Awkward Cuts with Normalizing Volume

[razlem]

I'm editing a documentary using Premiere Pro CC, and in my inexperience I started cutting away at the interviews before normalizing the volume. Now when I adjust the gain, I have awkward sound jumps between clips of the same interview (e.g. it will be a normal volume in one clip and then jump up in the next clip to account for the different peaks)

Is there any way retroactively apply normalization to the source audio? Or does anyone have any other suggestions?

[newpball]

You select all clips, right click, select 'audio gain' and then select 'normalize all peaks to' (usually -6 db).

[razlem]

You select all clips, right click, select 'audio gain' and then select 'normalize all peaks to' (usually -6 db).

Yep, I did that, but that caused the problem. To cut out the "ums" and pauses in the interview, I had to split and cut the clips, but the result is that the split clips now have different peaks and act differently when normalized automatically.

[newpball]

You select all clips, right click, select 'audio gain' and then select 'normalize all peaks to' (usually -6 db).

Yep, I did that, but that caused the problem. To cut out the "ums" and pauses in the interview, I had to split and cut the clips, but the result is that the split clips now have different peaks and act differently when normalized automatically.

You reasoning does not make any sense to me, how do pauses and ums influence the peaks?

As long as you select 'normalize all peaks' as opposed to 'normalize max peaks' all clips should be normalized wrt each other. Alternatively you can normalize the master track.

[razlem]

You select all clips, right click, select 'audio gain' and then select 'normalize all peaks to' (usually -6 db).

Yep, I did that, but that caused the problem. To cut out the "ums" and pauses in the interview, I had to split and cut the clips, but the result is that the split clips now have different peaks and act differently when normalized automatically.

You reasoning does not make any sense to me, how do pauses and ums influence the peaks?

As long as you select 'normalize all peaks' as opposed to 'normalize max peaks' all clips should be normalized wrt each other. Alternatively you can normalize the master track.

Sorry, maybe this would be more clear?

The range of the main clip is -18/-6. But there's an "um" in the middle, so I cut it out, resulting in two separate clips. The first clip now has a range of -18/-12. When the audio gain is applied, the -18/-12 clip goes up in range to -12/-6, but the second clip stays at -18/-6 because it's already at the peak, so there's an awkward sound change from the -12/-6 clip to the -18/-6.

[newpball]

You select all clips, right click, select 'audio gain' and then select 'normalize all peaks to' (usually -6 db).

Yep, I did that, but that caused the problem. To cut out the "ums" and pauses in the interview, I had to split and cut the clips, but the result is that the split clips now have different peaks and act differently when normalized automatically.

You reasoning does not make any sense to me, how do pauses and ums influence the peaks?

As long as you select 'normalize all peaks' as opposed to 'normalize max peaks' all clips should be normalized wrt each other. Alternatively you can normalize the master track.

Sorry, maybe this would be more clear?

The range of one clip is -18/-12. In the next clip (the same interviewee) the range is -18/-6 because the interviewee laughs. When the audio gain is applied, the -18/-12 clip goes up in range to -12/-6, but the second clip stays at -18/-6 because it's already at the peak, so there's an awkward sound change from the -12/-6 clip to the -18/-6.

So then how did you get into this mess in the first place? Or was it recorded like that?

[razlem]

So then how did you get into this mess in the first place? Or was it recorded like that?

It's just how it was recorded. The interviewee spoke at a low level and then laughed, causing the db to spike. The spike isn't representative of the clip's average volume, so other clips of that interviewee have different levels.

[budwzr]

So just select the clips that are out of range with the others, and change their peaks to match the others.

[newpball]

So then how did you get into this mess in the first place? Or was it recorded like that?

It's just how it was recorded. The interviewee spoke at a low level and then laughed, causing the db to spike. The spike isn't representative of the clip's average volume, so other clips of that interviewee have different levels.

Sorry it still does not make any sense to me.

1. you want record an interview
2. you setup the audio
3. you set levels and never changed them ever
4. now you record clips
5. you load it into Premiere Pro
6. you edited clips to get rid of pauses and 'ums'

So far so good?

So where was the sound level discrepancy introduced?

[budwzr]

[Oops]

[razlem]

So here's some snapshots. The first is the original volume, with the interviewee speaking louder in the third clip. All three normalized is the second pic. You can see that the middle clip jumps up in volume compared to the first, and this results in a sudden volume increase, and then it drops off again at the third clip, with another sudden volume change.

The same thing occurs when just normalizing the first two clips (leaving the louder third clip out of the normalization)

[newpball]

Sorry I am simply not getting it.

Selecting 'normalize all peaks' for all the clips will never change the relative volume of the clips.

[razlem]

Here's a video of the problem. This is adjusting all peaks to -6.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qI6ZJ5JHtXU

[budwzr]

You should post this in the "Audio" forum here at VidHelp. Some good pros over there.

[hello_hello]

Try Levelator. It's designed for that sort of thing. Some audio sections are probably more dynamic than others, so peak normalising won't fix them (in fact louder peaks can lower the average volume when normalising compared to audio with quieter peaks) but compression will help. Hopefully you can just throw the audio sections at Levelator and they'll come out fairly levelled.

There's another command line utility call Dynamic Audio Normalizer that also compresses and normalises, but Levelator is designed for speech, so give it a spin first, although someone else will have to explain how to extract the audio from the file so you can level it, then put it back, if you need help with that. It should be quite do-able but I never work with mov files or Premier Pro.