Delivering Multi-channel audio on Resolve 14

When delivering for broadcast, I must export video with 8 mono tracks in the following order: L, R, C, LFE, Ls, Rs, Stereo-L, Stereo-R (the first 6 tracks being the 5.1 channels). This was trivial to do in Resolve 12.5 as I could go to the Audio mixer on the Edit page and set the Master to 8 channels, and then select the correct output channel for each timeline track individually :



Now, I can't figure out how to do this in Resolve 14, even when looking at the manual. In the Bus Format window, I can select the format for the Main 1 output bus, but there is no option for a multi-channel bus of a custom size. I want a bus with 8 mono tracks, but that's not an option? The only way to get 8 channels on the output is to select 7.1, but that feels wrong, considering what I have is 5.1 plus stereo. I actually tried that, but it did not seem to work. I tried to manually assign tracks to the main output bus channels in the patch window and it did not seem to work either (and seems awfully tedious for something that used to be so simple).

So what am I missing?

I'm in the same situation. I've output 10 channel audio in 12.5 many times, no problem, but for the life of me cannot figure out how to do it in 14.1. I've read the audio output portion of the manual, but so far nothing I've tried has resulted in anything besides 2 channels (I'm guessing the main bus...)

Would appreciate some guidance on this.

there's a pulldown in v14 deliver page to allow 1:1 timeline -> deliver mapping, bypassing the audio page

I cannot figure this out...

Need to deliver a multi-channel file. 5.1 mix on tracks 1 thru 6. Mono L on 7, Mono R on 8

When I render out Timeline Track mode in the Audio tab within Deliver, I get 5.1 mix on 1 thru 6, then L doubled up on 1, and R doubled up on 2.

In the Main out Bus I can only setup up tracks based on presets, there is no way to manually designate my outputs?

Trying to read the manual as well but can't find information on this

Last time I had to deliver a multi-channel output, I exported the grade from Resolve 14, then went to my old machine with Resolve 12.5 to produce the master file with the proper audio channel. Not a fun work-around.

We need to figure this out ASAP, because more of these projects are coming.

I think I figured it out

first I setup my audio tracks in the EDIT page. In this case, a 5.1 track and two mono tracks that are a stereo pair.

Screen Shot 2017-11-15 at 11.43.28 AM.png (21.65 KiB) Viewed 18211 times

Then go into the FAIRLIGHT tab, menu bar FAIRLIGHT > Bus Format
I changed MAIN 1 to 5.1, and added two more MAIN tracks, each mono

Screen Shot 2017-11-15 at 11.44.02 AM.png (41.08 KiB) Viewed 18211 times

Then go into the Mixer panel within the Fairlight tab. Assign the tracks in the timeline to the corresponding MAINs. so I patched the 5.1 to MAIN1, Mono L to MAIN2, and Mono R to MAIN3

Screen Shot 2017-11-15 at 11.44.09 AM.png (23.18 KiB) Viewed 18211 times

(pt 2)

In DELIVER / AUDIO - add all of the MAINS

Screen Shot 2017-11-15 at 11.44.17 AM.png (35.06 KiB) Viewed 18210 times

In Premiere I checked the output, it sees the file as having a 5.1 mix on CH 1, and two monos on CH 2 and 3.

I would have preferred to have 8 mono outs, I'll have to figure that out next

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ugggg....

i did a short test when i started useing v14, took a feature mix from a top tier house, 8 mono tracks, and sent it back to them, and they said it was clean.

but since then i have not trusted the workflow enough to risk a QC rejection, so i'm back to useing DS for deleverables, render DPX out of Reslove, add titles/gfx/mix in DS and export from there

fortunatly DPX are Rt in DS, so basicly back to where i was in v11, but i've always done GFX/titles in DS anyway, was roundtripping them to Reslove for packageing/exporting with audio in v12, this suboptimal audio muckup in v14 puts me back to a v11 workflow, gradeing in Resolve, but finishing in DS, and really makes Nucoda a better fit now as it shares a timeline with DS, so no rendering/exporting/importing needed, much like in the era of v11...

end game v14's audio is substaintialy broken when creating deliverables, i was hopeing for significant improvement in routeing and/or a return to v12's timeline mixer tool -> deliver page as an option in v14.1, guess i'm on DS untill 14.2.... would be somewhat more unhappy if i didn't have alternate tools and workflows established already

Its it really all super simpel , but again , take a little time to understand the extreme flexibility you have now that you never had in 12.5. Also just forget about 12.5.
Dont try and force a workflow from any other / older app into a completely new app.

There is just one mantra you need to remember and separate mentally.
1. Determine how you want to listen to your edit (=monitoring setup)
2. Determine how you want to render it out. (=delivery tab)
And treat these separately but think about it in advance, which makes life a bit easier.

