Hey everyone, 

I searched the site, but found no results so I'm hopeful someone can help.

I shoot with a Sony XDCam PXW Z280.

I am on AVID News cutter 2019.

My employer recently upgraded from an older version and that's when the issue started.

No firmware updates or settings have been changed on the camera which would have caused the additional audio tracks.

We use XDCam EX 35 Mbit as our native format.

The camera can only shoot in XDCam EX 50 Mbit.

I transcode into the 35 Mbit format.

The camera shows it is only creating two channels of audio, but the clips are created with 8.

It's only an annoyance, but one that is frustratingly tiresome when I have a lot of clips to deal with.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Have you check the source file with mediainfo to check the actual audio track count.

I'm pretty sure xdcam has 8 tracks even if the camera only uses 2 of them.

I have that camera. It can shoot in XAVC Intra in both 4 K and 1080, which has eight channels of audio.  It records all eight regradless of how many you feed it.  If your camera operator set it to record that format, instead of XDCam EX, you're going to see eight channels upon import

Thank you very much for the response. I do appreciate it.

AVID does list 8 channels of audio for the video clips.

You are correct, the camera does create 8 channels no matter what.

However, the issue only started with the AVID upgrade.

On the previous version of AVID, and the same camera, ony two tracks were created.

I guess my question should be, is there any way to transcode that would only create 2 channels of audio instead of creating the 8?

Again, thanks for trying to help.

Thank you very much for trying to help.

I shoot the lowest quality the camera offers, I believe it's MPEG-2 XDcam EX 50 Mbits.

I guess my question should be, is there any way to get AVID to only create 2 tracks when transcoding?
I've been using this camera for more than a year, and this only became an issue when my company upgraded to the 2019 version of AVID.

Again, thanks for any help.

cthauser:

It's only an annoyance, but one that is frustratingly tiresome when I have a lot of clips to deal with.

I just sub-clipped a linked 8-track XDCam 50 Mbit file down to just A1 & A2 and when I transcioded the sub-clip in MC v2021.6, it gave me an A1 & A2 masterclip, @ 35Mbits. That same Linked masterclip transcoded to 8 Tracks.

I don't follow you exactly: how does your camera's XDCam 50Mbit media get into NewsCutter exactly? Are you by any chance Importing the XDCam, then Transcoding? If so, I thought there was an Import Setting > XDCam > Import Audio Channels drop-down there for selecting from a choice of 2, 4, 6, 8...etc. Tracks. Is that at play here?

I think you may have done it!!!

I always use source browser to bring the files into my bin and then transcode them into the 35 Mbit format.

I was looking in all audio and media creation settings and couldn't find it, but there it was in XDCam!

It somehow had been set to 8 and I changed it to 2.

Thank you so much!!!