It’s frustrating right? You’ve finished your shoot and brought it into your timeline, played it back and the audio is only coming from the left or the right ear.
It’s a problem that will hit you early when starting out in videography.
Luckily, it’s a problem that’s easy to fix. The video above will give you a quick rundown of the problem and how to fix it but for more details keep reading.
Mono Vs Stereo
More often than not the reason you only have one channel of audio on your recording is that the audio was recorded in mono or it was recorded using a mic that can only record with a mono channel.
To see if it was your mic then look at the jack tip. Does it have one or two black rings near the tip? If it has one then the mic can only record in mono (or split mono to fake stereo), if it has two then you should be able to record in stereo with that mic.
Now delve into the settings of your recording device and check that your settings are not set to mono.
Why Would You Record In Mono?
Mono can have its uses. For example you can record separate speakers into different mono channels on a digital recording device to save space and memory and then split them out in post.
You may also only need mono for a mix rather than stereo. But for most videography work compared to audio work you will want stereo.
How Do I Fix Mono in Post?
First thing to do is highlight your audio on your timeline and then go to your effects panel. Find an effect called ‘fill left with right’ or ‘fill right with left’ and drag it onto your audio in the timeline. Which effect you need will depend on which ear needs filling with the audio coming out of the other ear.
What this effect will do is duplicate the mono channel and apply it to the left or right channel to fake a stereo output. It’s not true stereo but it’s a good fix for non-stereo recorded audio.
And that’s it! You should see in your audio meter that both left and right now have audio coming out of them.
See you next time!
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