I've just made a long video for YT, and my audio in my video is perfect here at my computer, and I've made sure that it never peaks over -20, or gets too loud or crackling.
However, after uploading to YT it must've been compressed, and now my audio sounds like it was recorded too loud and cracks or puts metallic in my voice.
Maybe there 's an easy fix for this for future videos?
Here is the general answer to your question for streaming services:
The devil's in the details! A search of the forum will lead to clues about the details.
For Broadcast:
"Vegas has loudness meters. Should be easy to hit -23 with a bit of compression on peaks."
-20dBFS is too low. YT re-encodes your media so that is an additional generational loss as well. Unlike most music streaming hosts, YT will not raise the submitted volume level. The Youleen LU meter is a popular LU meter and Toneboosters has a real good loudness meter as well which offers even more info.
For streaming narrative content, I use -16 LUFS and -14 LUFS for music (integrated w/ max true peaks not exceeding -1.9 dBTP) LUFS is not to be confused with dBFS.
Toneboosters has a real good loudness meter as well which offers even more info.
Although Vegas has a good set of loudness meters, setup is a bit complicated for novices.
Toneboosters Barricade 4 is my go-to choice, because in addition to LUFS /LKFS, controls, it has limiting, compression and the dBTP filters that are exceptionally clean and free of distortion.
For Youtube, I shoot for -15 LUFS, which should not incur a loudness penalty.
The Toneboosters v3 Loudness Meter is free.. as are the other v3 plug-ins. Among other niceties, it has noise gates (inaudible), so very low level and silent passages are not factored into the all important integrated measurement.
I usually use Sound Forge Pro's 'Statistics' tool to determine loudness of a mixed program, which is non-realtime and displays the pertinent LUFS, dBFS, dBTP and RMS info of a file in a matter of seconds. The Statistics factors (text) can also be copied to the clipboard to accompany a broadcast submission.
Thank you all for the nice replies.
I have never been looking much into audio settings, but they are as important as the video.
I have used Audacity to remove noise, and to make the sound "perfect". It never peaked up in any red areas, and on my Vegas videos I added compression/soft limiter, just in case, so it was so frustrating when the final result was good here at my end, but after uploading all this happened :)
The Toneboosters v3 Loudness Meter is free.. as are the other v3 plug-ins. Among other niceties, it has noise gates (inaudible), so very low level and silent passages are not factored into the all important integrated measurement.
The Toneboosters v4 plugins can also be run in demo mode forever; Cantabile Light will save your presets, which are the only demo limitation of v4.
I've enjoyed these since the beginning, having been a beta tester for their pre-release version a long time ago.