So first of all, I think the terms are used slightly differently in different markets and at different points in the post production chain. But the gist of what Fredo is saying - I think - is that “groups” refer to the group channels in Nuendo, and they get sent to the “stems” which are what you are told to deliver. The “stems” then combine to create the full mixes of whatever channel-count is required.
Just so you have an idea of what it looks like for me (I just pulled up an older template for stereo):
Groups (these are “group channels” in Nuendo):
- Narration
- Interviews
- Dialog A
- Dialog B
- Nat
- SFX hard
- SFX soft
- MUS A
- MUS B
So, as you can see there are actually four groups that contain speech, and the reason they’re separated is a) because it’s sometimes easier to deal with them separately that way when processing, and b) because the delivery requirements vary per client (network).
The way I do it personally is then route the above to any deliverable I need. It just so happens that I prefer to keep my deliverables on Nuendo’s “output channels”. So my “output channels” look like this:
- Full Mix Stereo
- Full Mix Mono
- Mix Minus Narration - Dipped
- Mix Minus Narration - UNdipped
So the above four would probably be considered “mixes” by many people, and the remaining outputs “stems”:
- Music & Effects (which includes “nat” group)
- Dialog
- Narration
- SFX
- Music
- Nat
So the difference here is that many people will go from the groups in my first “category” and route to the “stems” at the end here, and then from the stems to the “mixes”. So you would adjust your stems accordingly. The benefit of that is that you can create an M&E stem first, and you can dip that for narration. The output of that M&E + dialog + narration will be your full mix. If you then send from the M&E pre-fader, you have the M&E UNdipped which is often a requirement.
All of that gets a bit complicated and annoying and there are different ways of going about it, but I think the gist of what Fredo was saying was that you create your overall “foodgroups” first, and then you combine them into the stems you need to deliver, and then from there to the mixes you need.
Several direct routings. You can have up to eight destinations.