Audio Settings in Vegas for DVD

plasmavideo wrote on 10/27/2005, 12:02 PM

What levels do you guys use when producing audio for DVD Architect in Vegas?

Reason I ask is that all of my DVDs have audio that is way too hot, and in fact it clips in some cases. Best guess from listening to it by ear is that it's about 8 to 10 db hotter than commercial DVDs.

After editing a video, I usually normalize the tracks. The master output mixer is left at default, and average peak audio on the master VU meters is about -6 to -3 or so.

When encoding the AC3 audio, I use the stereo DVD preset and do no recompression in DVDA. I have played with changing the dialog normalization setting to -31 as was suggested in another thread, but that only seem to make it louder!

I know that analog inputs to digital devices like DVCPro machines are normally set to -20, so I'm guessing that maybe I need to set the master output mixer to -20 in Vegas, but I would have thought this would all be taken care of "behind the scenes" in Vegas and DVDA so that normalization is normaliztion is normalization, yada, yada.

Most threads that I've searched on these fora complain about audio being too low, not too high, so I'm looking for advice.

By the way, I added an audio track in PCM format to a menu that was normalized to 99% in Sound Forge and it too was very, very hot.

Am I missing a setting somewhere in Vegas or DVDA, or should I be setting audio to -20db before importing into DVDA?

Thanks in advance - I'm frankly stumped at this point.

Tom

Comments

B.Verlik wrote on 10/27/2005, 8:01 PM

I don't understand how your DVD can sound too hot from the way you're doing it. I usually try to keep my loudest PEAK level at -3 and I do the dialog normalization setting to -31 for my ac3 and it sounds about on a par with most commercial DVDs.
Are you using a Sony Digital 8 camera and trying to record live music? Because I know mine can't handle a loud conversation without over-saturating.
What is your regular "Normalization" setting set to? Do you have a weird sound card? Do you transfer your video via firewire? How is the sound, while it's in the "Timeline"? Do your DVDs sound normal when played on the computer and distorted while being played on a set-top player? (My Akai DVD player will play any DVD too hot, if you don't adjust it from within the player.) There's nothing wrong with the way you described what you do so I'm just fishing at this point.
Your settings look normal to me, so I'd guess it to be some kind of conflict between the sound card and Vegas. More details needed

plasmavideo wrote on 10/28/2005, 8:37 AM

Thanks Steve.

Nothing unusual, just capturing DV over firewire, placing on timeline, normalize timeline to -1 db, set master output to -3 or so on peaks, create AC3 with -31 and open and burn in DVDA.

Last night, I set the master gain to -12 db, AC3 to -31 and no film compression processing and burned a vob to the hard disk. Opened it in my computer DVD playing software. It compared favorably to both a DVD I burned on my desktop player and a commercial DVD. I haven't burned it to DVD yet to try it on a desktop player, but will do that today.

Going from -3 peaks to -12 and turning off the film mode dynamic range processing might have done it. Strange, though, why I had to drop down to -12 db in the master gain control. I did read that figure mentioned on another website, though. I've never seen anyone mention that here.

I've got a lot to learn about DVDs! The bright spot is that I thought the video looked extremely good using the output for DVDA preset without having to do any tweaking.

Tom

B.Verlik wrote on 10/28/2005, 10:54 AM

I've heard other people say that they can set their regular "Normalization" level to -1 and it works fine, but I found that sometimes my signal sounded a little hot on that setting and I reduced mine to Normalize at -3. This seems to work well for me, otherwise, every other setting is about what you had before reducing to -12db. (I think those with the -1 setting, may have used "wave hammer" in Sound Forge to get the levels that high and not sound over-saturated. At least that's what I remember a few people writing in the past.)

GGman wrote on 10/28/2005, 11:20 AM

plasmavideo wrote on 10/28/2005, 11:46 AM

"Opened it in my computer DVD playing software."

I would guess your windows sound panel has the level to high for this device. Or the app playing it. Did you try it on an external DVD player and TV at normal levels of listening?

Sony Vegas Master levels usually default to -21. Double click on the fader handles and see where it goes. You are setting it to -3 from what you said. I would not normalize all tracks like you say. That just raises the noise floor as well. I just normalize an event when I need more level from that event. Use a comp/limiting plugin or a Mastering plugin on the track or master out instead of Normalizing all tracks.

Last resort, don't use -31 on your DVD audio setup. Try going lower, like -21, etc. But I don't think that is where your problem comes from.

GG
>>>>

Yes, the problem showed up when playing back on set top players - not just one, but several. The Ulead DVD player in the computer tracks the same problem that shows up with the desktop players.

My master level is set to -21 (fader) but the audio peaks at -6 on the meters. What I'm not sure about is if the 0 on the meters indicates digital limits, or indicates -21. I'm assuming the former, as that would make more sense. Normalization is set in preferences to -1, the default.

And I forgot to mention that I used the wave hammer plug-in in the master mix to keep excursions to a minimum.

Thanks for all of the replies. Ironically, wy wife just played a commercial DVD that was pretty hot as well, but not as hot as the ones I've put out. There's more to the story than I know at this point. I suspect that "standard" doesn't really apply. I found a pretty good website that goes into details about how the dialog normalization and film dynamic range settings work on DVD, so maybe "the light will come on".

I'm also currently hooking up a way to meter audio levels coming from the desktop DVD players and from the sound interface output of the computer. That ought to give me a better frame of reference.

Happy Editing!

Tom