Mono to Stereo

Hi,

I posted this as part of a previous thread, but on the forum it looks like my question got lost, so since it's a question and not an answer, I'm posting separately. Hope this is OK.

I am in the process of converting mono to stereo. I think stereo has a richer sound.

I recorded mono in 2 channels with slightly higher levels on one than the other.

Now that I am going stereo, I deleted the higher level track, duplicated the lower level track, and now I'm linking them as stereo pairs.

Problem one: FCP (I'm in 4.5) won't let me link the clips at the track level-- if I select both tracks and press option-L it doesn't do anything. It's making me link pairs clip by clip, which is verry slow. Is there a faster way I'm missing?

Problem two: well, this isn't really a problem, but earlier Nick wrote:

i DO pan my stereo pairs to the center if i've got sep chanels,
select once its in the timeline,
and control >
or modify menu > audio

Why pan them to the center? My audio controls seem to default to pan left ("-1". I've tried right, left, and center and can't tell a difference in sound, at least for the clip I'm working with. And it's another parameter to have to change manually, which is a pain.

Thanks!

here's my answer from that thread:
-------------------------------------------------

sorry, dylan, no faster way with what you;re doing.

if you;ve got dual mono, which you do,
then there is no need to pan to the center at all.

in my case i had two distinct audio tracks: a mic on each of two actors.
it was disconcerting having one actor coming out the left, and the other coming out the right.

in your case, with exactly the same audio on both tracks, center pan, or stereo will give you the same result.

i cant hear them, of course, but i'd say there's nothing "richer" about the tracks you are creating.
dropping one chanel might make them a bit clearer.
doubling that up will do NOTHING but raise the volume by 3db.

you will also have the matchframe isues i mentioned.

if you match frame your clip, you will bring up the original 2 tracks in to the veiwer.

to get around that, you'll have to batch export as reference files

the "faster" way is to not do what you;re doing.
there is very little benefit to it.
if you had the same mic going to both chanels, but with one side a bit lower than hte other, then simply panning the original clips to the center without the fiddling around should give you almost exactly the same result.
and that could be done in one go:
drag to timeline, select all pan to center, drag back to new bin.
match frame issues still exist.

nick

I'm with Nick. What you are doing is making dual mono clips, not stereo clips. And there's no benefit to that unless you need to make it louder.

Thank you guys. I'll just revert back to my original then.

> Why pan them to the center?

Dialogue tracks should always be in the center. With lower-end productions like the student films I've cut, we also sometimes had projection systems that lost one side, left or right. People who didn't pan dialogue tracks dead center were horrified to find, at their screenings for grant applications, that half their dialogue went missing. Same with music.

> What you are doing is making dual mono clips, not stereo clips.

While it's true you can't get stereo sound from duplicating mono tracks, I do use this trick in music recording, which is dual mono tracks with very different effects applied -- eg. the same mono signal from an electric guitar, split into two channels, with a wah pedal on one channel but not the other, and different reverb settings. Not stereo, but I think you do get a more complex sound perspective.