I am interested in making videos for multi-channel (quad & 5.1 surround) music, and Magic looks extremely promising! But I'm having some problems with the Magic Demo.
I can load a multi-channel audio file and Magic allows me to select each channel as a source. However, Magic will only play the first two channels correctly--even when a multi-channel audio interface is selected as my system's default audio output device. Every channel after the first 2 is either silent or full-scale clipping (ouch!).
If I select the audio interface's output channels as Magic's sources and play the audio through the interface, Magic correctly processes all channels. This is true for both physical audio interface (iConnectivity PlayAUDIO12) and virtual device (Rogue Amoeba Loopback).
Is this a limitation of the Magic Demo? Or is this a bug?
Yes, even though Magic can use multichannel audio files as input, it can't play them back in multichannel. The workaround you discovered is the best solution for now.
In a future version of Magic we will support playback in multichannel, but I can't say exactly when that will happen.
Yes that sounds fine. You can do mono files if you want though; they don’t have to be stereo.
Also, when you replace the movie’s audio with the original, try to do it without re-encoding the video. It will be faster and better quality. You can use ffmpeg, if you are familiar with it.
Yes, I tried a mono file and it worked great. For my purposes, I will probably experiment with loading up the stems for even finer control of the scene.
I recently learned of the audio pass-through feature of ffmpeg (ala Handbrake)--great tip! I will likely use Logic Pro to re-integrate the multi-channel audio, though.