Saving Mono Sources as Mono Tracks

[Merciful Angel]

This was something I expected to be able to do, but everything I could find was a fix for mono sources being saved to a single channel of a stereo source. This might be a technical or format limitation and I am being a little silly, but it just felt wrong.

For reference, I am separating game audio, my mic and a voice-chat into separate channels for the sake of mixing. I also have desktop audio recorded as a back-up in case I forget to flag the game as game-audio my audio-routing software. The desktop and game audio channels are stereo and recording as stereo, which is fine. The microphone and voice-chat channels (both flagged as mono) are each saving as two identical channels, so I have 8 a8dio channels in the video instead of the six I expected.

1. I suppose question one is simple; is this something that should be changed? Do the video formats require all tracks to be paired if any of them are stereo?
2. Does this feature exist and I am too blind to see it?
3. Is it just me that wants this?

 

[AaronD]

OBS is not a DAW. There are several people that wish it were, and they're made their case several times. I myself wouldn't mind seeing just the *existing* functionality rearranged to be more like a professional audio console. And then add an option to choose specific channels of each input device instead of the entire device, and to feed a second output device with the Program audio. That hasn't happened either.

OBS started as a "bedroom streamer" app and grew from there, and the audio has always been "just enough" with things being tacked on as they were easy at the time. It really needs an overhaul to support the more experienced workflows, but until then, the answer is to use an external DAW like I do.

That's really the mentality in the pro world anyway: audio and video are completely separate, each with its own processing chain and a different set of people responsible for it (a sole proprietor of course wears all of those hats at once), and the two finished streams are combined at the last moment and sent out. For a video tool like OBS to have ANY audio processing is considered "token", and not taken all that seriously.

For you, either do your audio stuff in an external DAW, or live with OBS saving *every* track with the global channel count, period. (it makes the code easier)

 

[Merciful Angel]

It's fair enough; a couple of extra audio tracks are not adding all that much to the size of a file containing 1080p video anyway.