Adobe Premiere Pro CC: Separate Audio Channels

Posted on February 16, 2014 by Larry

Recently, I wrote an article discussing the new audio types in Premiere Pro CC (you can read it here). The problem with the new Standard audio type is that it works too well.

If you edit a stereo or mono clip into the track, the track automatically conforms to the number of channels in the clip. But… what if you don’t want it to conform the channels? For example, almost every interview I shoot is recorded “dual-channel mono,” where the host is on channel 1 and the guest is on channel 2 and both channels are supposed to be panned center.

From the point of view of Premiere, this looks like a 2-channel stereo clip which would get placed into one track. But it isn’t. I need separate control over each channel But, how?

NOTE: In this example, I have audio on channel 1, with no audio on channel 2. This type of clip is treated the same as a two-person interview clip where I need separate control over each channel.

MODIFY CHANNELS TO THE RESCUE

Piece of cake. But you need to make these changes before you edit a clip into the Timeline. Once it’s in the Timeline, it’s too late.

In the Project panel, select the clip, or clips, you want to modify. (Yes, you can apply this setting to multiple clips at once!)

Then, choose Clip > Modify > Audio Channels (shortcut Shift+G).

This opens the Modify Clip dialog. Note that both audio channels (Left and Right) are assigned to the same audio track (Track 1).

To convert this stereo clip to a dual-channel mono clip, change the Number of Audio Tracks to match the number of audio channels in the clip. In my case, this is 2.

Next, set the Channel Format to Mono. What this does is tell Premiere that there are two channels of mono audio in the clip, rather than a single stereo pair.

Notice that the track assignments at the bottom have now altered from indicating a stereo pair to assigning each channel to its own track in the Timeline.

When you click OK, Premiere warns you that this setting will not affect any clips already edited into the Timeline. Click Yes.

Now, when you edit the clip into the Timeline, even though it may appear as a stereo clip, Premiere is smart enough to assign each channel to its own track so you can edit and adjust each speaker independently. Here, the Left channel is assigned to A1 and the Right channel (which is silent) is assigned to A2.

EXTRA CREDIT

While, normally, an interview would have audio on both A1 and A1, in the case of this example, I have audio only on one channel and silence on the other. I would like to get rid of that second channel to avoid cluttering up the Timeline. (In point of fact, having a silent channel isn’t hurting anything, but it does take up space.) Because both channels are linked, clicking either audio channel in the clip selects both tracks of that clip in the Timeline.

To solve this, Option-click the channel you want to delete. This selects just the one channel, then press the Delete key.

Gone.

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55 Responses to Adobe Premiere Pro CC: Separate Audio Channels

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LarryJ says:

September 14, 2014 at 9:41 pm

Oscar:

You are right, my language was sloppy. I’ve gone back and corrected the article.

Thanks!

Larry
jimmy buckets says:

October 21, 2014 at 1:16 pm

Thanks for the concise tutorial! Got me where I needed to be in minutes!
Jimmy
Jason says:

October 23, 2014 at 7:48 am

Can you specifically go through the how you make this work globally in the preferencees,
Guillaume says:

April 22, 2015 at 8:54 am

Hi, I have the almost the same problem but in my video MP4 file, I have 2 audio tracks and when I import it in Premiere, it only shows the track 1 (computer sound) but not the track 2 (my voice recorded with a mic)
I used Action! to take a video of my computer screen

Windows 7 64bits, Premiere Pro CS6

If you could help me, I would be so grateful 🙂
thanks
Larry says:

April 22, 2015 at 10:58 am

Guillaume:

Hmmm… I don’t use Windows, so it may be a Windows issue. However, can you hear both channels when you play the clip outside of Premiere?

Have you tried separating the two channels in Premiere using the Extract Channel menu command?

Larry
amanda says:

May 12, 2015 at 12:39 pm

Thanks for saving the day yet again Larry! As a home based professional documentary filmmaker and editor, I can’t thank you enough for all the scrapes you’ve got me out of over the years. Your advice, knowledge and endless generosity, in my opinion makes you a living legend. Thank you!
Larry says:

May 12, 2015 at 1:33 pm

Happy to help.

Thanks!

Larry
Emily says:

May 18, 2015 at 11:14 pm

Thank you so much Larry. If it were not for yourself and other lovely people who have posted tutorials on forums I would have thrown in the towel on Adobe PP CC. I wish I could go back to FCP 7, but thanks to you at least I can attempt the transition! You are a gem. Also, this page (not sure about others) is formatted perfectly so I can save this info as a PDF if ever I need to go offline. Brilliant.
Pelle says:

June 7, 2015 at 2:35 am

Hi Larry,

Thanks for the tutorial. One thing I couldn’t find is:

What if you have 100 clips, some with 2 audio tracks (for inserts or wide shots) and some with up to 6 audiotracks (for interviews with multiple people). If I modify them at the same time with ‘number of audio tracks: 2’ it will delete the rest of the tracks in the clips that have more channels.

How can I approach this problem? In FCP7 I would just dump it in a sequence and al the tracks would be (dual)mono.

Another question that raised: why would’t you always use mono tracks? Except for music and/or sound fx I wouldn’t know why the rest would be stereo. Is it only for cleaning up track space?

Hope to hear from you. (I’m on PP CC 8.2.0)

Best, Pelle from Amsterdam
Larry says:

June 7, 2015 at 3:11 pm

Pelle:

Yup. This is a problem. Premiere assumes all 2-channel clips are stereo, which is why we need to change them before editing them to the Timeline, because once they are edited, the tracks can’t be changed.

The only solution is to group your clips into two bins: one for 2-channel and one for 6-channel. Then, you can quickly fix all the clips in each bin, without losing any audio channels.

larry