Audio levels

[phase3player]

Is there an easy, effective way in PE9 to balance out/normalize the volume across all the clips in a movie?

say 5 clips are brought into the timeline shot with different cameras. using different mics, recorded at different levels.

Is there a way to get the volume across all of the clips the same so the all the audio in the video is balanced when exported?

Could Smart Mix do this somehow?

- Robert

[Dave McElderry]

Robert, there is a normalize function. Right click on the audio clip in the timeline and choose "Audio gain..." You'll see Normalize there. Steve Grisetti reports that it doesn't work correctly since version 8. I did just try normalizing the same clip in V7 and V9 to see what would happen. For this particular clip V7 added 2.3 dB and V9 added 2.2 dB. Very close. Further attempts to normalize the already normalized clips did not result in any additional changes, which is the way it should be. I believe what Steve tells us, but for this particular clip V9 seems to be pretty consistent with V7.

EDIT: Correction. I just went back and reread the thread in reference. Steve said that normalizing was broke (didn't work at all) in V8. In V9 he says that it works, but not to his satisfaction. If I understand correctly I think he said that it doesn't have as much adjustment effect on the level as it should.

[phase3player]

How about when there's more than one clip?

Can you shift or control click on all of them or something and normalize?

I get how to do it for one clip. What I'm not clear on is a group of different clips.

Thanks.

- Robert

[Dave McElderry]

Yes, I just tried it. You can lasso the clips you want to adjust so that they're all selected, then right click and perform the normalize. On two different clips done together this way I ended up with two different amounts of normalization adjustment.

[phase3player]

Great. Thanks Dave. I appreciate the help.

I'm new to PE and it's super to be able to get help like this.

- Robert

[Dave McElderry]

Very welcome Robert. Glad to help if we can. Oh and, BTW, if you need to select non-contiguous clips the key sequence is Shift-click.

[phase3player]

Shift-click on a Mac?

How about for contiguous clips?

- Robert

[Dave McElderry]

I don't know the Mac equivalent for Shift-click. Steve's also a Mac user so hopefully he'll chime in. Whatever it is, it will work on contiguous clips too.

[phase3player]

I'll test it out. Thanks. Probably the same. Maybe control-click.

Thanks again.

- Robert

[Dave McElderry]

Okay. What I was trying to say is that for contiguous clips I prefer to lasso over using a Shift-click. Either will work.

[RJ Johnston]

You can try using the Compressor of the Dynamic audio effect to level out the loudness of several clips. See this thread:
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1059&start=0&hilit=compressor