Blackmagic Forum

I filmed a two-person interview with each subject being mic'd with a lavalier mic recorded on a separate track on my field recorder. The file was inadvertently combined into a stereo file instead of two separate mono files. One subject is hard-panned to the left, and the other to the right.

I am trying to figure out how to separate the two so as to be able to edit and process them individually. I have to think there is a simple way to do this (hopefully in Resolve), but I am having a brain-fade at the moment.

I tried to hard pan the clips (first left, and then right) in Resolve and separately render them, but I am prevented from doing that (probably because there is no video associated with the clip). I suppose I could throw the video piece in the timeline (muted), but that seems a little too involved.

I'd appreciate any advice you can offer. Thanks!

Working Separately with Multichannel Audio File Elements

If you’ve edited a multichannel audio clip onto a multichannel track, you can convert that track and its contents into a Link Group of mono tracks, each of which contains a single clip for that track’s channel. This can be useful if you need to fix a multi-channel surround audio clip with an incorrect track mapping. You can convert it into a Link Group, at which point you can easily rearrange the channels.
To create a Link Group from a single multichannel timeline:

Right-click the track header of a multichannel audio track, and choose Convert to Linked Group from the contextual menu. This automatically creates one new audio track for each channel, all of which are linked together. For example, converting a 5.1 audio track results in six new tracks with six individual audio clips (one for each channel), all of which are linked together.

If necessary, you can also unlink a linked group to turn it back into independent mono tracks.

To unlink a Link Group:

1 Choose Fairlight > Link Group.
2 When the Link Group dialog appears, select the link group you want to unlink.
3 Click Unlink.
4 Close the Link Group window when you’re finished.

For more information about Linked Groups, see Chapter 168, “Setting Up Tracks, Busses, and Patching.” If this checkbox is turned off, multi-channel audio will be imported into multi- channel audio tracks in the Timeline.

A couple ideas:

1. From the bin, go into Clip Attributes and change the one stereo track to two mono tracks. Nothing in the file is actually changed, this only affects how Resolve treats the clip.

2. If you're brave enough to be using the version 20 Beta, there is a new Preference under User>Editing>General Settings that will do this automatically for all clips.

Thank you both. I will give those methods a try.