How to level up High difference in speaking sound volume on video

[Ricardogn]

Hi All,

Here's the problem, I have recorded some videos with a crappy phone that doesn't get volume very well from a distance, so you can hear perfectly well the person who has the device but the person who is at a short distance is barely listenable. The difference between the two volume levels is too high.

The tool I normally use to edit video is VirtualDub and Windows Movie Maker. I could increase volume in Windows Movie Maker, but just the overall volume, which helped a bit but is not what I wanted. I could do nothing in Vdub. I proceeded to look into an audio software alternative. So I downloaded TMPGEnc to extract the audio from the video file and looked into some audio tools to fix the job to then re-encode the video with the newly fixed Audio file.

So far, the only way I found to fix this a little bit better is by using Goldwave and manually selecting each part of the audio file wave where the other speaker has low volume and manually increasing it. This is a very time consuming job and I was wondering if there is any other way I can perhaps try to bring volume levels closer to an average to avoid the high difference between speaker 1 and speaker 2/etc.

I am attaching an example of how much the difference between the sound levels is...

Anyone has any idea how can I do this properly? What tools should I be looking into and what filters/etc should I use to get the desired results? There has to be an easier way to do this...

Thanks!!!

example.wav

[jagabo]

It's called dynamic range compression. Most audio editors have it. Audacity's Effect -> Compressor...

comp.wav

[Ricardogn]

awesome!! im gonna try this, tks a lot!

[Cornucopia]

That's a good suggestion for already-recorded material, but don't forget to work towards improving the WAY you're capturing the audio. as well. Better mike+recorder, better placement, more isolation/better directionality.

It's alot easier to make a minor fix to something that is nearly there, than to make a major fix to something that is way off.

Scott

[Ricardogn]

It's called dynamic range compression. Most audio editors have it. Audacity's Effect -> Compressor...

comp.wav

jagabo, what were the exact settings you used on this wav file for Audacity Compressor?

Threshold, ratio and attack time?

Tks!

[jagabo]

I don't remember for sure. But I believe it was about:

Threshold: about -60
Ratio: 10:1
Attack Time: 0.1
Decay Time: 1.0
Normalize...: enabled.

[Ricardogn]

awesome, i've been using this with a lot of my video files now. works beautifully!! tks guys! i luv this forum!