1.      Introduction

The following guide collects some notes on handling files with audio in an encoded format in Adobe Premiere. The export of some types of coded audio may not officially be supported by Adobe. However, as long as some key settings are correct, and the audio streams are not modified, it is possible to ‘pass through’ these SMPTE 337M wrapped audio streams.

2.      Avoid any audio processing on coded audio tracks

There are several possible workflows that include coded audio (e.g. Dolby E) and correctly pass it through Adobe Premiere. In order to not break the coded audio streams it is crucial to keep the source bit depth, avoid sample rate conversion, rate conversions and in fact any kind of processing on these kind of audio tracks throughout your Premiere workflow. Also, channels need to be passed through one-to-one i.e. no channel downmix or panning may be applied.

3.      Example Setup

We will assume that the source file is a .mov file with multichannel audio, where on some of the audio tracks there is encoded Dolby E present.

• Open Adobe Premiere Pro
• Create New Project on welcome screen
• Drag your clip onto the bottom left window where it says “Import media to start”
• Right click on clip > Modify > Audio Channels

Number of Audio Clips: 1

Clip Channel Format: Adaptive

Active Channels Per Clip: Matching Source Input, here: 16

• Click OK.