Montage render to bwf with 8 channels (no ambisonic)

Hello,
I would like to render a montage with 8 tracks so that I get a bwf with 8 tracks/channels including all Metadata from the original file.

Background:
I took several takes with an 8 channel field recorder. Some ambient, some talking heads, some boom. Track 1 and 2 got delayed by 3ms due to the latency of the wireless microphones. Therefore I get phasing issues.
As far as I know, only in the montage I can drag the first two tracks 3ms to their new destination.
Problem is: if the montage is set to 8 channels, I can not play the file because I have only two physical output channels (stereo), so I have to change Montage to stereo. If I render now, I get a stereo file and all information is lost.

BUT: If I set the montage just for rendering back to 8 channels, I get a file with 8 channels, perfect length but no samples. It is completely empty.

Addition:
Metadata does not get copied either way from a montage, although set with a render preset which works fine on the original file (no montage, just bwf) and copies the metadata, too. Most important would be the timecode information, which could be copied by hand, but that’s annoying if you have to do it for a bunch of takes…

I hope I’m doing something wrong.

Have a nice day,
Stephan

What WaveLab version are you using?

11.0.30

Hi!

With a multi channel wav file 6 channels, I did a quick test
it works if I render in Master Section then metadata is included

  1. wav is 6 channel included with metadata
  2. open wav as montage and move one 1. track 250 ms just to test it
  3. check by clicking on track/wav to see if metadata is included
  4. render thru Master Section to new file
  5. check so track is set to 6 channels in my case
  6. yes metadata is included!

regards S-EH

Nope, does not work here.

  1. Bwf-metadata does not get written if I render to new file, but as far as I know, this is a known problem, as it does not get copied to the montage in the first place. What kind of metadata are you talking about? Timecode? I’m talking about BWF and iXML.
    Looks like:

zSPEED=25.000ND
zTAKE=053
zUBITS=04042200
zSCENE=TEST
zTAPE=TEST
zCIRCLED=FALSE
zTRK3=Lav 1
zTRK4=FemLav 2
zTRK5=AmbL
zTRK6=AmbR
zTRK7=Boom1
zTRK8=Boom2
zTRK9=D3
zTRK10=D4
zNOTE=Good Take

  1. As long as the montage is set to 8 channels (multi-mono) I can not playback the file
  2. If I set to stereo, I just get a stereo file, regardless what setting I use for rendering.

Have a nice day.

Please read the manual about montage and metadata. It is of course possible to render the metadata defined in the montage, to a .waf file.

If you want to play to 8 different speakers, you need to set the proper audio connections…
If you want to play to stereo, the montage output needs to be set to stereo. And each track needs to be assigned to the desired output. There is a setting per montage track, for this.

If I add the metadata manually, yes, it gets written to the new file. But if I create a new montage from a file with metadata, the metadata does not get copied from the original file. I have to do this manually.

No, I do not want to play to 8 different speakers. I have one file with 8 tracks. I want to edit one or two of these tracks, listen to them, than save the file as 8 tracks with the original metadata. This is no surround or ambisonic file, just a tracks from a field recorder.

But anyway, I can use the kicker to move the tracks and save the file without rendering to a new file. This way I can avoid the montage.

This is normal. The audio montage is primarily done to assemble multiple audio files. When you insert a new audio file, its metadata won’t override the montage’s metadata.

Then you have to define the montage as 8 outputs, and render with the option “multi mono”.
For playback in stereo, you can use the Mix to mono option of the Master Section.

Like this from Justin as an example:

<?xml version="1.0"?> /Users/sven-erikhansson/Desktop/Kameleont Borås måndag 18:4/FOLDER01/ZOOM0001/ZOOM0001_TrLR.WAV 0 119043391 WaveLab

INFO
Name: @Name@
Originator software: @WaveLabAndVersion@
Date: @Date1@
BWF
Originator: @WaveLabAndVersion@
Origination Date / Time: 2022-03-29 09:07:44
Time Reference: 0 s
iXML

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> 1.52 This is a Meta-data preset with many activated options. aXML This is a Meta-data preset with many activated options. CART Title: @Name@ Start date: 2013-02-17 Start time: 00:00:00 End date: 2099-12-31 End time: 23:59:59 Application ID: @WaveLab@ Application version: @WaveLabVersion@ URL: http://www.steinberg.net ID3v1 Title: @Name@ Album: Artist: Year: Comment: Genre: Instrumental ID3v2 Title: @Name@ Year: @ThisYear@ Date: @Date1@ Time: @Time3@ Comments: This example generates ReplayGain Software and settings used for encoding: WaveLab 8.0.0 Commercial information webpage: http://www.steinberg.net

regards S-EH

That’s interesting.