Both are absolutely separate things and can be controlled separately with infinite flexibility.

In above case , with a 5.1 track and 2 mono tracks panned left and right, it seems setup like this from a monitoring standpoint (otherwise panning the track 7 and 8 is irrelevant for rendering intent).

You can render this in so many ways.
You could as currently described above, render it as monitored eg as a single 5.1 track plus 2 mono tracks
You could render it as 8x mono tracks by just selecting the checkbox "render one track per channel " in the audio tab on the delivery page without changing anything else and you are done.
Super easy.
[edit / correction] This only works for a single multichannel track (handy for 24 chan track for example) and gets deactivated once you add other track so implement next more flexible setup option instead . There are option to do this in current setup but is a bit more difficult .[ end correction]

It makes your life easier if before you setup your track layout you think about these things.
So if for the sake of argument before starting to setup the timeline i wanted to render this out as 4xstereo tracks instead, i would have set all tracks to mono (8x) before populating them and then just created 4 main stereo busses. Direct the tracks to the stereo busses how i want it to appear on the render and then at render time just add all the 4 stereo busses to the render audio tab.
Done.
With that same setup without changing anything i could also render 8xmono by instead of rendering the busses , adding the 8 individual tracks directly to the render tab.
If i changed my mind and wanted a 4 channel track , a 3 channel track and a mono track in the delivery , i would only add 1x4 channel bus and 1x3 channel bus to my setup , add these to the render output plus the final mono and done.
And so on and so on.

So absolutely "nothing" is broken there . Any combination is possible and even possible at the same time (impossible with 12.x)
You can set up 50 different mixes and render out 50 other different combinations all at the same time.
It just takes a bit of effort , forget about what you know from 12 and embrace the new routing options.
And please stop claiming it is broken if you just dont understand how it works. That is not fair to all the hard work that went into this amazing application. And save that for stuff that is actualy broken and report that properly to the amazing BM team.

p.s. In 14.1 the linked groups are back on request and our complaints, which makes setting up a 5.1 mix from stems for "monitoring" a bit easier if laid out in mono tracks. But is pure for monitoring as for render you dont need this if you just want to render out the stems (just add all the tracks directly to the output )

I think I figured it out

So I tried your method and I got it to work (I think). I made a timeline with 8 mono tracks, Then I created 8 mono Main busses and I patched tracks 1-8 to the respective bus on the Fairlight page. On the Deliver page, I added all 8 busses and linked each one to the correct track: why can't I just automatically replicate the assignment I made on the Fairlight page? This feels tedious. Hopefully, once I've created a deliver preset, I don't need to do this again.

I checked my output file and reimported it in Resolve to make sure everything is in the right place. It all seems fine. But I would be nervous to send this to a broadcaster's QC department. I hope Blackmagic Design can confirm the proper workflow.

You dont need to create 8 mono busses.It works but is 8 busses more then you need. Just instead of that add the 8 timeline tracks each to the delivery page .

2017-11-15_20-33-46.jpg (55.71 KiB) Viewed 18188 times

As described above this is the most flexible track layout as with additional busses you can combine these in all kinds of delivery specs you want.

You dont need to create 8 mono busses.It works but is 8 busses more then you need. Just instead of that add the 8 timeline tracks each to the delivery page ..

This works for the first 8 tracks, but for some reason, I cannot select a Track Number above 6 on the Deliver page, even though my timeline has 8 mono tracks. If I type in "7" or "8", it reverts back to "6". So maybe something is broken after all

You dont need to create 8 mono busses.It works but is 8 busses more then you need. Just instead of that add the 8 timeline tracks each to the delivery page ..

This works for the first 8 tracks, but for some reason, I cannot select a Track Number above 6 on the Deliver page, even though my timeline has 8 mono tracks. If I type in "7" or "8", it reverts back to "6". So maybe something is broken after all

So I deleted my last two tracks in my timeline and added them back in: now I can select the correct track number on the deliver page. Not sure what kind of bug I encountered before. Maybe it has something to do with how the tracks were added?

EDIT: just restarted Resolve and the bug is back. I've got 8 mono tracks but I can only select tracks #1-6 for the timeline track. And this is with the timeline that worked properly before I restarted. Deleting a track and adding it back in fixes the issue.

"THAT" might be an actual bug if behavior changes between a restart of the same project.
I remember seeing this before when some of the track where routed to other busses, but was long ago.
The concept is solid though.

Play with it and see what triggers and un-triggers this behaviour and report to BM.


(and as a backup you can use your 8 mono busses way. It is also perfectly viable, just a bit more work)

You dont need to create 8 mono busses.It works but is 8 busses more then you need. Just instead of that add the 8 timeline tracks each to the delivery page .

