Anyway to determine the recorded audio level of a video file?

[blackfox135]

Greetings
I'm capturing tv shows using Snapstream Beyond TV with Hauppauge MCE500 tuner cards.
The problem that I'm having is that the captured recording sound levels are too high and become distorted. There are some tuning options in the settings.xml file, but what I would like to find is a tool that would tell me the embedded recording level of the sound portion of the video in db's. Then I can play with the settings.xml file till I get the captured recording sound to be at a normal recorded level, ie 0db +- 2db's.
Any help would be appreciated.

[Starman*]

I'm not familiar with your capture card so I'll hold advice on that for now. Is the audio via the soundcard line-in? I have a solution for that scenario.

You really need to measure the sound level live before recording, for that particular station. I've checked levels between stations and shows/advertising. The difference in volume between a show on my quietest station and advertising on my loudest station is about 20dB.

BTW I've yet to have a sound card that shows audio levels within its software so why would tv be any better!

Starman*

[Bjs]

Strange , while I don't have that particular equipment , I use the line-in adjuster , in volume control to control the level of incoming audio when I record .

That's because I use a vcr to split the signal's to two rca's and associated conversion adapter's , and avoid those rotten inbuilt tuner's .

I wonder if this method work's for other's ?

[blackfox135]

Thanks everyone for your replies.
I have found a software tool called MpegValidator which as part of the test on MPEG only files, will tell you the recorded sound level. With this tool I have made two recordings of the same tv station, one from a US satellite network using RCA audio input into the Hauppauge TV Tuner Card (MCE500) and the other from a cable provider using RF-COAX into the other MCE500.
The recording levels from cable are fine. The recording levels from the satellite receivers are over recorded and the sound is distorted. An independent test of capturing the recording from the satellite receiver using a different capture card and different recording software shows the sound recording levels the same as cable.
So the problem is somewhere between BeyondTV4 and the Hauppauge Cards. Volume level adjustments via Windows would not work as one card records the cable at the right level and the other card records the rca feed at a distorted level.
Any other thoughts out there on adjusting the volume on the hauppauge mce 500 cards?
Thanks