Creating 5.1 from Mono audio source?

[Rudyard]

I was fiddling around in vegas 5.0 the other day and looked at the 5.1 panning option.

I have been converting old VHS video with mono sound and was wondering can you break that mono sound up and pan it to what is happeneing on the screen to create 5.1 sound?

I assume not because all the audio is just in 1 channel and I guess in movies the pros record the dialogue seperate from each other and all the music and effects are also seperate so they can pan each recording to whatever speaker they like.

Is that how the pros do it? And am I right in assuming I couldnt recreate a mono audio source into a 5.1 source?

[guns1inger]

You can, but it takes a lot a work. A few years ago Sergio Leone's The Good, The Bad and The Ugly was restored. This included building a new 5.1 audio track from the original mono mix. To do this, they had to cut the audio into very small chunks, then reassemble it from scratch to get the new panning. They also found that in some places they had to add extra effects to hide issues they simply could not correct. At the end of the day, I am not convinced it was worth the effort. As much as I love the film, the 5.1 mix does not sound as convincing as the mono mix, and the artificiallity of it is more of a distraction.

[edDV]

That is how the pros do it. You can always copy the mono 6 times and play with filters. Remember how bad those 50's simulated stereo LP records sounded?

My vote would be to make a foley stage with the kids and create new tracks.

http://www.filmsound.org/terminology/foley.htm
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Movie_Making_Manual-Foley
http://www.sonicscience.com/boon/foleyarts.html