Rendering multichannel tracks to multichannel files is easy once you understand how. Setting up a multichannel render template in Vegas Pro requires that your project is set up correctly otherwise you won’t get the render that you expected. This tutorial shows you the entire procedure for setting up both your project and the render template so that you always get the multichannel audio that you expect. In this example I’m going to set up a 4 channel render template but you can use as many channels as your render type supports.
Important Note: Throughout this tutorial I use the QuickTime Avid DNxHD template from a previous tutorial. You can substitute any render template that supports multichannel but it’s important to know that not all render types support multichannel.
- Start by bringing up the Mixing Console by pushing the mixing console button above the Master fader.
- In the Mixing Console window, press the Insert Bus button 4 times to insert the 4 buses we will need to map to the audio channels in our render template.
When finished, the mixing console should look like this:
- Now it’s time to assign your audio tracks to one of the buses. This can be one track per bus, or multiple tracks per bus. It doesn’t matter as long as you assign each bus the audio that you want to appear on that channel because in the next step we are going to do the mapping of buses to audio channels in the rendered file.
Click on the square bus assignment icon to get the bus selection drop down:
It should look similar to this when all of the assignments are completed:
Also note that you can perform the bus assignments in the mixing console as well:
- Now you are ready to set up your rendering template. Use File | Render As… to bring up the Reader As window and select the template that you want to enable for multichannel audio. I’m going to select the Avid DNxHD template that I made in the last tutorial. We will need to use an option that is normally hidden so you must check View all options way down at the bottom of that window if it isn’t already checked.
- Click the Enable multichannel audio option and then press the Channels… button to bring up the channel mapping window.
- In the Channel Mapping window, map your bus to the appropriate channel in your render. In the example below, I selected mono downmix because my tracks were mono. If any of your tracks are stereo, you can select the stereo bus and it will map it to two channels automatically. Press OK when you are done.
- The last step is to make your template use the multiple channels. Press the Customize Template button, go to the Audio tab and change the Channels to4 Channel and press OK.
There you have it. You can now press the Render button and your project will render with 4 channel audio or as many channel audio as you added buses and mapped them to channels in your render template. Hopefully this will give you a good starting point for creating more templates of your own that use multichannel audio. Don’t forget that even though you can save these templates, you will still need to press the Channels… button to bring up the Channel Mapping window and map which buses you want to assign to each channel before rendering.
Happy Editing,
John Rofrano
You are my favorite. This has been bugging me for a while — multichannel mxf w/ 8 channels now works great. Thanks!
Thanks so much for posting this. I needed to create a four channel audio render for a TV station and I didn’t have a clue. I did the mapping and rendered it to MXF (HD422 1920×1080 60i 50mbps, and it looks great. At first, I couldn’t figure out how to check my work, (see the tracks) but I found a switch inside Vegas to see the rendered audio tracks after importing the rendered file back into Vegas.
I don’t see any square bus assignment icons 🙁
If you don’t see the square bus icons in the track header then your track header is too short. Expand it to be wider and more icons will appear.
What version of Vegas are you using to accomplish this? Will this process also work in reverse, in other words can I open a vid file with multichannel audio in vegas? I’ve been eyeing the Sound Devices Pix 160i which I believe creates mov files as apple pro res with multichannel audio (all in one file), but wasn’t sure if Vegas can open such a file. Thanks!
I’m using Vegas Pro 11.0 in the example, but I have tested this back to Vegas Pro 8.0 and it works both ways. You can create a multi-channel video file and you can open a multichannel video file and see all of the audio channels brought onto the timeline as separate tracks. In Vegas Pro 8.0 the multi-channel option is always visible and it is positioned right above the drop down box where you select the template. If the encoder doesn’t support multi-channel it will be grayed out.
