When you go to "Render As" in Vegas and select "AC3" as your output format, choose "Stereo DVD" as your template and go to "Custom", then go to the "Advanced" tab and where it says "Film: Standard" change both of them to "none." This will prevent the AC3 encoder from messing with your audio levels. You might want to save this as a new template.

James

John said>>What did you set your dialog normal level to? I use -31db which brings the level up most of the time. An average of -31db is standard, but Vegas doesn't default to that level. Perhaps it wasn't set the same in both renders.<<
I didn't set mine, but it's showing - 27db....should I try -20 or something?
>>Also, Did you Normalize on one of them when you edited? Any audio envelopes used?<<
Yes, I did normalize some clips on one and not the other but the normalized clips are well into the video. Both videos open with up beat, very compressed music that I'm judging by (aurally) and the latest render on the weak signal video has the master volume showing as high as + 1 db. As I recall, the other one averaged about what I usually render at, -3.
James asid:
>>then go to the "Advanced" tab and where it says "Film: Standard" <<
There is no advanced tab, but do you mean the Preprocessing tab and then line mode profile and RF line profile?
Edit: I just realized the louder one is rendered as .wav not .ac3, could that make a differece having pcm selected in DVDA?
Thanks guys,
Randy

Normalize doesn't always work that well. You would be better off setting up points along the audio envelope and raising or lowering the volume.
Also, if you set the dialog normal level to -20 it will lower it, not raise it. Setting it to -31db will raise it. Try matching the volume of the two by playing with the dialog normal level settings until they are both loud enough and match each other, but I suspect that the normalize function in Vegas should be undone and the other alternative tried first as I said.

John

Thanks John,
Since the hotter one was a .wav, I rendered the quieter one to .wav; that must make a difference because I had to go back and re-render the second one because it was hotter than the first one (remember I had the master peaking at +1 on the 2nd, quieter one).
>>Also, if you set the dialog normal level to -20 it will lower it, not raise it. Setting it to -31db will raise it<<
Really? Are we talking about the same thing here, I thought the closer we get to 0 (zero) on a db scale, the hotter we get.
Oh well, I'm just happy that the levels are the same now because it's due today.
Thanks again John,
Randy

From Dolby Labs:
"To prevent these apparent loudness differences from becoming bothersome when switching between programs—thus causing the listener to readjust the volume control—Dolby Digital has incorporated a "dialog normalization" feature to allow the producers to set the appropriate reproduction level to a known average level reference. This feature is implemented in Dolby Digital encoders and consumer decoders."


Since the quietest sounds amidst the grenade launchers and Jurrasic growls are the movie dialog, Dolby Labs have set the encoding standards to a dialog normalization level of -31db. The Dolby Digital encoder sends a control word called a dialnorm to the decoder to adjust playback level. It acts like an automatic volume control but only through attenuation (lowering). For full volume with no attenuation the dialog normalization value is -31db (in other words an "average" of -31db) which the dialnorm in the encoder leaves alone when it encodes AC-3. This allows the other levels in the program to be adjusted appropriately relative to the dialog, but striclty through attenuation. Thus the default setting of -27db is already telling the encoder that the average dialog is 4db higher than the -31db reference and as a result the dialnorm will reduce the levels across the board by 4 db. Set it to -20db and it will reduce it by 11db.
So If you want to raise the overall volume of the encode set dialog norm to -31db. You should also set the line mode profile under dynamic range control to none so that the dynamic range isn't compressed especially if there is music.

John

Very interesting and informative!
Thanks John,
Randy