Playing avis; sounds are loud, dialogue quiet

[einz_zwei_polizei]

I watch avis via Zoom Player and watch it PC to TV. I have my video card connected to my TV's S Video! I use ffdshow as my codec. Everytime I play a movie, the sounds like action sounds you know gunshots, music, car driving etc. gets loud but the when people talk in the movie the dialogue gets quiet! I hate always putting up and down the volume of my TV. This problem is also there when I watch it on my pc but not that bad probably because I sit closer. Is this a codec problem or the avis are encoded that way?

[redwudz]

Drop one of the videos into MediaInfo and check what format the audio is. I suspect 5.1 AC3 (6 channel). With surround sound the dialog is usually just on the center channel and you would need to use a 5.1 audio setup to play it back properly.

But if it's just two channel MP3 stereo, it was likely encoded wrong and not so easy to fix.

And welcome to our forums.

[einz_zwei_polizei]

I'm not too knowledgeable with all of this so you would need to be more basic with me So in the end is it something in the avi itself that needs to be fixed or can I use some other codec to get this right?

[redwudz]

We would need to know the audio format to answer that. A MediaInfo screen shot of a video with six channel audio.

[einz_zwei_polizei]

I believe it has the 6 channel audio. What now? And btw, I only play avis is ffdshow enough as my only codec?

untitled.bmp

[AlanHK]

Open "ffdshow audio decoder config" and adjust the volumes for each channel.
Or maybe the "Equalizers".
I can't see a specific "downmix" filter, but there may be one somewhere.

(NB: use PNG, JPG or GIF for screenshots, saves 99% of filesize and displays inline.)

[einz_zwei_polizei]

I raised all the bars including the master volume to max (300%) and everything is still the same.

[TJohns]

I raised all the bars including the master volume to max (300%) and everything is still the same.

Wrong solution - it's still playing the sounds out speakers that don't exist.

Scroll down further in the list & find the MIXER control. Turn it on and down-mix the 6 channels to whatever you've REALLY got (stereo should work in a pinch)

update: closer inspection of the image above looks like OUTPUT is the next option down the list...I've got MIXER in between. Maybe the ffmpeg codec needs a later version????

Trev

[tomlee59]

If you raise everything, then everything gets louder. Doesn't sound like that's what you wanted to do, so don't do that

Instead, it sounds as if your problem is that you aren't getting enough center channel (where dialog tends to be concentrated). So why don't you try raising that?

If that doesn't work, experiment a bit. Try moving everything to minimum, except one. That will help isolate which channel(s) have what you're looking for.

Edit: as the poster just above says, you do need to make sure that you're outputting signal to speakers that actually exist. If you don't have a surround-sound setup, then you need to enable the "mixing" function (as the name implies, this combines sound from the various channels, and outputs the result to speakers that you *do* have hooked up). Repeat the experiment above with the mixer engaged.

[einz_zwei_polizei]

I noticed that if I raise everythin the volume section, equalizer and mixer everything gets louder even the dialogue which is great and that's what I would want. But the sounds get a little distorted that way. So you are saying I should only raise the "C" bar in volume section and "Center" bar in mixer section for the dialogue?

[AlanHK]

Yes, the Mixer controls are probably the best place to start.

Possibly just clicking "Normalize" on the Volume controls would help too.

It seems that the guys who write FFDshow are good at coding but really can't be bothered documenting anything. They have a wonderful wiki at http://ffdshow-tryout.sourceforge.net/wiki/audio_decoder_configuration which is mostly dead links.

But see http://www.hack7mc.com/2009/02/simple-ffdshow-audio-settings.html which explains some of these settings.

[AlanHK]

I noticed that if I raise everythin the volume section, equalizer and mixer everything gets louder even the dialogue which is great and that's what I would want. But the sounds get a little distorted that way. So you are saying I should only raise the "C" bar in volume section and "Center" bar in mixer section for the dialogue?

Raising all to the max is the same as changing the master volume.
You want to selectively boost some channels, probably the centre as you said.