Mixing a film in 5.1 - Surround panner and Stereo automation

bumpity bump bump

do it the other way around, 5.1 first and then do a stereo fold down (or whatever it is called in english) from that. muh easier.
but of course even better to do two seperate mixes :)

amdrecording


UnderTow- what are some examples of things that easier to do in ProTools? I hate digidesign with a passion, so it would take a lot to convert me... But that doesn't mean it's not a possibility. So far Sonar hasn't been too painful for post, the mix is sounding great.

Well.. this is a huge topic... One of the first things that comes to mind is the way that the video follows editing. If you grab a clip or a clip boundary and drag it (to move the clip or to trim it) the video follows as you drag. This means you can very quickly drop clips (like SFX) at the right spot as the video follows what you do. You can quickly find scene borders, video edits etc.

Another important advantage, a huge topic in itself, is the vastly superior automation in Pro Tools. From the fact that you have various automation modes (Read/Write/Touch/Latch/Touch_latch/Trim...) to the way you can edit automation or the way it follows your clips editing to all the cools functions like Capture/Preview automation (So you can catch the settings of a track/bus/plugin at one place and copy it somewhere else or preview plugin changes without affecting automation until you decide to write it) or functions like Write_To_Start, Write_To_End, Write_To_Selection (So you can write the current automation "states" to the Start/End of a track or the current time Selection. The automation window lets you bypass or engage specific types of automation like volume/pan/mute/sends/plugins etc Or enable/bypass all automation etc... Or the way it interacts with Mix Groups so whatever you do on one track in a Mix Group also affects other tracks in the Mix Group (and of course you can enable/disable any specific group you created).

The groups also have edit groups which only affect editing and not mixing. Or you can create edit+mix groups... The routing is more powerful. (You can route buses to track inputs or other busses etc... (This is VERY useful when you have to deliver different versions of mixes. My typical Pro Tools template will generate Surround/Stereo/DM&E/M&E/SFX/DIALOGUE/MUSIC/FOLEY/different_languages/etc mixes in one go.

Navigation is faster in my experience. You can easily jump to any marker by typing "dot"marker number"dot"on the numerical pad. (You can even use markers to enable/disable groups etc so the numpad becomes a quick way to enable/disable and change things in your session quickly.

Proper Pen tablet support! (This is huge in itself. This makes me about twice as fast as using the mouse not to mention avoiding RSI).

The list goes on and on. For me Pro Tools is about 8 to 10 times faster for doing post work than Sonar is (And I have been using Sonar for much longer than Pro Tools!)

Of course I am talking about PT HD. In Version 9 that means getting PT|HD, PT|HD Native or PT 9 with the extra Tool Kit. If you do a lot of commercial post work the investment pays for itself in the time saved.

UnderTow

amdrecording


Thanks for the info. This makes me feel like a buffoon for doing this work in Sonar.

PT|HD is a great platform, but I've also done 5.1 work in SONAR for broadcast and theatrical release without problems. YMMV, etc.

Just to be clear, I was speaking specifically about post production. Not composition/scoring. I use Sonar for music (Not to film) and Pro Tools for post. I can not comment on the differences between PT and Sonar for scoring (although there is probably some overlap between the two types of work).

UnderTow

I should say also, that I think Sonar is an EXCELLENT tool for scoring to picture. The only hurdle is to render the video file into something manageable, since quicktimes totally don't work.

I would avoid rendering a video file in Sonar.  It can be done, but it is waaaay more efficient to render audio in Sonar then marry the audio in a video editing program like Vegas or QT Pro or even windows movie maker.   You will have way more control over the Pic file and it happens much quicker. 

UnderTow


Just to be clear, I was speaking specifically about post production. Not composition/scoring. I use Sonar for music (Not to film) and Pro Tools for post. I can not comment on the differences between PT and Sonar for scoring (although there is probably some overlap between the two types of work).

UnderTow

Personally I could not use ProTools for orchestral scoring, first of all, lack of a 64 bit installation- limited amount of RAM because of that, so where do I put my samples, I got rid of my 8+ sample slaves last year and want to have it all in one machine. And MIDI.. still not good enough in ProTools. So in the moment, I still like the combo of Nuendo for scoring + mixing. Sonar was nice for electronic music, I preferred it for that style of production
 
 

UnderTow

kubalibre


Personally I could not use ProTools for orchestral scoring, first of all, lack of a 64 bit installation- limited amount of RAM because of that, so where do I put my samples, I got rid of my 8+ sample slaves last year and want to have it all in one machine.

