Help needed to improve the audio of .avi file?

[dweeb]

The movie info is :
Video stream
frame size 576x240 23.976fps (41708)
length 94945 frames
decompressor XviD Mpeg-4 codec

Audio stream
sampling rate 48000Hz
channels 5(Stereo)
Compression AC-3 ACM Decompressor


The audio quality is very low.
I have all the XVid, AC3, Mpeg4 codec etc installed

I have tried using VirtualDub to extract out the .wav file and using TMPGenc with Toolame to code the movie for burning but no improvement to audio quality.

Help pls

[Tommyknocker]

Load the wave file you extracted (or the original video if you like) into Gold Wave. Select Effects-->Volume-->Maximize. Adjust to what level you like, save it under a new filename. Load the new file into Virtual dub along with original video, and save it under a new file name. The resultant video should be your video with the new volume level.

[dweeb]

Tried that but it doesnt help

Another case of GIGO??

Anyone??

[Stinky]

Is the volume just too low? I find that the best way to work with AC3 is to extract the AC3 from the avi (load the avi in VirutalDub then do File-Save Wav) -- and save it as .ac3 ... by NOT using full processing mode you just extract directly to ac3. Next take the ac3 and run it through BeSweet using the BeSweet GUI. The default setting for AC3 to MP2 conversion does a 95% Normilization and will make the sound easier to hear. Plus it handles the 5.1 to 2 channel downmix automatically.

see this guide: http://www.doom9.org/ac3tomp2.htm

[tonofsteel]

I dont know if this is a possible direction, but use virtual dub mod. After you load your file, go to streams->stream list. Then in there select the stream list and demux it. Then it should be the AC3 file as it is without any converting.

But in any case when the source of anything is bad, then you usually cannot improve it by leaps and bounds, it will not turn from bad to excellent quality.

I am not too familiar with any kind of audio processing that can be done, so mabye someone knows of a filter or something that can improve it to a certian degree......

[Stinky]

Quality can be vastly improved with SoundForge and the Noise Reduction DirectX plugin.

You can convert the AC3 to WAV then run noise reduction/normalization/click removal on the WAV then encode the WAV to MP2.

I didn't mention any of this because I think he's talking about the sound being low and not the quality being bad, but I could be wrong.

[fritzi93]

I think he's talking about the sound being low and not the quality being bad, but I could be wrong.

Bet you're right, and I bet I know which movie it is.

[lordsmurf]

SOUNDFORGE and the SF audio restore guides at lordsmurf.com

[dweeb]

Thanks Stinky

I used the BeSweet method. The audio is ok now after encoding with TMPGenc.

FYI - the movie file is "missing2-dcn.avi"

To clarify : the audio is very low after conversion from avi to mpg using TMPGEnc; had to set to max the tv volume for a bit of audio. Tuning the volume up a bit on pc while playing the original avi is very deceiving cos it's very very low after conversion to mpg.