Comments on a 5.1 project

[immerjan]

I searched the forum, but somehow nobody seems to really do the "commenting" in X4. I however, like it a lot to make some comments directly into the project. However, I just realized that when I try to use the function on a project with 5.1 switched on, the program will tell me it can't open the "wave-in" device (I suppose that's the normal stereo mike I simply plugged into the mic jack on my pc).
Has anyone else experienced that? I'm kinda sad about it because now I have to speak things onto a stereo project in X4 and then copy the wav file and bind it back into the other project.

Help is appreciated.

[Black Lab]

Commenting, as in voice-overs? It's not that people don't do it, but forums are usually a sounding board for problems, so I guess you can say that voice-overs aren't too problematic.

Does your "wave-in device" support 5.1?

I'm kinda sad about it because now I have to speak things onto a stereo project in X4 and then copy the wav file and bind it back into the other project.

Not sure what that means.

How are you doing your voice-over?

[Ken Berry]

While I appreciate that you may see advantages in making comments directly into a project using VS's inbuilt audio recording capacity, I personally find it much better to use a third party program -- either Nero WaveEditor or the freeware Audacity -- to make my voice-over commentaries. They allow much greater flexibility and I find the VS capacity far too limited, as you also seem to be finding... I do them as .wav files and time the section of the video in which they are to fit. Altogether I find this gives a more "professional" sound.

[teknisyan]

I'm glad to hear that you liked the program and like what blacklab mention, laptops usually records in stereo or 2 channels audio only unless of course your hardware supports 5.1 audio output. Which you will need to check if your computer manufacturer.

[DVDDoug]

I can't help with the details... I've used 3rd-party software for the few 5.1 projects I've done.

Typically, commentary is mono (or 2-channel stereo if there are two commentators).

If you are adding commentary to a 5.1 mix, you'd usually record it separately in mono (or stereo) and then mix it into the center channel (or left & right) of your existing soundtrack. (And, you usually need to lower the existing soundtrack so that you can hear the commentary.)

Unless you have one of those cameras with 5 microphones built-in, most people are not recording in 5.1. The 5.1 channel mix is made usually from multiple recordings. Pros would be "mixing-down" to 5.1 (and 2.0) from multi-track recordings, and some of the tracks would be recorded at different times.

This allows you to pan (position) different sounds to different locations/channels in the final mix. And, this is done in post-production (not during "live" recording).

A simpler "home movie" surround track might not be multi-tracked, but might be built-up (mixed) from a center-dialog track, a stereo music track for left & right front, and a stereo rear-channel sound-effects track. (You'd probably have some sound effects in the front too, and maybe some dialog in the rear... but you get the idea...)

[immerjan]

Wow, that is a real in-depth answer ...
I thought I would just easily use that possibility of a voice-over and that's it, but of course I better record it on a different device and then use the audio file in my video project.
What I understand now is that once I switch the project to 5.1 sound, the input would also have to be a 5.1 microphone, which for a voice-over doesn't really make sense.

Thanks guys!