Have you looked at VEP? http://www.viennaensemblepro.com/  It is quite a cool application. Solves the whole RAM limitation issue in PT (or any other 32 bit host). (And you could have kept your 8+ sample slaves. :-) ).

Anyway, this is OT.

UnderTow

yep, that is a pretty cool concept, but I wanted to get rid of the maintenance for too many machines. Its so much easier with only one workstation now and have it all in one box with 48 GIG RAM and Kontakt x64.
 
VEPRO would work I guess, but its really the MIDI editing that keeps me from using ProTools from scoring work. But I guess PT 10 will be great at MIDI editing and have an x64 version, and I´ll be back at the fence !

Supercomposer

UnderTow

kubalibre


Personally I could not use ProTools for orchestral scoring, first of all, lack of a 64 bit installation- limited amount of RAM because of that, so where do I put my samples, I got rid of my 8+ sample slaves last year and want to have it all in one machine.

Have you looked at VEP? http://www.viennaensemblepro.com/  It is quite a cool application. Solves the whole RAM limitation issue in PT (or any other 32 bit host). (And you could have kept your 8+ sample slaves. :-) ).

Anyway, this is OT.

UnderTow

yep, that is a pretty cool concept, but I wanted to get rid of the maintenance for too many machines. Its so much easier with only one workstation now and have it all in one box with 48 GIG RAM and Kontakt x64.
 
VEPRO would work I guess, but its really the MIDI editing that keeps me from using ProTools from scoring work. But I guess PT 10 will be great at MIDI editing and have an x64 version, and I´ll be back at the fence !

I had Vienna Ensemble before. Works pretty well, but if you check out out the VSL forums--- many are moving or moved already to single machine setups. It is easier to keep your setup nice and tidy. Good thing with vienna instruments that the plugs are x64 - no problems here with one machine and Windows7 x64.

OldDog

amdrecording


I should say also, that I think Sonar is an EXCELLENT tool for scoring to picture. The only hurdle is to render the video file into something manageable, since quicktimes totally don't work.

What are you using as a format?

Good question- it took me a long time to find the right combo. I have a program called AVS video convert. It is very flexible, I can convert just about anything TO just about anything. I've found that the codec "IBM Motion JPG" works best, and I convert everything to AVI. The file size is pretty large, I store the video file on my OS hard drive (mainly to keep it AWAY from my audio drive). Picture quality leave a lot to be desired, but it's EXTREMELY smooth in Sonar.

-A

www.alexdavismusic.com

kubalibre


Wow, I wish you best of luck with Sonar and a 5.1 film mix. Sounds to me like trying to shoot an elephant with a kid´s slingshot.

Honestly, buy an app that is more appropriate for that job. Nuendo or ProTools would be the weapons of choice for 5.1 PostPro.

Music sequencing is a field for Sonar.

yep, but too late now. Although I haven't encountered any huge problems. What are some advantages of Nuendo over Sonar? Very curious about that. In any case, I'm really doing this mix as a favor (even though I'm getting paid quite well for it), and don't have any aspiration to do this kind of work EVER AGAIN... but doing this mix means that I have a lot of control of the overall level of the music compared to SFX and dialof... So I have a huge interest in making sure the music is mixed PERFECTLY. Composers don't often get that chance!

Not going to buy a new program for a single gig, so I'm sticking with the slingshot and the elephant!

www.alexdavismusic.com

amdrecording

Good question- it took me a long time to find the right combo. I have a program called AVS video convert. It is very flexible, I can convert just about anything TO just about anything. I've found that the codec "IBM Motion JPG" works best, and I convert everything to AVI. The file size is pretty large, I store the video file on my OS hard drive (mainly to keep it AWAY from my audio drive). Picture quality leave a lot to be desired, but it's EXTREMELY smooth in Sonar.

-A

www.alexdavismusic.com

Excellent.  I will try that.  I assume there are no issues with loosing timing back to your original SMPTE time code right?
 
I am really getting excited about this, I have been having a blast in X1 so far and if I can get this to work smoothly it will give me a workflow I can live with.
 
Best, -H