Sound Levels

[wolfnature]

Hello Everyone,

I am new to video editing and wanted to find out about sound levels in videos. I don't have any software at the moment, but am looking at a few programs and wanted to have an idea of what to look for. One of the big things I would like to be able to do (if possible) is work with the sound. I would like to be able to boost the sound, but at the same time would like to level it out.

For example, if I have a video of someone speaking, the speakers voice is somewhat low, while people asking questions are loud (since they are closer to the camera). Is there a way to change the sound to the same level and then boost it so that the speaker would be easier to hear, but someone next to the camera isn't blasting your ears?

Hope this makes sense. Not sure if this is possible, but figured I would ask.

Thanks.

[gadgetguy]

You can do this in Audacity. Demux the audio to wav. Open it in Audacity and then select the sections you want to make louder (or quieter) then adjust the volume level to suit. Export back out to wav and then use the new audio file in your video editing software.

Oh, and welcome to videohelp.

[Soopafresh]

In addition, you can apply dynamic range compression to the audio, making the quiet parts louder and the louder parts quieter. This gives the audio an "FM Radio" kind of quality to it. A lot of video editing apps have this feature built in. Sony Vegas does.

[wolfnature]

Thanks for the quick responses. I wasn't sure if you could pull the audio out and then put it back in. And Vegas seems to be the frontrunner in my software selection.

Thanks again.

[edDV]

Thanks for the quick responses. I wasn't sure if you could pull the audio out and then put it back in. And Vegas seems to be the frontrunner in my software selection.

Thanks again.

If you want to take this beyond Vegas look at SoundForge. It has many more audio normalization and equalization features.

If you didn't know, Vegas was developed from SoundForge but didn't carry over all the audio features.