How to best normalize video files?

[mikehende]

I have 2 types of video files, flv and IFO in separate folders and wish to play one folder at a time, these music videos are from the 50s-70s so volume wise they are all not the same. First, what's the best way for me to have all videos play at same volume? Next, Using VLC, I am seeing under Preferences-Audio the settings as shown in the screenshot I have attached. If using VLC is the best video software I can use for these old videos [I am open to any better video software so please recommend] then what's the best way to set the audio options here please as what's shown here definitely is not playing all videos at same volume?

[DB83]

AFAIK normalisation does not equate to loudness. It just sets a peak.

If a recording >> capture has low volume then all you can do is manually 'up' the volume or re-encode and re-sample the volume at a higher level

[mikehende]

So there is no option to normalize all video files like using mp3gain to normalize a batch of mp3's?

[mikehende]

I am wondering if it would be safe to use something like ReplayGain via Audacity?

http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=63067

Also, would it be best to redo all files somehow to normalize all files or get something which will normalize during playback on the fly?

[hello_hello]

MP3 is the only lossy compression format which lets you adjust the volume losslessly. For all other formats you'd need to re-encode the audio to change the volume.
Unless of course you can run a ReplayGain scan on the audio and save it as a tag for VLC to use to adjust the volume, but I've no idea how that works for video files (as opposed to audio-only files).

Foobar2000 has a ReplayGain scanner. It'll play the audio in all the video containers it supports without extracting it first and will also convert it while applying ReplayGain, but I've no idea if it can save ReplayGain info to files such as flv and vob etc.

Oh well..... there may be a plugin which allows it to do so, but I just tried both a vob and a flv file with foobar2000 and it wouldn't open them. It's happy with AVI/MP4/MKV etc, but not vob a flv.

[mikehende]

well, what's the easiest software to use to effectively normalize the audio volume and save for my flv and vob video files without losing any video quality one at a time please since this seems to be my only option?

[hello_hello]

If your definition of "normalise" means making them all sound like they have the same level......

I don't know of any tools which make working with flv files easy, so I'd start by opening each flv with MKVMergeGUI and remux them as MKVs (no re-encoding). Rather than remux them one at a time you can at least add them to MKVMergeGUI one at a time and then use the "add to job queue" buton, add the next, add it to the job queue..... when you're done open the job queue and start it running to remux all the flv files as MKV.

Once that's done, open the MKVs with MKVCleaver and extract the audio streams. You can open multiple MKVs and use the right hand pane to extract all the audio as a single batch job.

When all the audio is extracted, run any which are in MP3 format (which probably won't be unusual) through MP3Gain as you normally would. For those which aren't MP3, well as you're familiar with it, I'd use my favourite converter to convert them to MP3 and do the same thing.

Then it'd just be a matter of using MKVMergeGUI again to replace the original audio stream with the new version. Once again, open each flv file (or the newly created MKV), deselect the original audio, add the new version, and resave it as a final MKV file. You can add each to the job queue as before so you don't need to sit around waiting.

MKVMergeGUI opened the few flv files I have with which to test it, so it should work fine.

IFO files are a different story because IFO files are DVD files which open associated vob files (unless there's a type of IFO file I'm not aware of). MKVMergeGUI will remux vob files as MKVs too, so you can use the same process as above for them, assuming you have an individual vob file per music video etc.

Rather than remux the flv files as MKVs first there might be a way to extract the audio from flv files directly. I just googled "extract flv audio" and found a couple of programs which appeared to do just that, but in reality they seemed to convert flv to a different format by re-encoding the audio and video. Maybe you'll have more luck (I didn't look too hard), but if nothing else and you don't mind the MKV format, the above method at least won't re-encode the video and you'll only be re-encoding the audio if necessary.

[rcubed]

mikehende,
GoldWave has a maximize level function that allows you to set the highest volume level in an audio file to a specific db level and adjust (scale) the rest of the audio accordingly. The audio files must be in some form such as .wav etc.

rcubed

[mikehende]

Ok guys, will look into this, thanks!

[bsuseno]

mikehende, perhaps you'd like to check out:

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/353195-[Freeware]-BS-FAG-Fix-and-normalize-audio-ga...in-video-files


Cheers,

[mikehende]

I will do just that! Appreciate it!