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  1. Hi all, wonder if you can help with this.

    OK, downloading various music vids from youtube, I then convert them to SVCD using Format Factory, before finally burning them to a CD using Nero.

    What I then find when playing on my DVD player is that the volumes fluctuate between the clips.

    It occurs to me that when creating an audio CD you have the option to normalise all the volumes, so that the track volumes are all same level.

    So, is there anyway to do this with video clips? The amount of times I have to increase/decrease volumes during the playing of a single SVCD disk is really frustrating.

    Help!
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  2. Member Cornucopia's Avatar
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    Am I being punked? Am I am on Candid Camera?

    It's 2014. Why are you still doing SVCD?

    Regardless, normalization can be done to any video file. Same as with audio files, just the extra steps of demuxing and later remuxing.

    Of course, if you are asking these questions, you might have trouble with the fact that normalization DOES NOT raise all volumes to the same level. At best, it raises each file's Peak to the same level, but that guarantees nothing about the overall levels.

    Scott
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  3. Dear me. No-one's being punked, and no-one's on Candid Camera. Just pull yourself together and calm down.

    I use SVCD because I want to use CD-Rs to play through my DVD player. For CDR's - I find SVCD is the best format. Regardless of your thoughts, it works for me. The question I'm asking here is how to best get the levels of the video's the same? Demux/Remux? What a pain. And as you so self righteously claim, it IS indeed 2014, so why should this process not yet be automated within some app?

    Meanwhile, lose the paranoia eh man? People don't come on here to insult you.

    Getting back on track, I suppose that as the vids go through different conversion programs then the only place they could all be brought into line volume wise is the final CD authoring app, which as I say, is currently Nero, but does not have any options to play with levels. So, I need something that does.
    Last edited by cawright1; 24th Apr 2014 at 19:02.
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  4. cawright1: First, I think itīs you who should stop insulting, Cornucopia/Scott is one of the most knowledgeable and helpful members here in VH, for many of us itīs a privilege to have him share his experience...for free! and I donīt really see an insult anywhere in his post and let me tell you that his remark about using SVCD in this day and age is quite tame and polite compared to what other members will probably make, better get ready.
    As for your question, if you donīt want to travel the demux/remux route, you could look for another program to do the conversion to mpg instead of Format Factory, there are others that offer more options like adjusting audio levels. You can find them in the Software section of this site.
    Good luck and please, watch that attitude.
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  5. Format Factory would probably (I don't use it) have a setting for normalising the volume. However normalising the way it's traditionally done doesn't necessarily mean the volume will always sound the same. It's a very long story which is being discussed in this thread. It mightn't help with your particular process, but might help you understand the way the different methods of normalising work, if you don't mind doing a bit of reading.
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  6. Originally Posted by julitomg View Post
    cawright1: First, I think itīs you who should stop insulting, Cornucopia/Scott is one of the most knowledgeable and helpful members here in VH, for many of us itīs a privilege to have him share his experience...for free! and I donīt really see an insult anywhere in his post

    No. I dont care if he is the king of England. The guy was patronising. That's insulting.
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    Originally Posted by cawright1 View Post
    Originally Posted by julitomg View Post
    cawright1: First, I think itīs you who should stop insulting, Cornucopia/Scott is one of the most knowledgeable and helpful members here in VH, for many of us itīs a privilege to have him share his experience...for free! and I donīt really see an insult anywhere in his post

    No. I dont care if he is the king of England. The guy was patronising. That's insulting.
    He's patronizing? You're a fool ... who's still using VCD's .
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  8. I'm a Super Moderator johns0's Avatar
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    Just curious why you aren't using dvds,they are cheaper and you get much better video quality.
    I think,therefore i am a hamster.
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  9. Member Cornucopia's Avatar
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    Ok. I'll own up. Sure, I was patronizing & snarky & sarcastic in that first post. I won't deny that. I probably didn't need to go down that route and, sure, it felt good at the time, but probably really wasn't helpful to YOU overall. So, I'm sorry. BUT,

    I won't back down from TELLING you that you are doing yourself a disservice by continuing to work with SVCD. Heck, it's not even full SD quality! See this example of a post from a recent thread to see the quality difference: https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/364080-1920-x-1080-vs-640-x-480?p=2317252&viewfull=1#post2317252

    Sure, why should I presume to tell you how to do your own thing? Good question. Here's the answer...