Hello, I attempted to post previously, but I don’t think it went through. I was wondering what version of Vegas you are using. I’m using version 8, but the “enable multichannel mapping” button is greyed out for quicktime files. I tried the same concept via avi and it did indeed work. More than exporting multi channel dnxhd files, i’m interested in importing them. I’m interested in acquiring a sound devices pix 260i, which records an apple prores file, or i’ve come to understand, an avid dnxhd file as a quicktime with multichannel audio embedded, and was wondering if Vegas can pull in those files with the multitrack audio intact. Thanks
Sorry I didn’t get to your posts sooner. I went back and checked and multi-channel mapping wasn’t added for QuickTime until Vegas Pro 10.0 so you will need at least Vegas Pro 10.0 if you want to produce multi-channel QuickTime files. As for using Vegas Pro 8.0 with ProRes and multi-channel, you should probably get a sample file from this device and test it. I had no problem importing a multi-channel ProRes file into Vegas Pro 10.0 but the same file would not import the audio into Vegas Pro 8.0. However, I had no problem importing an Avid DNxHD multi-channel file into Vegas Pro 8.0. So depending on what’s really in this QuickTime file, you may need to upgrade Vegas Pro in order to work them.
Great information! thanks for your help.
Hi JOHN,
I know that this is not the topic, but I need your expertise.
I will explain as much as I can. I have a couple video files in HD 1080i as .MTS Files with 5.1 surround files.
In order to get this easy done I choose to down mix the 5.1 to stereo. When I start the project I selected stereo instead of 5.1.
Now the project is done and I want to render and for this I want to have 5.1 instead, I want to replace the stereo with 5.1 files, but is not possible. Even when I make the changes in the project properties nothing is happening.
Any idea how to put back the original 5.1 audio files instead of having stereo.
I can do that with video files (using video proxy method)but not with audio files, video proxy is ok, but how can I create an audio proxy and later on to change it to the original audio files?
Thank you in advance,
JohnyK
Once you make a project Stereo, any audio you add to the timeline with be treated as stereo. If you convert your project to 5.1 Surround later, any new audio that has 5.1 channels will be treated as 5.1 but all existing audio on the timeline will remain stereo as you have seen. The only way to get them to show their 5.1 tracks is to add them back to the timeline again so that they get reprocessed. Someone could write a script to pull the 5.1 tracks back out of the audio files but I don’t know of any script that currently does this.
Hello John Rofrano, I have a question.
When trying to create karaoke, with what settings would you need to have in order to a finished product with 2 audio tracks (one with vocal and one without)? In every other case, I manage to have 1, 3, or 4 audio tracks but 2 audio tracks seems to be a cursed number.
Sorry, I’m not familiar with how Karaoke content is created. I would think that you would want 4 audio tracks composed of 2 x 2 Stereo tracks. One stereo pair would have the voice and one stereo pair would have just the music because you still want the music to be in stereo. I assume that the Karaoke playback device has a way to switch between the two sets of tracks. You might want to check with a company that actually creates content for Karaoke players. Hope that helps.
John… all I can say is, without you in this world, I would have been stuck more times than you know. An example is right here in this article… I have been bashing my head trying to render a video I’ve set up for 5.1 surround sound. The only way I could render a high quality file was in stereo – every time I selected the correct amount of audio channels it would say the custom template wasn’t compatible. Finally, after searching online I once again end up at you! I did as you described and was finally able to render my MXF 422 with 8 channels of audio. Thank you thank you thank you. I love sony vegas pro and wish more people realized just how intuitive and powerful it is.
THink I spoke too soon. I’m sooo close. But now when I render out the video with the channels mapped, in my headphones that are set up for 5.1 surround its now just a stereo image without the surround sound sounding like it did while editing using the same headphones. I don’t get it.
:/
I’m not giving up!
Matthew
Headphones are only stereo so you won’t hear the surround mix properly. You’ll need a plug-in like the Waves Nx – Virtual Mix Room over Headphones to simulate the surround panning over stereo headphones.
Okay… think I’m on to something. I went to play back the .mxf file in VLC player (because I don’t know where else to play it) and realized under the audio menu all 6 tracks are individually available during playback but only one track at a time. Make sense? I’m doing all this for a 15 sec HD tv broadcast and client asked for surround sound.
In the rendered file, the 5.1 surround is mapped to 6 mono tracks (LF,RF,C,LFE,LR,RR). It’s up to the playback device to map them back into their surround channels (Front Left+Right Stereo, Center Mono, Low Frequency Enclosure Mono, and Rear Left+Right Stereo). I believe you did this correctly you would just need to tell VLC how to map them properly.
Thanks!