Creating Surround Sound in Premiere 6.5 with Stereo Source by Boyang Li Published on Dec 9, 2002 12:00 AM

Everyone knows that DV is stereo, meaning there's a left and right source. Dolby 5.1 has five channels or speakers and one subwoofer. Here, I'll focus on the four speakers in the four corners because the fifth speaker is generally used for dialog and again the 6th is the subwoofer. Those two channels you can add later.

The example I'm going to use is a boat circling the camera. Now, there is only one microphone on most camcorders that records the left side and the right side. So how do we "simulate" the boat circling the camera? Simply, we duplicate the left and right channels and put them in the rear two channels. Now we have four channels. With four channels (tracks in Premiere), we can export them as PCM tracks and then import them into your favorite DVD authoring program. Add the fifth center channel (dialog) and subwoofer channel to complete the Dolby 5.1 sound scheme.

The next step is to make smooth transitions from the front left to front right to rear right to rear left, and then return to front left. This is the most important part since we're trying to achieve a clockwise circling feeling.

There are two ways to achieve this.

Method 1
This method is simpler logically, easier to understand, and easier to implement and edit. Basically, we will take a clip, unlink the video from the audio, make four copies of the audio track and work with those four audio tracks.

First, we should acknowledge some basics. To expand a track, click the little triangle on the left side of the timeline where the audio track names appear (Audio 1, Audio 2, etc). One can then see a red and blue button. Click the blue button and you will see a blue rubber band. This is the rubber band to adjust the "pan" or left and right sources of the audio clip (in effect panning left to right or right to left). If you click the red button, the rubber band becomes red and indicates that it adjusts volume. In this method, we will be working with the red rubber band: volume.

Next, drag a clip onto the video 1 track, which naturally places the audio on audio 1. Right click the clip and select "Unlink Audio and Video." The video track should now be yellow and the audio blue. Leave the video track be as we're only dealing with audio. Next, select the audio clip and press copy. Then paste the audio clip to Audio 2, Audio 3, and Audio 4. Make sure they're on top of each other. And there you have your four audio channels. Audio 1 will be front left. So we must mute the right channel to only allow the left channel to be present. To do this, right click the audio 1 clip, select "Audio Options," and "Mute Right." Likewise, since audio 2 is front right, we mute the left channel. For audio 3, mute the left since it is rear right, and for audio 4, mute the right for it is the rear left speaker.

Subsequently, we insert three markers (press asterisk on the number pad, see 3rd screenshot) on the timeline to separate the four transition periods (front left to front right, front right to rear right, rear right to rear left, rear left to front left).

To go from front left to front right, place and drag the red rubber band at the first marker all the way down, as well as dragging the ending of the rubber band down. So basically, the volume of the front left speaker is decreasing for the first section.

Correspondingly, audio 2 (front right) must increase in volume. So drag the beginning of the rubber band of audio 2 all the way down. Then at the first marker, keep the rubber band in the middle. And at the second marker, drag the rubber band down and keep it down to the end.

As we have just successfully transitioned the sound from front left to front right, we will next transition the sound from front right to rear right. To achieve this, we follow the same procedure as before but just at other markers. On audio 3, keep the rubber band down till the first marker, and drag it to the middle at the second marker. At the third marker, drag the band down and keep it down to the end.

For audio 4, keep the rubber band down at the beginning, first marker, and second marker. Then at the third marker drag it to the middle. At the end of the clip, drag the band down.
Now, to shift the sound back up to front left to complete the circle, we go back to audio 1 and drag the rubber band to the middle at the end of that clip.

To summarize the rubber band process, what we have done is essentially decreased the volume in front left, increasing it to front right, then decreasing those while increasing the rear right, decreasing those three while increasing the rear left, and decreasing those while increasing the volume back to front left. This effectively achieves the circling feeling.

Now that we have four audio tracks, we must export them so we may import them to a DVD authoring program. To export each audio track separately, we must hide/disable the other three tracks. So, for example, to export audio 1, we hide audio 2, 3, and 4. Simply click the each little speaker buttons next to where it reads "Audio 2," "Audio 3", and "Audio 4," leaving only audio 1 to have the speaker icon. Now in File, Export Timeline, Export Audio, and use the settings of Windows Waveform 48000Hz since this is raw PCM format. Simple do the same process to export audio 2 while hiding the other three, etc.

Next, in your favorite DVD authoring program that support Dolby 5.1, import those four tracks and assign each one to a speaker accordingly thus creating the four surround channels. You may import the 5th dialog and 6th subwoofer tracks too if you had created them.

Method 2
This method is a little more complicated. However, it gives more freedom to control the transition process from each speaker to the next. We will be using the Audio Mixer in Premiere which allows us to control the rate of transitioning. Also, with this method, we will be panning the audio mostly though some parts will need volume changes as well.

To start off, just like method 1, we unlink the video and audio. But now, instead of copying the audio to make four tracks, we only need to paste it once to make two tracks. Essentially, audio 1 will be the front two speakers while audio 2 will serve as the rear two speakers. For each track to serve as the left and right speaker, we will need to pan that particular track from left to right.

First, insert a marker somewhere on the timeline. Here, I have inserted it in the middle. This point will serve as the transitioning point from front right to rear right. Make the audio 1 clip end just a tad beyond this marker, and audio 2 clip start a little before the marker. Then end the audio 2 clip a little before the end of the scene, and start the audio 1 again before the end. See screenshot.

To pan each track, open Audio Mixer and click the middle button under the number 1 and 2. That middle button is called Automation Write which will write a drag points on the pan rubber band as you turn the pan dial. Ok. Start playing the audio 1 on the timeline. As it plays, turn the pan dial from 100% to 100% right slowly. Stop play when it reaches the end of the audio 1 clip. Now, play the audio 2 clip and turn the #2 pan dial from right to left slowly. For the third clip on audio 1 track, keep the dial at 100% left. See previous screenshot.

But what about those overlap areas? Those are where the sound is shifting from front to rear and rear to front. The first overlap area is from front right to rear right. To achieve this, click the red button by the track numbers to show the red rubber band. Then simply put a drag point at the overlap start and end. The volume decreases for audio 1 clip and increases for audio 2 in the overlap region. For the third clip on audio 1 (which is the transition from rear left returning to front left), perform the same rubber band maneuver.

To sum up, the blue rubber band gradually decreasing is the panning of audio from left right and vice versa, which is done using Audio Mixer. The two overlap areas on the red rubber band are transitions from front to rear. So if we look at the timeline again, we see that the front audio (audio 1) pans to the right, then with the volume change the sound shifts to the rear right, panning to the left on the rear speakers (audio 2), and shifting back up to the front left with the volume change.

Importing to a DVD authoring program, this time around, will be somewhat different. Just like method 1, first disable the second track while exporting the first track in Premiere. Since we only have two tracks exported from Premiere, we must import the front track twice: assign the front track once to the front left channel, and again to the front right channel. Likewise for the rear track: import and assign the rear track to the rear left and rear right channels. We are doing this because the panning of the audio (left and right movements) is already incorporated into each track.

Conclusion
In brief, surround sound is achievable in Premiere even if the source is only stereo, eg. DV. All we have to do is play around a little with the audio in multiple tracks. Both of these methods are quite simply to understand when one gets the logic, though method 1 is slight easier to manipulate such as adding multiple scenes.