Hi everyone...I'm new to audio editing, so the terms I'm going to use are probably WAY off.

I've been tasked to edit footage from a long meeting. In this meeting, no mics were used (built-in camcorder mic only!) and many of the speakers were very soft-spoken. If that's not bad enough, the crowd surrounding the camcorder erupts into thunderous applause every couple of minutes! So when the overall volume is increased in the video (using Wave Hammer and other filters), the applause still blows out the sound.

Is there a way to tighten the range of the volume? In other words, can the speech portions be boosted, and the very loud applause be lowered below the "red" range automatically? So far, I've increased the overall volume with Wave Hammer, but am still having to go in and edit sound envelopes around the applause, which is taking a VERY long time. Also, there's a good chance I'm using Wave Hammer and the other filters incorrectly...sound editing seems very complicated!!

Thanks for all the great postings -- I've learned a lot already! -- and thanks in advance for any help with this post.