2017-11-15_20-33-46.jpg

As described above this is the most flexible track layout as with additional busses you can combine these in all kinds of delivery specs you want.

I tried this for the 5.1 / dual mono setup.
The 5.1 track was sent to channels 1 thru 6
the dual monos were sent to 1 and 2. I can't figure out how to send these to 7&8

You are mixing monitoring and rendering again. (eg sound you monitor over 1+2 can be rendered to 7+8 , or 3+4 , whatever )
If you render direct timeline tracks nothing can get mixed but just gets assigned the track you order it in. Only if you render busses you need to pay attention to what you patch into those when you render these.

interesting, glenn. have to try this out. just curious, though, when rendering directly from a timeline track, does the master get bypassed or included? might make a big difference with efx on the master.

thanks,
g

Actualy bypass is not the right word. You tap into the audio stream at different points when you select to render a timeline track, or a sub bus, or a main bus.
So depending on what you want.
If you setup a master (main bus) with all kinds of fx, yeah sure you need to render that master, so think about your setup and what kind of master(s) you want beforehand. You can have multiple and different kind of masters and therefore setup different end mixes at the same time. Master is just a name for another bus at the last point(s) in the audio chain. In DR 12 it was a single fixed entity and you could only render waht came out there.
Direct 1:1 timeline rendering is not someting you would do with a complex mix with fx etc but for rendering out stems that came from another daw, or for dailies etc etc.

You dont need to create 8 mono busses.It works but is 8 busses more then you need. Just instead of that add the 8 timeline tracks each to the delivery page .

2017-11-15_20-33-46.jpg

As described above this is the most flexible track layout as with additional busses you can combine these in all kinds of delivery specs you want.

so i tried this tonight, excatly as this shows, and i thought excatly as i tested a month ago,
what i get is 2 chanels of garbage, and 6 silent chanels

this is sooooooooooooooooooooo broken

beyond broken

ventureing into brave new worlds broken

look up the word broken in the dictonary and it refrences audio outputs in v14...

this is sooooooooooooooooooooo broken

beyond broken

This have never been broken, it has always just required a little thought and patience in learning the implementation.

But, this is pretty straightforward once again with Link Groups available in 14.1 once more.

In this example, using a 7.1 fixed channel configuration with Film channel order.

The panning is not important, but merely illustrated to indicate what the Link Group will automatically configure in the background (manual panning is not required).



In the Fairlight Menu, select Link Group.



This will open the Link Group window.



With the 7.1 channel configuration now in a Link Group, only a single Mixer channel will be presented with the panning automatically configured.



The Meters Panel will visually confirm an active Link Group for the member channels.



The Timeline will still provide control of the member channels, with a white line indicating that these channels are all members of a Link Group.



Rendering is straightforward.



Reimport the interleaved file in to Resolve to confirm - wait a second for waveforms to build. voilà !



The "individual clips" option in the Render Settings will obviously create 7 mono audio tracks.

In the OP's case, one could just as easily set up a 5.1 Link Group with an accompanying Stereo Audio Track, set up the appropriate Main Busses, and Render as a single 8 channel interleaved audio file, a 5.1 interleaved audio file with a stereo audio file, or 8 mono audio files.

One could obviously do a combination of all of the above, embedded along with video, with any of the other formats provided by Resolve.

Thanks Glen,

using the direct mapping on the Deliver page works great!
Works with Quicktime and OP1a formats but not MXF OP-Atom.

All this looks simple and straight-forward enough, but somehow my 5.1 mix doesn't sound as it should in that - even if I pan my outputs all the way to their intended speaker - I'm not getting enough channel separation (if any at all). For instance, with FL channel panned all the way to the Fl speaker, FC channel all the way to the front center speaker and so on - I still hear all channels coming from all my speakers with almost the same volume. So e.g. the FL-FR pair doesn't sound like a proper stereo should; both those channels are also in my Front Center speaker, along with what should only come from it - my FC channel... No control over the front "stereo stage" width/separation at all

I'm sure I'm missing something obvious, but what would it be? Here are my steps:

- defined my LCRSS outs in the Resolve Preferences
- laid 5 mono track, each containing one channel from my clip (with 4 separate channels embedded), and in the correct order
- made my Main to be in the LCRSS format

Why no proper panning effect and speakers' separation?!!

Piotr

PS. Like many other people here, I'm coming from Vegas Pro which offers a straight-forward and actually working method of 5.1 surround sound creation. Using Vegas Pro, I can easily make a sound channel come from the desired speaker, and - depending on my panning settings - from that speaker only. This in turn allows to create a really wide front stereo stage, pin the FC channel to the front center speaker only, create effects like the sound moving from one speaker to another, etc... So, my hardware setup is fully capable of outputting the full surround sound capabilities - just not in FairLight