Easy way to set audio for one clip as the reference volume?

jcg wrote on 1/7/2004, 9:08 AM

Please forgive this seemingly lazy request, but I’m in a bit of a hurry. I’m sure the answer is somewhere on the Forum, or in Vegas or Sound Forge manuals. If someone can give me an answer without too much trouble, I’d really appreciate it.

I have a 2 minute scene that is non-stop dialogue between two actors while they are playing pool. The director had the scene shot from 9 different angles (one camera). I wasn’t there for the filming so I didn’t watch the boom operator, but the result is that the volume is fairly variable between the numerous angles. My question is this: is there an easy way to set the audio for one clip as the reference volume and then automatically have the others conform? Thanks for the help.

JCG

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 1/7/2004, 9:14 AM

There's a good chance that if you normalize each one (right-mouse-button click the audio event, choose Switches / Normalize) that you'll get them all very close to each other. The only thing you may have to watch out for is loud transients that will throw off the normalization process. Make sure you trim the clips first to eliminate any loud noises that may occur before or after the desired material. After you've got all nine clips normalized you can string them out sequentially on the tineline, zoom out far enough to see them all, then drop the volume on the louder clips by dragging the top edge of the event down to visually match the height of the wave form of the quietest clip. If you stretch the audio track height as tall as you can get it then eyeballing the levels will probably be close enough. Total time to do this should be well under a minute.

jcg wrote on 1/7/2004, 10:13 AM

Chienworks - thanks a million. Just what I was looking for.

JCG