Feature request: native 5.1 tracks

Skaven252 wrote on 1/31/2010, 6:34 AM
I have noticed two problems in Vegas that make editing Surround material difficult:

* 5.1 audio can be imported to Vegas, but it is divided into 5 separate tracks that need to have their speakers configured correctly. This makes editing 5.1 material rather unwieldy.

* If a 5.1 Surround Vegas project is nested into another 5.1 project, its audio is actually flattened to stereo, making it impossible to combine multiple 5.1 projects into one 5.1 compilation, unless those are rendered into intermediate 5.1 videos first.

The suggested solution would be an audio track that is natively in 5.1. It's displayed as a single track (maybe with 6 channels visible), but can only be assigned to the Surround Master bus. It cannot be panned nor its pan animated, but individual speakers could be turned off. Any 5.1 video material (including 5.1 Vegas projects) would get this kind of a track for their audio, and any 5.1 audio files could be dragged to these. 5.1 audio event clips could be split, faded and crossfaded like any other audio event. Switches like Mute, Reverse, Normalize etc would apply, but there would also be special Channels options: one (selected) channel only, Combine to Stereo and Combine to Mono.

Would this be feasible?

Comments

musicvid10 wrote on 1/31/2010, 7:03 AM
It's a nice idea, and has been mentioned before. The two major drawbacks are cost and system strain. Realtime 5.1 preview in Vegas would seem a lot, considering all the other things it is being asked to do.
newhope wrote on 2/1/2010, 12:01 AM
I'm not sure that it should be such a strain on the system to be able to replay multichannel WAV files.

In this case you wouldn't want to replaying Dolby Digital encoded files and decoding them on the fly but multichannel WAVs is a different kettle of fish.

To be able to import more than just a mono, or stereo file onto a track and have it assigned correctly, possibly by an output selection dialogue box, to surround outputs would certainly enhance Vegas.

This is the sort of thing that ProTools HD, and also ProTools LE when combined with the Complete Post Production plugin, can do as do other professional DAWs.

New Hope Media
JohanAlthoff wrote on 2/1/2010, 3:26 AM
I'd say system strain is completely irrelevant at this point. Like Skaven points out, we're already doing the same thing with workarounds.

Cost is probably the more relevant argument; I strongly suspect that Vegas is a stereo application "under the hood," and expanding the notion of a "track" to actually behave more like a "folder" or "track group" is, I assume, a big deal.

Not to say it wouldn't be fantastic, though. The largest problem Vegas has from a workflow perspective is that it doesn't scale very well -- as soon as you hit the 20-or-so track threshold, your project will become harder to manage. Projects-in-projects is a decent stop gap, but given that they are not reversible (there's no way to "explode" a subproject) they are limited in usability.
musicvid10 wrote on 2/1/2010, 8:47 AM
I'm not sure that it should be such a strain on the system to be able to replay multichannel WAV files.
I'd say system strain is completely irrelevant at this point. Like Skaven points out, we're already doing the same thing with workarounds.

Apparently, the two of you did not read the original post the way I did. Playing back 6-channel wave from the timeline is exactly what Vegas Pro does natively, and does very well. I neither questioned that, nor was that the subject of my response, since the OP already reports success doing just that. If you were unaware, 5.1 audio requires encoding, which in the context of the post, would need to be done in realtime or with background rendering.

My impression is that the the OP wants to be able to edit and play back realtime encoded 5.1 audio tracks on the timeline, and I still think that is what he is asking (read the thread title). That is quite a different consideration, and one that would place additional demand on system resources, again no question about that. Probably would cost us more, too.
Skaven252 wrote on 2/2/2010, 2:13 AM
"My impression is that the the OP wants to be able to edit and play back realtime encoded 5.1 audio tracks on the timeline"

No... I just want to avoid the hassle that occurs when I drag & drop a 5.1 interleaved .WAV file into an audio track. Vegas currently imports it as 6 separate audio tracks, that then need to be configured correctly (by switching off speakers on each 6 tracks).

Also, if you drag & drop another 5.1 Vegas project into a 5.1 Vegas project (to nest/embed it), its audio gets collapsed to stereo, which makes editing nested 5.1 projects impossible. The 5.1 projects need to be rendered to an intermediate lossless video with 5.1 audio for editing - and then the above hassle (having to reconfigure speakers) still occurs.

I presume that if an already AC3/Dolby/whatnot encoded 5.1 audio file was dragged to Vegas, it will create a temporary proxy file for realtime playback, so that shouldn't cause any extra CPU usage.

