File failed QC: Channels Per Stream or Audio Streams

If your QC report shows Channels Per Stream or Audio Streams in red, your audio channels are laid out in the wrong way for your ad.

Audio mapping – reading the QC report

• Channels Per Stream shows how many audio channels are in each stream of the uploaded file. Audio Streams shows how many audio streams the file has. Both are values from the uploaded file, not the required ones.
• For example, Channels Per Stream 2.000 and Audio Streams 1.000 mean the file has one stereo stream holding both left and right.
• These two rows usually fail together.

Audio mapping – what it means

A stereo mix has two channels: left and right. In a video file, they can be packed together into one stream (a stereo pair), or each can have its own stream (discrete streams). The layout your ad needs depends on its spec:

• TV: two discrete streams, with left on stream 1 and right on stream 2 (1 channel per stream, 2 streams).
• Digital: one stereo stream with both channels (2 channels per stream, 1 stream).

Audio mapping – likely cause

This is usually a wrong spec or an export setting. Common causes:

• A Digital file (one stereo stream) was uploaded for a TV ad, or a TV file (two streams) for a Digital ad.
• The audio was exported with the wrong layout, for example as a stereo pair, which is often the default in editing software.

Audio mapping – fix

1. Click View Specs on your ad to see the audio layout your file needs.
2. Set the audio layout in your export settings to match: two separate (mono) channels for TV, or one stereo channel for Digital.
3. Re-export using the matching Export Guide and upload the file again.

Make sure left and right are a true stereo mix. If both channels are identical (dual mono), the file may be flagged.

Audio mapping – when to contact Customer Success

• You’ve exported the file using the specification shown by the View Specs link for the ad in your campaign, but it still fails this check.