Hi. Please help. I am producing an instructional DVD that has two audio tracks- (music and voiceover). All I know is that I have levels for each audio track and then I have a master level.

That's not all you have. What you really need to do is adjust the music up and down when you stop and start speaking. I would leave those "master" levels and the audio track levels alone .. or, if needed, just tweak them a little bit.

What you want to use is the AUDIO ENVELOPE to control the volume. To get that you need to use the ENVELOPE EDIT TOOL. To select that tool go to the icons at the top of the page. The NORMAL EDIT TOOL is selected by default. It looks like a squiggly horizontal line with a capitol "i" over it. It will already be "selected" and have a box around it. Click on the tool to the right of that tool. It looks like 4 small circles with a line connecting them. THAT is the ENVELOPE EDIT TOOL.

Now, when you bring your cursor down to the timeline it will have those 4 circles and a line to the right of the cursor. Place your cursor on the MUSIC audio track and right click. Select INSERT/REMOVE ENVELOPE then VOLUME. A purple line will appear in the center of your audio track. Click on the purple line and a box will appear on the line. Move your cursor slightly to the right and click again for a second box.

Now you can click and drag each box up/down/left/right and it WILL DRAG THE ENVELOPE WITH IT. By adding boxes at the right places and adjusting the audio envelope you can reduce (or increase) the volume of that audio track for as long or as short as you wish.

So .. when the voice track has words, reduce the volume of the music track ALMOST to the bottom FOR THE DURATION OF THE SPEECH. If you pause for any length of time bring the music up and then down again when the speech resumes.

You may have to play with the levels a bit 'till you find what works, but it is very easy once you know how.

Can someone please dummy down for me what approx levels I should set these to? I know that I need to set my voice louder (relative to my music). But are there thresholds/ranges I should shoot for when setting the audio tracks and the master?

Your voice should not be louder relative to the music. The music should be softer relative to your voice. As I explained above you do not want to increase your voice level .. you want to decrease the music level. If you try the former you may end up with distortion, and bad sound.

Also, I keep reading about other audio render settings but I can't find these. Perhaps I am using the wrong workflow???

Your "audio" or your "voice"?? If you have the music at the same level as your voice you will have a hard time hearing what you are saying. Again, *reduce* the level of the music when you are speaking and all will be good.

Geowickey,

I am not familiar with Platinum 9, but I believe it has many of the same features as Vegas Pro.

Re levels: Does Platinum has audio meters appearing on the tracks somewhere? If so, then a reasonable level to aim for with the master volume, which is the final volume, is around -6 Db. At least make this your starting point - you might wish to experiment a little. Avoid going above 0.

Remember: the master audio is the sum of all the other audio tracks, so you might need to experiment a little to find a good balance of levels between the dialog and music tracks.

The other posters referred to dropping the level of your music when there is dialogue. This practice is known as "audio ducking", and is just that, one audio level "ducks" to allow space for other audio. Thus, you drop the level of the music in those places when you wish to hear the dialogue. You can easily do this using a Volume envelope on the music track. I'm sure the Platinum 9 help will be able to assist you on the use of track envelopes.

Hopefully this will give you a bit of info to start with.

Good luck,

marks

There is no "standard" volume for DVD's.

Thx for the replies. So what I am hearing so far is to use audio envelopes so that I can lower the sound of the music when I am speaking. Got it. This helps me a lot for what to do on the project timeline but I am still confused about rendering.

I keep reading something about -31 being some sort of magic number for rendering.

Anyone?

I keep reading something about -31 being some sort of magic number for rendering.

Sorry but that's a setting that you can only get if you have the Pro version of Vegas with the pro AC-3 encoder.

Mike

Look up "gain" and "volume" on the Wiki. They are two different animals.

Gain has to do with sample rate, and volume has to do with playback level.

A track with too much gain will have clipping (red) peaks, too little gain will not have enough dynamic range.

Mixing tracks with different "levels" are constrained by the track with the poorest levels. Increasing volume in a track with low levels results in distortion.

And my post will attract the audio pros to give me a lecture, so you will learn more soon.

So let me come at this from another angle.

If I've adjusted the levels on my voice track and my music track so that my voice can be clearly heard over the music (with or without envelopes) and my master is set to around -3 (and everything sounds reasonably good after I burn the DVD) then...

am I good?

Is there any fatal step I am missing? Am I okay with the render workflow I described above?

THANKS!