Delivering Multi-Channel Audio From Resolve

Remarry Mixes & Get Setup For Easy Output

For many colorists, finishing graphics, titles, & audio are tasks that someone else in the finishing pipeline completes.

But for many of us ‘jack-of-all-trades’ types, it’s a daily occurrence to complete other finishing tasks – including properly marrying audio mixes back with our grades and outputting final files.

I’ve been fortunate for the past 5 years to share space with a top-notch audio finishing company called OttHouse Audio, and we work on many projects as a team.

So for me, nearly every day I’m getting surround, stereo, and other audio stems to remarry back to a project’s final picture.

In the past, I handled this remarry post color render – meaning that I would remarry audio in an NLE like Premiere Pro, FCP or Avid.

But for the past few versions of Resolve (and R12 is highly advanced in its audio capabilities), I’ve been doing this work without leaving the app.

There are a couple of steps that need to get configured so in this Insight I want to show you how.

Similar To Premiere Pro

If you have ever remarried and delivered multi-channel audio in Premiere Pro then you’ll feel right at home doing these tasks in Resolve.

The audio configuration, as well as look & feel of audio in Resolve, is very similar to that of Premiere Pro.

This includes track types – mono, stereo, 5.1 and adaptive, as well as how the mixer outputs channels in pairs.

As I’ll show you in the movie, my preferred method involves setting up track types and using the mixer to direct tracks to an appropriate output.

However, there are multiple ways to handle multi-channel output – including using 5.1 interleaved tracks (instead of discreet channels like I show) or by using adaptive tracks which I personally find to be a little convoluted and more meant for handling multi-channel sources, not output like I often need to do.

Regardless, there are a few steps to get set up, but once you do them than any time you need to output multi-channel audio will be a breeze.

Question or additional thoughts please use the comments below

– Robbie

P.S. I realized when editing this Insight that I didn’t need to keep coming back up to the workspace menu (twice!) to open up the audio (track) mixer.  I could have instead used the handy button on the timeline.  Sorry about that!  Still learning R12!