Sorry to be so dense, but what do you mean when you say, "flatline?" I guess I don't understand the problem.

John

You coming from an audio background John I'll bet you do know you just have a different term for it. It's when one normalizes a clip and instead of normalizing, it does the opposite and the .wav (graphics of the clip) actually goes flat or shows no presence of audio and indeed there is no sound.
Randy

Ahhh, now I get it. I've never experienced this particular problem because I rarely, if ever, use the normalizing function.

I've never felt that normalizing is particularly useful. Well, at least on individual tracks. All it does is crank up the gain on the track so that the highest peak is set to some fixed target level, but our ears hear the RMS or average level and normalizing doesn't take the "loudness" of the track into consideration.

John

Yes normalizing the whole track is ordinarily useless if there are several clips on it with varying dynamics; however I find it useful to right-click a clip at a time and simply select normalize. With a (track) compressor/limiter and a preset EQ (for whichever mic I used) I'm usually done with sweetening audio.
Randy

Sorry Randy,
I misunderstood as well. The problem you are describing can be solved by splitting the track up into smaller sections. That way it is averaging less. It should eliminate that problem.
I thought you were referring to those annoying split second audio dropouts which appear on the timeline as flatline sections where the dropouts occur. You have to strectch the timeline out to see them. They occur too frequently and nothing suggested by Sony or anyone else has eliminated their appearance. I get them on more than 50% of my projects. Sometimes I have to recapture or PTT again to eliminate them. Sometimes they appear elsewhere the second time around. Same goes for the flash frames.
The problem I have found with three versions of Vegas (up to version 4) is the amount of wasted time redoing things to get perfection. Most frustrating and annoying.

John

>>The problem you are describing can be solved by splitting the track up into smaller sections. That way it is averaging less. It should eliminate that problem<<

Hmmm. I guess I'm not doing too well at explaining what I'm talking about. Let me try again. I right click on an audio clip on the timeline and select switches/normalize. The .wav graphics turn into a flat line and there is no audio (a known issue). The workaround in the past has been to chop off a little on one end and then it magically works on the next try. I've noticed in V5 it can take several trys to make the workaround work. As to what you mentioned for a workaround, I do realize, if I have a loud peak in a particular clip (ie laughter) I should separate that from the rest of the clip and then normalize the rest of the clip (or open in Sound Forge and reduce the volume of just the peak and then normalize in SF).
It's been a known issue for a long time (since V3 at least) but I was just wondering if anyone has noticed the problem actually worsening.
Thanks,
Randy

I am familiar with the problem (normalize a clip...but it turns the volume off (flat line), rather than increasing it), although it hasn't occured as much lately as it used to. Since I haven't noticed it in 5.0 at all, I figured it was fixed.

When I did experience the problem I didn't crop the clip, I just split it (usually just once). Then the two separate pieces would usually normalize just fine.

If that didn't work, I would increase the volume for the specific section using the rubber band for volume.

I did notice that this problem was intermittent. It mainly occured for my AVI file audio.

If I still needed to normalize the clip, I would take it into Sound Forge and it would normalize just fine (but this was my last resort).

If this is still a problem, it would be nice if Sony would fix it.

>>When I did experience the problem I didn't crop the clip, I just split it (usually just once). <<

Thanks Chanimal

Hmmm, well maybe you did know what I was talking about after all John I just don't remember anyone ever suggesting to split the clip, the workaround was always to snip a little off the end. Anyway, it is actually worse for me now and I was just wondering if we all have just accepted it as normal workflow or if Sony was still trying to fix it. It's not a big deal unless it's one of those jobs where I have lots of short clips on the timeline (this one in particular being a United Way recruitment with lots of people saying one or 2 lines) and the volume levels varying so much.

Thanks guys,
Randy

Randy,
wouldn't compression be a better fix to your problem than Normalize anyway?
Depending on the persons voice just normalising by itself still wouldn't getting sounding at the same volume. Or maybe you're doing that as well, I know sometimes I've got to put enough gain onto a clip to get it up where the compressor will kick in.

Bob.