It’s the little things that make a difference. When I’m rolling with just one lavalier mic, it goes into just one channel of audio. This means that when it’s pulled into the computer, all of the talent’s lines go to one speaker.

Protip: Stereo audio is important. Here’s why, and here’s how to fix it in Premiere Pro.

It’s generally bad form to have all of the lines coming out of one speaker, and a telltale sign that a piece was either edited on awful laptop speakers or by someone with little experience on the audio side of a/v. Always check out your audio to make sure that even if it’s not true stereo (with different signal to either side) it’s at least coming out of both speakers.

Even worse is when background music is a great stereo mix and the talent’s lines or VO is blasting out of a single speaker. The disconnect makes my brain hurt.

Since forever, Premiere Pro has had an easy fix – the “fill left” and “fill right” audio filters. They take the side with the audio you want and copy it over to the side without audio. It’s a quick fix, but I would invariably choose the wrong one, because I could never figure out if it was “take the left channel and fill in the right” or “fill the left channel with the right.”