GUI for dvdauthor - audio too loud

[mrcoolekin]

I was wondering if anyone knew if GUI for dvdauthor normalized your audio while the dvd is being created?

I created a 6 Channel AC3 audio file that sounds just right when you play it before you do the authoring. After the DVD is created, when you listen to the DVD, it's really loud and noise can be heard. I'm using dvdauthor as the authoring engine.

If GUI for dvdauthor does "something" to the audio, what can I do to avoid it being changed? Thanks.

[borax]

No, it doesn't do anything with the audio. AFAIK, dvdauthor itself doesn't do anything with the audio either. One possibility are ac3 attributes which are sometimes ignored in the final dvd (normalization standard is -31db).

[FulciLives]

If you go to the doom9 forums [LINK] there is a section for AUDIO and there is a sticky there on how to properly encode AC-3 audio and it covers dialog normalization etc.

I just normalize to -3.0db and then in the AC-3 encoder I pick -31.0db and that seems to work well ... then again I only work with two channel audio (when doing my own AC-3 encoding).

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[mrcoolekin]

Hm......ok, I guess I'm gonna have to see what I can find out then.

The process I use to get 6 channels is by using graphedit and using ffdshow to output to a 6 channel "single" wav file. I then use VirtualDub to encode it to a 6 channel ac3 file. After that I have to use ac3fix cause GUI for dvdauthor says that it's a unrecognized ac3 file. I then create my dvd as usual. But when I listen to the audio again, it's just a bit loud.

[borax]

Try Aften for encoding and (if necessary) delaycut to fix errors.

[MysticE]

Hm......ok, I guess I'm gonna have to see what I can find out then.

The process I use to get 6 channels is by using graphedit and using ffdshow to output to a 6 channel "single" wav file. I then use VirtualDub to encode it to a 6 channel ac3 file. After that I have to use ac3fix cause GUI for dvdauthor says that it's a unrecognized ac3 file. I then create my dvd as usual. But when I listen to the audio again, it's just a bit loud.

Maybe you could try Audacity (free) on your "single" wav file and tell it to Normalize or lower the volume first.

[mrcoolekin]

Thanks for the advice everyone. Well the problem seems to be with how ffdshow decodes the audio I guess. If I play the files on graphedit, which ffdshow is used for the decoder, it sounds normal. If you use WMP's default audio decoder it goes loud. I did confirm that WMP's default decoder is decoding the audio correctly cause I put the files on my usb flash drive and played it on my dvd player. My DVD player also played the video loud. I'll have to isolate the problem and see which program jumped the db. I'll end up using one of the problems you guys list =)