressed data)
http://www-mmsp.ece.mcgill.ca/documents/audioformats/wave/wave.html

The multichannel wave that you get from soundout() in avisynth isn't "wave format extensible" 0xFFFE . I don't know the nitty gritty details, but something is different about the header or they way the RIFF chunk ID size is , something like that, and CS4 treats it differently

A quick way to identify the difference is check the .wav with gspot or wave wizard

Try an export from soundout() , and check it in premiere

[Asterra]

A quick way to identify the difference is check the .wav with gspot or wave wizard

MediaInfo is evidently also capable.

Try an export from soundout() , and check it in premiere

Entering rough territory. The only way I've even been able to load these .MTS files with Avisynth is with DirectShowSource, which I have already determined defaults the audio to stereo. There has to be a way of converting one wav type to another...

[poisondeathray]

MediaInfo is evidently also capable.

Certain versions of mediainfo may be missing some of the information

Entering rough territory. The only way I've even been able to load these .MTS files with Avisynth is with DirectShowSource, which I have already determined defaults the audio to stereo. There has to be a way of converting one wav type to another...

This would be because your directshow decoder is set to downmix (you have a filter somewhere in your directshow filter chain that is downmixing)




This seems to work in PP, wrapped as an .aiff. 6 channels preserved, imported as mono channels automatically

ffmbc -i input.ac3 -acodec pcm_s16be output.aiff

[Asterra]

Yep, that does work. I sincerely wish I'd known about it a couple of weeks ago. Thanks for discovering this, though.

The trouble is that I've got about 100 individual 5.1 channel wav files, recognized as 5.1 in PPro (but missing the surrounds), complete with painstaking edits on each of them. Simply replacing the files with 6-channel AIFF files doesn't work because, as you said, PPro sees the AIFF as six mono channels, and so it replaces only the first channel out of the 5.1, leaving the other five blank. Therefore I cannot currently envision how I could make use of the AIFF files.

The problem seems to be simply this: Premiere Pro cannot properly handle 5.1 as a 5.1 channel. You give it AC3 and it completely demolishes the audio with mis-timings and pops. You give it WAV and it loses the surrounds. This means that the "quickest, easiest" solution available to me, so far as I can tell, is to render each of these 100+ 5.1-channel wavs as mono, rear-left and then rear-right, and replace them within the timeline.

[poisondeathray]

Yep, that does work. I sincerely wish I'd known about it a couple of weeks ago. Thanks for discovering this, though.

The trouble is that I've got about 100 individual 5.1 channel wav files, recognized as 5.1 in PPro (but missing the surrounds), complete with painstaking edits on each of them. Simply replacing the files with 6-channel AIFF files doesn't work because, as you said, PPro sees the AIFF as six mono channels, and so it replaces only the first channel out of the 5.1, leaving the other five blank. Therefore I cannot currently envision how I could make use of the AIFF files.

The problem seems to be simply this: Premiere Pro cannot properly handle 5.1 as a 5.1 channel. You give it AC3 and it completely demolishes the audio with mis-timings and pops. You give it WAV and it loses the surrounds. This means that the "quickest, easiest" solution available to me, so far as I can tell, is to render each of these 100+ 5.1-channel wavs as mono, rear-left and then rear-right, and replace them within the timeline.

To be fair, it handles some 5.1 formats properly, and I don't recall the 5.1 AC3 problems when using CS4. It might be you have some other install problems, because you had some issues that I couldn't replicate on CS4 (some other audio issues, v210 issue... a few more probably... )

CS4 still works with the AVS frameserver, so you could replace an .avs with each 100 individual 5.1 wavs . If they are named the same (e.g. 1.wav vs. 1.avs), I think it will automatically relink all of them when you use the replace function. There are avs batch scripters available. I did a quick test and direct avs import shows all 6 channels, as a single track (not imported as 6 mono channels)

[poisondeathray]

Here's another weird one:

AME's encoded 5.1 WAVs are identifed the same, "wave format extensible", but do not suffer from the same problems as other "wave format extensible" encoded from ffmpeg/ffmbc/eac3to

Does your AME suffer from AC3 decoding problems too, or is that limited to your PP CS4 ?

Perhaps you can setup a batch watch folder on the WAVS generated by FFMBC, and let AME do the conversion ?

[aedipuss]

never mind

[Asterra]

To be fair, it handles some 5.1 formats properly, and I don't recall the 5.1 AC3 problems when using CS4. It might be you have some other install problems, because you had some issues that I couldn't replicate on CS4 (some other audio issues, v210 issue... a few more probably... )

Bah, let's be fair. That's a stretch. ;p The AC3 audio in question imports flawlessly in all other applications and may actually be importing correctly in CS4 (it is not convenient to check), but it is destroyed upon export for certain.

CS4 still works with the AVS frameserver, so you could replace an .avs with each 100 individual 5.1 wavs .

Actually.. CS4 happens to be the only PPro for which AVS support is not enabled. Basically, CS4 - specifically, the introduction of Media Encoder - broke the plugin. You can still import but exporting will crash Media Encoder. The devs fixed support with CS5 but never looked back at CS4. This fact is the source of about 50% of my woes.

I also wouldn't quite know what script to use to cause PPro to import/replace as 5.1. That begins to cross the time-investment threshold where it's literally better just to load all this junk up in Audition and start saving new mono wavs.

[poisondeathray]

Scratch that idea - I've never used the watch folder before, can't seem to setup a 5.1 encode (seems to want to downmix)

Actually.. CS4 happens to be the only PPro for which AVS support is not enabled. Basically, CS4 - specifically, the introduction of Media Encoder - broke the plugin. You can still import but exporting will crash Media Encoder. The devs fixed support with CS5 but never looked back at CS4. This fact is the source of about 50% of my woes.

You sure about that? I used it all the time in the past with CS4 . It doesn't work with CS5 (there is a patched version but it doesn't work well)

I'm talking about Premiere Pro AVS Import Plugin

[Asterra]

AME's encoded 5.1 WAVs are identifed the same, "wave format extensible", but do not suffer from the same problems as other "wave format extensible" encoded from ffmpeg/ffmbc/eac3to

This curious observation gave me an idea which I just tested. Get this.

Using SoX (http://sox.sourceforge.net/Main/HomePage), I did literally this:

sox input.wav output.wav

What do you suppose the result was? Correct: A 5.1 channel .wav, recognized as such by PPro, and with the surrounds intact. The filesize difference is 12 bytes. Problem solved. And I don't even care that I don't know precisely why. ;p

[poisondeathray]

I noticed their changelog says

Fix WavPack header bugs.

Maybe it's some small difference in the header that causes PP CS4 to go bananas, because sox output is waveformat extensible as well



For the record, AVS import works fine, exports out of AME fine in CS4. I just tested a bunch of encodes . Must be another install or system problem on your end