Limecraft offers extensive support for multi-channel audio. This article explains how to configure audio channel layout configuration and how multi-channel audio is used in Limecraft Flow. Please note that Limecraft does not ingest multi-channel audio by default - the default behaviour is to create proxies with a simple stereo pair. To use more complex audio channel layouts, it must be enabled first.
What is Audio Layout or Audio Channel Layout?
The Audio Channel Layout, or simply Audio Layout, refers to the details of the content of each audio channel, and the nature of sound reproduction or the way sound is played out. The two most common used Channel Layouts are mono and stereo, but also surround sound flavours and customised configurations are possible. Using Limecraft, you can qualify the different audio channels according to the nature or the language of the audio, loudness, codec, etc.
Where can I find information about the Audio Channel Layout in Limecraft Flow?
With the audio layouts you can describe in detail how the audio of a media clip is structured. For clips containing audio layout information, the clip info sidebar will contain a section ‘Audio Layout’, describing how the audio in the original media of the clip is structured:
Each row of the audio layout represents a so-called “Channel layout”. A channel layout represents a collection of audio channels which are meant to be played out simultaneously in a particular way. The example in the screenshot is for a clip with 4 channel layouts:
The first channel layout is a 5.1 mix and is in French.
The second channel layout is a stereo mix and is in French.
The third channel layout contains a 5.1 mix in the original language.
The last channel layout contains a stereo mix in the original language.
When hovering the mouse over a row, Flow will show in detail which audio channels constitute this channel layout:
So we store explicitly which particular channel is the left channel of the 5.1 French channel layout, which is the center channel, etc.
In addition, a channel layout can contain descriptive metadata. The following fields can be set on a channel layout. This is a fixed list of fields and not configurable.