--

So... if Vegas already does all I want, could you please tell me how to do this:
1) Drag a 5.1 audio or video file to Vegas as an event
2) Have that event's audio track stay in 5.1 surround, yet occupy only one Audio Track which requires no speaker reconfiguration.

I don't think that's currently technically possible, because all Vegas Audio Tracks are stereo, and can only be panned in 5.1 surround.
Skaven252 wrote on 2/2/2010, 2:16 AM
" Projects-in-projects is a decent stop gap, but given that they are not reversible (there's no way to "explode" a subproject) they are limited in usability."

Fortunately, multiple instances of Vegas can be run, so the nested project can be "exploded" in another session. :)
musicvid10 wrote on 2/2/2010, 7:27 AM
* 5.1 audio can be imported to Vegas, but it is divided into 5 separate tracks that need to have their speakers configured correctly.

I got the impression that your question was about 5.1 AC-3, not multichannel wave, which is a completely different format. So, precise language is helpful and appreciated. Also, how you propose to have six channels all as one event on still be able to edit them?

If what you really want to do is drop a Multichannel PCM file into a surround project in Vegas (do I have that right?), then why don't you submit that, along with your other feature requests to Sony, and report back what they say?
guvnor_p wrote on 2/2/2010, 7:55 AM
I've been meaning to send a mail directly to Sony about the handling of surround sound. I love the work-flow of Vegas for audio and have used it on many many projects including games and films. The handling of surround though is so antiquated and limited it's very frustrating. Not being able to have surround busses, add surround effects on tracks or even use surround VSTs other than the effects that come bundled with Vegas on the master output is very limiting.

Please correct me if I'm wrong. I've looked at going over to Nuendo, but Vegas is just so fast for the way I work.
newhope wrote on 2/3/2010, 4:18 AM
The terminology, calling a multichannel WAV file 5.1, was what confused Musicvid, but coming from a professional audio background I have encountered the need to do this in other situations.

However the process of replaying 6 track WAV files intended to be used as unencoded 5.1 is pretty much the norm when mixing for 5.1 from submixes like Sound Effects, Atmospheres and even Dialogue and original Music tracks.

Editing isn't the question because, in general these are submixed tracks that have been produced by a previous mixing process where editing of stereo and mono components and mixing into a 5.1 submix has already taken place. If they do need editing it is basically the same as editing stereo except you are cutting six tracks of audio at once.

The ability to bring those six tracks up on one fader on a mixer certainly reduces the real estate required when mixing, whether it's a hardware or software mixer or just the onscreen track display.

Like I said in my previous post ProTools HD already does this, and so will ProTools LE when the Complete Production Toolkit is installed... mind you both options are significantly more expensive than Vegas.

New Hope Media
Skaven252 wrote on 2/8/2010, 2:09 AM
" So, precise language is helpful and appreciated."
"The terminology, calling a multichannel WAV file 5.1, was what confused Musicvid"

Vegas is used by a varied group of people, I guess this explains the confusion.

An example: Pro Tools' graphic interface looks like a mixing console, because it's made for people who have previously worked with hardware mixing / editing consoles.

I come from a game development backround, so my approach has been completely different. 5.1 interleaved .wav file is the most common format I have encountered in my work, and I never needed to even look into AC-3. The game console does the encoding part.

There's a similar situation with graphics. Computer artists talk about "textures" and "polygons", and then professionals who work in the graphic design / print industry get confused ask them to use "more professional" terms, like color separation and halftoning.

Yes. Vegas is used by quite a varied group of people. I actually use it to create individual sound effects for games. It's not primarily meant for this, but works wonders.

Sorry for the confusion.
musicvid10 wrote on 2/8/2010, 8:22 AM
Now that I understand what you are talking about it is much easier to understand what you are asking for. And I support the idea, although I suspect that implementation would be nontrivial and maybe not exactly what you want. Because the realtime output would still not be encoded as 5.1 or 7.1 or whatever, the audio channels would still have to be assigned (routed) from the timeline to discrete sound card channels for playback.

Just to be clear, in audio parlance, 5.1 most often refers to an encoded surround source, and multichannel wave refers to discrete pcm mono channels in one file, up to 32, I think. So using the term "5.1" by itself commonly invokes "5.1 Dolby Digital AC-3." Likewise, the term "5.1 interleaved .wav file" may be used in game developers' circles, but in my neck of the woods, that is an oxymoron.

And I also agree that the Vegas timeline is not the friendliest when it comes to handling multichannel WAV. Here is another thread on a similar subject that was started by one of the forum's pros (pay particular attention to SonyPCH's responses to get a better understanding of what would be involved):
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=19&MessageID=677840