    You are here to get help on something. Sometimes it's just ONE thing that you are concentrating on. But I am here, among other reasons, to help. Not just YOU, and not just that one thing. I try to emphasize "big picture" stuff. And I try to talk in my answers, not just to YOU, but to ALL who have similar questions.

    I question your presumption that SVCD is the best way for you to go. Is it (in this day and age)? There are LOTS of better alternatives - maybe it makes sense to reevaluate and if I can help walk you through that and find an alternative that gives you MUCH BETTER quality experience, for little to no effort, isn't that a BONUS? And if I do to all those other similar questioners of the same ilk, I'm doing them a bonus, too.

    So I will continue to question that presumption. Sure, it's your business and you can take it or leave it. But I'm still free to dish it out here. If I cross a line and get truly "insulting", not only will I gladly back down, but I would likely be given a reprimand from the moderators/Baldrick. That would be jeopardizing my standing in this forum, which I really don't want to do. Barring that extreme, I think I stand on good ground, even when apply some occasional "condescension".

    I actually do have plenty of good suggestions to give you, even regarding continued use of SVCDs (which, if you were to do a search on past threads on this site, you would find that I am one of a remaining few here - and on the internet in general - who TRULY understands S/VCD in depth. Did you know that you can sometimes get a S/VCD player to recognize a disc encoded with a Widescreen 16:9 flag? Or that you can, more rarely, substitute MP3 audio for the standard MP2? It's tricky, but can be done, as I have test discs to prove it). However, I likely would couch my answers in the form that takes you back to square-one and gets you to reevaluate your overall system so that you can optimize the whole thing, and possibly educate YOU and OTHERS along the way. Because I might believe that you may THINK you know what is best in your situation, but it is what you DON'T know that could improve your situation, and you yourself are the one holding yourself back. Just that you don't know it yet.

    Gee, that does sound kind of pretentious. But it is meant with good spirit. So, take it or leave it. I don't care. I'll still be here. If you leave it, expect me to chime in WHEN I FEEL LIKE IT, even if you don't. But I won't be a pest about it, I want my answers to be helpful (most of the time), or I just wouldn't answer at all.

    ****************************

    So, there are apps that do normalization of the audio within video, but most of the ones that I know of do so by doing a full decode & re-encode, and sometimes not just of the audio but of the video as well. Mainly because they aren't built for that specific purpose alone. Nothing good that I know of is built for that specific purpose alone. One could code an app like that, but it probably hasn't been done, mainly because the reasoning behind the need to do that is flawed in the first place.
    As I said in the first post, a file with an RMS average level of -20dB but with a number of peaks at -4dB and another file with an RMS average level of -45dB but with ONE peak at -4dB will both get normalized up (say) 3dB to -1dB, but the first file will now have an RMS of -17dB and the 2nd file would only have an RMS of -42dB. Will they sound like similar levels? Hell, no!
    This is not the way to go about trying to even out one's sound level. Period. So any app that just looks at peaks on each file and raises them to the same is NOT going to give you what you are really wanting.

    Barring the fact that you'd be changing the dynamics away from the original artistic intent, and all that, what you want is something that recognizes both the peaks and the relative average RMS levels and manipulates BOTH to arrive at an agreed range that fulfills some ideal. Such a program doesn't yet exist, as far as I am aware, though it could very well be programmed. I've even thought of doing as much, but with my current schedule and level of coding ability, that would be years away from completion.

    Are you really ok with that other (existing app) scenario? There are former threads here that I believe show examples of scripts one can use to do that very thing, in a fairly automated way. I, however, am reluctant to guide you to them, for the very reasons I just described.

    Scott

    <edit>Oh, and by the way, I am a descendant of a king of England. Honest.</edit>
    Last edited by Cornucopia; 25th Apr 2014 at 17:06.
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