Help with death in family

[minome]

Hello, anyone

My wife's 98 year-old mother passed away recently. I took two very short clips, less than one minute each, which are in mp4 format. My wife would like to keep them as they are the only existing video of her mother.

The volume is too low on the videos and I would like to boost it. This is a one-time only request if someone would be willing. A zip file of the two videos is 63 meg. I am reluctant to upload the file as an attachment to this message for privacy concerns. The video is of the day she died and is heartbreaking to watch.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

[hech54]

I would upload the ZIP file to:
https://mega.nz/
....and send the link to anyone willing to help.
Much easier.

[johnmeyer]

You can upload to Mediashare (or mega.nz or any other file sharing site) and password protect the file. The password protection will keep "the masses" from watching or listening to your clips.

Boosting the volume is simple, and you can do that on your playback device. However, if the volume is really low, the background noise will mask any audio you want to hear.

I own iZotope RX Advanced, a professional audio editor. If I were to tackle a job like this, I'd first demux the audio, then remove background noise, and finally boost the volume. I'd then re-mux it with the video, leaving the video completely intact and unchanged.

Regardless of who does the work, do not expect some miraculous ability to hear things that you couldn't hear before. That sort of thing doesn't exist, despite what you see in Hollywood movies. However, you should find it more pleasant to listen to.

[JVRaines]

Regardless of who does the work, do not expect some miraculous ability to hear things that you couldn't hear before. That sort of thing doesn't exist, despite what you see in Hollywood movies. However, you should find it more pleasant to listen to.

I gather that "pleasant" is not the goal in this case.

[lingyi]

Others will be able to give you better instructions of how to best do this, but you can use Audacity to boost the vocals and reduce the background noise. If there's music, it's harder to isolate voices. Use MP4muxer to separate (demux) the audio from the video and you'll probably have to convert the audio to .mp3 or .wav to open in Audacity. You can use Foobar 2000 to do this. All these programs are free.

Alternately, you can just upload the demuxed / unconverted audio only if that helps with your privacy concerns.

Condolences, cares and prayers for you and your family.

[johnmeyer]

Regardless of who does the work, do not expect some miraculous ability to hear things that you couldn't hear before. That sort of thing doesn't exist, despite what you see in Hollywood movies. However, you should find it more pleasant to listen to.

I gather that "pleasant" is not the goal in this case.

I guess that is a rather sloppy adjective, given the circumstances. All I was trying to say is that it would take less effort for the listener to understand what was being said.

[minome]

Well here goes. The files are attached. If anybody is willing to do a quick fix volume boost that would be great.

The outcome will not be "pleasant" but rather horrific. It is the sound my wife listened to 24 hours a day during the last two weeks of her mother's life.

Thanks in advance.

PS. I need to emphasize that this is a very disturbing pair of video clips. The recording is the sound of death rattles.

[pandy]

@setlocal

@echo Audio processing, video is copied losslesly

@rem folder where ffmpeg.exe is located
@set FF=C:\ffmpeg
@set PATH=%FF%;%PATH%

@set filename=%~1

@rem audio bitrate
@set ab=192

@rem set compression factor (should be higher than 3 to avoid distortions, 0 to disable) 
@set compression=5

@set aproc="firequalizer=gain='if(gte(f,125),0,-INF)+if(lte(f,12000),0,-INF)',dynaudnorm=p=1/sqrt(2):m=100:s=%compression%,firequalizer=gain='if(gte(f,125),0,-INF)+if(lte(f,12000),0,-INF)'"

@ffmpeg.exe -hide_banner -v 32 -stats -y -i "%filename%" -c:v copy -af %aproc% -c:a aac -b:a %ab%k -f matroska "%~n1_dynaudio.mkv"

@endlocal
@pause

Above script may solve your problem. Only audio level is changed (normalized and compressed plus some filtering - only spectrum between 125Hz and 12000Hz is left - 5 is compression factor - can be adjusted - recommended value is between 3 and 30, to disable compression it should be set to 0). Video is copied without any change. ffmpeg shall be located in folder 'ffmpeg' on your C hard disk. I you have any further questions just ask.

Please accept my condolences.

[jagabo]

Just amplified. Allowed a little clipping.

clips deleted

[minome]

Thank you so much everyone, and especially jagabo for doing this. I have deleted the original videos from my post, since the volume is now fixed.

[jagabo]

Do you want me to delete the videos in my post?

[minome]

Jagabo: go ahead and delete. I downloaded the files. Thanks again.