premier pro and 5.1 audio

[mike909]

Ok, so premier can't deal with ac3 files (even though I upgraded the minnetonka surcode encoder and can now 'export' 5.1 ac3 files with my movies...be it avi, mpg2, or whatever). BUT since premier can't import ac3 files I have to convert them to 6 channel wav...no biggie. Done this with besweet, ac3tool, even saved it directly from vdubmod as wav. Premier's 'file-info' thing tells me it's a 6 channel wav file, but when I import the wav file it creates a bin and loads the 6 channels seperately into that bin folder witch each channel mono. Ok...whatever, if that's how it wants to play...fine. My question is then....how can i get those 6 channels onto the timeline as a 5.1 track? If I drag the bin it drops the 6 mono channels onto a stereo track sequentially...obviously bad. If I drag the files individually onto the timeline it also drops them onto a stereo track...not a 5.1 track (which I have added to the timeline). Here's the tricky part....if I create a 5.1 file with Audition and export it as a 6 channel wav, premier will import that fine and drop it onto the timeline as a 5.1 track. So...the question is...how can I import a 5.1 'non-origianl' audio file (original source is unprotected vob file) into premier for use on the timeline. I want to do this so I can edit the video on top of it to my liking then re-export the video w/ audio in Dolby Digital format.

[mike909]

Update:
Does anyone know how I can convert ac3 to a 5.1 channel uncompressed wav(that can be read by Premier pro as 5.1)? I have tried besweet and ac3tool but neither of them produce audio that can be read by PPro as 5.1. If someone has successfully got 5.1 audio from a vob file that premeir can interpret...please let me know. Thanks.

[mike909]

Well, I still can't figure out. Audition can export a 5.1 audio file fine and premier loves it, but any file I try to convert from an .ac3 source to wav premier see's as either stereo, or 6 mono files. One workaround that I figured out though, was to create the video with premier and drop the vdubmod'd .ac3 file into EncoreDVD's timeline. EncoreDVD has no problem wtih 5.1 ac3 files.

[dcsos]

There are several possible solutions for importing AC3 audio files into PPRO. An easy solution is to convert the AC3 files to a stereo PCM wav file - There are several converters which do this (I use the River Past Audio Converter).If you want to preserve the 5.1 channel dolby capability of the AC3 file, then break each of the six channels into individual wav files using a program like "Hypercube Transcoder" (Freeware).
David Burdick posted this on an ADOBE FORUM I happene to be reading yesterday

Most recent posts by David Burdick
Cant import AC3---WTF - 01:04am Dec 22,

[mike909]

I have converted the ac3 file with besweet, ac3tool, and softencode. The problem is they are 6 mono files as far as ppro is concerned. I can in fact then use the audio mixer to re-pan those files to the 6 channels in Ppro, or do the same in Audition (multichannel-encoder). But what I wanted to do was keep the original Signal where they are. I don't want to have to figure out what channel goe's where, and what percentage of it is being panned around the room to what locations etc. I will take a look at the post that you are talking about, but I myself posted this problem in great length in the adobe forum...
http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx?50@@.3bb97e55/0!login=true
their the problem is explained in greater detail.

[Cunhambebe]

Not even Vegas can import AC-3 files. Hope Vegas 6 can do that. The solution is to go AC-3 to WAV with BeSweet. Note: there's going to be a quality loss.

[elessaroflegion]

does anyone know how to convert mpeg4 or .m2a files because premier pro gives me a message error when i import these files