When I export an audio mixdown, the resulting WAV appears to correctly implement the panning [1]. Unfortunately, if I try to use Cubase to overwrite the stereo audio in the original video file with 5.1, I get the orange warning shown above: “The project contains no stereo output channel.” Also, the Channel Selection drop down is empty. If I proceed and press Replace Audio anyway, I get the following “A serious problem has occurred” error in Cubase and I am encouraged close the application:
Is it possible in Cubase 13 (or 14) to overwrite the stereo audio in a video with 5.1 surround?
[1] - While the wave file appears graphically to be correct, I am presently unable to fully test the WAV without attaching it to a video file. I can only inspect the audio mixdown WAV via a graphical inspector, and it looks fine.
Can you attempt this again by saving this project outside of your one drive folders?
Your project is using one drive cloud directory and cloud storage itself can be finicky, especially if the audio stems are in a constant space of file persistence if cloud storage is trying to prevent files from being overwritten.
@Covad - Thanks for your help . Same error when using an HD location that is not associated with any kind of network storage or OneDrive. It looks to me that there is a minor bug in Cubase that allows me to select the Replace Audio and Export Video buttons before the Channel Selection is completed. “This project contains no stereo output channel.” was probably meant to be an error rather than a warning. Somehow, I managed to bypass the error and crash the program.
What I don’t understand though is if Cubase 13 is capable of replacing the stereo track of a Video file with 5.1, why isn’t the Channel Selection dropdown detecting my apparently working 5.1 bus?
Does Cubase 13 not allow you to replace a stereo track of a video with 5.1 by design?
My initial impression was that this would work so I initially thought that perhaps cloud storage may have done something odd. But alas, looks like I couldn’t be more wrong.
After a good look around and tinkering with their export function for an hour, currently it doesn’t look like Cubase supports multi-channel outputs (3Ch+) with the Export Video function. Seems like it only does Stereo for now.
It’ll only replace stereo tracks on the fly, which is why it’s screaming at us that there’s no stereo track to conduct the replacement since your testing pan is only using rear left/back channels. Same thing happened on my end where I forced the UI to just do it despite its lack of support.
At the end of the day it’ll still only render the video containers to contain only 2ch audio as part of its requirement.
This would obviously be a huge time saver to have this feature be a possible for multi channel media where we upmix a stereo to surround file on the fly like this…
Alas, it looks like you’ll have to take the extra step and export your 6ch in normal fashion to a 5.1 out wav and process that wav file to be compatible with your video container and remux your video with the supported 6ch audio format.
You can easily test your video file without muxing if your new 6CH file has the same exact name as your video. This way, most media player can add it as a new audio track selection.
Hi there,
As far as I know, Cubase (and Nuendo doesn’t support channel layout beyond stereo, but I may be wrong.
You may want to try the ‘ER Media ToolKit’ I created to handle any kind of video/audio. Specifically the ‘MediaER Pro’ app (part of the complete pro bundle) is equipped with the ability to replace any kind of audio in an existing video.
The tools are not free, but costs very little compared to what it gives and the time/hustle it saves.
If you’re interested, you can google search it and see what’s it all about.
All that said, if you happen to be using MP4s, they don’t accept those multichannel .wav formats so if you want to remux with free tools, you can look up MeGUI and perform a .wav to .ac3/.aac conversion then quickly mux your new audio file to MP4 format.
Here’s a quick and dirty tutorial on MeGUI use from me:
Hi @Covad ,
Two things, my MediaER Pro app lets you keep the PCM wav format if you insist, but it warns you that some players may not be able to read the created mp4and the default aac/m4a is better supported by any player.
Secondly, the MediaER Pro app has far faster workflow, as you only set the conversion you want and when drag over the app both the new 6 channel audio and your original video.
But I can understand folks who wouldn’t want to spend the extra $29.90 if they only do it once in a while.
Slightly off topic but I did have a question about your app that may help me save sometime for some 5.1 distributions, @Sagi . For m4a/aac re-encodes from Cubase’s 6CH.wav, does your app keep channel orders or does it rearrange from standard?
Cubase outputs [L, R, C, LFE, sL, sR] and AC3/DTS encoders keeps these order during hardware playback on my 5.1 receiver’s decoder.
But anytime I run through various AAC encoders, they keep jumbling the order to from either [C, L, R, sL, sR, LFE] or [L, C, R, sL, sR, LFE ] depending on the encoder so my receiver plays center channel on left/right speaker which forces me to check ordering and restructure the .wavs prior to encoding.
Does your app keep the standard channel orders intact from cubase’ 6ch.wav to 6ch.m4a?
Hi @Covad
My Media ER ToolKIt sends arguments to the free FFmpeg project.
Cubase and Nuendo use the SMTP (L-R-C-Lfe-Ls-Rs) standard. Pro Tools, on the other hand, uses the Film (L-C-R-Lfe-Ls-Rs) standard. FFmpeg encodes its AAC as C-L-R-Ls-Rs-LFE.
As long as the player reads the input standard, it should automatically adjust its output to whatever it needs on the fly, but not all players are equipped to do so.
FFmpeg documentation says:
To fix a 5.1 WAV improperly encoded in AAC’s native channel order: ffmpeg -i "/input/path/SMTP.wav" -filter 'channelmap=1|2|0|5|3|4:5.1' "/out/path/reordered.wav"
Personally, I never got any complaints, even though I didn’t include the above manipulation in the app’s options.
You can easily do it (given that you have FFmpeg installed) in Windows CMD or Mac’s Terminal and see if it fixes your problem. If it works for you, I may consider adding it as an option in the app’s options.
Appreciate the response! Aye it’s so niche that literally it is all my Yamaha and Denon receivers that behaves this way with 5.1 aac.
It’s so annoying. As a result, it forces me to remap channels in cubase prior to WAV output rather than dealing with adding syntax on command prompt with ffmpeg executable to correct this decoding behavior for my receivers. Hence the reason for simply choosing ac3 for theatre playback when previewing post atmos rendering.
Fortunately it’s a none issue playing via PC media players.
. Same error when using an HD location that is not associated with any kind of network storage or OneDrive. It looks to me that there is a minor bug in Cubase that allows me to select the Replace Audio and Export Video buttons before the Channel Selection is completed. “This project contains no stereo output channel.” was probably meant to be an error rather than a warning. Somehow, I managed to bypass the error and crash the program.
