Sound problems in videos

[Paultx]

I have dozens of videos in an external HD and I decided to play them using my old Philips BDP3200X via its USB port. The videos are in the AVI, MKV, and MP4 formats/containers.

Besides varying in their volume level, forcing me to use the TV remote control to make adjustments whenever I play a different video, most of these videos have a lack of balance between the actors' voices and the soundtrack, which many times sounds too loud, so I have again to lower it using the remote.

Is there a way I can normalize these videos' sound to get a more balanced experience?
And If there is such a way, can I use it to normalize all the videos at once, or I'll have to do it one at a time?

TIA.

[Paultx]

Especially the music plays too loud most of times.

[jagabo]

Most people who complain about not being able to hear the dialog have a setup problem. If you have your system setup to output 5.1 (or 3.1 or 7.1 etc.) sound but you only have two speakers most of the dialog will be hard to hear. That is, if your system is set up to use a center channel speaker (where most of the dialog is) but you don't have a speaker attached to that channel, you won't get much dialog. In a case like this the solution is simply to down mix to stereo.


If that's not your problem there are many thread here that discuss normalizing and increasing the center channel volume. For example:
https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/382259-Movie-music-too-loud-but-dialogue-too-quiet-fix-needed

[johnmeyer]

I agree with jagabo: you should first do a very careful setup adjustment. Some modern amplifiers have a setup microphone which you place around the room while the amplifier emits various tones and sounds. You then repeat the measurement several times with the mic placed in different locations.

If you don't have such an amplifier, then the other way to do it is to have your amplifier play white noise through each of your five or seven speakers, one at a time. Buy or borrow a sound meter and adjust the volume control on each channel until you get the same volume reading on the sound meter when measured at the location where you will be sitting while watching the TV.

You should also make sure that you use the correct setting to match your source material. Most amplifiers have many different settings which let you use just the two front, side speakers (this is usually called "stereo"); another setting that will let you simulate the center speaker, again just using the two front, side speakers (phantom mode); and then other modes which route audio into the rear channels in different ways. If your source material is stereo, and you decide to use a 5.1 or 7.1 mode, sometimes (although not always) you may lose some of the dialog (it gets too soft).

And, of course, you may indeed have source material that is unbalanced or contains poorly mixed audio. If this is the case then you will indeed need to temporarily adjust the speaker levels away from the preset you created. However, if you are watching movies on DVD or Blu-Ray, you should almost never have to do this. If instead you are watching junk you downloaded from the Internet, then there is no way to predict what you are going to get, and there is no easy solution, other than to get better-quality material.

[hech54]

If your conversion to AVI or MP4 involved a downmix from 5.1 to STEREO.....your problem is not fixable. The damage is done.

[Paultx]

I thank you guys so much for your answers. As you may have noticed, I'm a newbie when it comes to video stuff—and even more about audio!
I forgot to say that I play those videos on a simple LCD TV. No external amps or speakers, it's only an old Philips BDP3200X/78 and an old Panasonic Viera.
As to the audio setup in the BD player, I found some settings I know nothing about. I took some pictures to show you. Unfortunately, I couldn't find how to set the whole thing to English, so the language you see is Brazilian Portuguese. I hope you can get some ideas from certain tech terms that appear in the pics.


[Attachment 48779 - Click to enlarge]

[Attachment 48780 - Click to enlarge]

[Attachment 48781 - Click to enlarge]

[Attachment 48782 - Click to enlarge]

The first item on the list is Night mode. And there is this PCM and bitstream thing on the Neo 6 list. That blank ribbon in the lower part of the images shows details about each option, some referring to 7.1 and stuff. I'm lost!

[amaipaipai]

If you don't have a multichannel environment, just your TV, then you don't need to enable NEO 6.
https://www.lifewire.com/dts-neo-6-1846892