DVD masters audio

[kippard]

We have some DVD recorder DVD's that are our masters from a live event. The audio is up and down and all over, is there a quick way to auto-level or normalize the audio? We would probably prefer switching to mono. Thanks again videohelp.
kippard

[Cornucopia]

If your level is "up and down and all over", you DON'T want to either normalize it or "auto-level" it. Why?

1. Normalize will look at the highest peak, compare that to your reference (usually FullScale Digital 0) and then apply a linear gain amplification on THE WHOLE THING of exactly that distance amount, such that the highest peak you referenced earlier will now come out to ~0db.

This is not good for you this time, because you already have "wild" audio, which won't become any less wild just by it all being louder. If you had listened to it with the speakers at "3" and then listened to it again with the speakers at "8", without changing anything else, you're still gonna be unsatisfied with the "wildness".

2. "Auto-level" isn't really a term used in pro audio circles, because it conjures up nightmares of low-quality consumer equipment doing an even greater injustice to already poor audio. Auto-levelling or "auto-gain-control" or "dynamic range compression" is useful with certain kinds of material, especially when you can monitor/control the action of the compression.

Without being able to adjust such things as "threshold" and "compression ratio" and "attack and release times", you'll be stuck with the designer's vision of the kind of material they thought would work with it--the CONTROL won't be able to accurately follow and compensate for the material--you'll end up with alot of over-compensation and under-compensation. This is quite audible and distracting--known as "pumping" or breathing".

Your best bet is to:
1. Rip the DVD and demux the audio track.
2. (If needed) decode the AC3/MP2 to WAV.
3. Open the PCM/WAV in a GOOD audio editor program (like Adobe Audition/Cooledit, ProTools, Soundforge, Nuendo, maybe Audacity, etc) or NLE with good audio control (like Vegas), which has access to such audio DSP effects as Limiting and Compression (with full control over them). Hopefully, they will also have ability to seperately make and record adjustments to those controls via a keyframeable timeline.

This way you can manually adjust the volume on the Main Sections, and then keyframe in short term fixes to those harder-to-fix subsections. Being able to record the keyframes/changes allows you to make adjustments if they don't quite work.

You can also user other DSP if needed, but from your OP it sounded like it was mainly a volume thing.

Once you're happy with it, Bounce/Render/Export a mixdown of the adjusted track and re-encode/remux that with the original MPG video.

HTH,

Scott

[kippard]

Thank you, I have Vegas, but being a Premiere user, I had a hard time using it. I'll have to try again. 8)