Way to "normalize" audio levels?

dlg wrote on 1/9/2008, 12:23 AM
Hi! I'm splicing together a bunch of different clips all recorded w/ different audio levels (at least that's how they're displayed and previewed in VMS). Is there some way to "normalize" them all to more or less the same level, i.e., make the loudest portions of each clip be the same volume and scale the rest of the audio signals accordingly? Thanks!

DG

Comments

Toobad wrote on 1/9/2008, 3:51 AM
Right-click the chosen clip on your audio track. Choose "Switches" from the drop-down menu then select the "Normalise" switch. I guess you could Shift Click to select a particular range or indeed all the clips to highlight a batch before applying the Normalise switch. Hope this helps.
Trevor.
dlg wrote on 1/9/2008, 9:21 PM
Worked like a charm, thanks Trevor!

DG
Chienworks wrote on 1/10/2008, 3:57 AM
If you select a group of clips and normalize them all together then they all get raised exactly the same amount, which probably isn't what you want in this case. That means that the softer clips will still be just as much softer than the louder clips. Normalizing them independently will raise the softer clips more than the louder ones.

Normalize doesn't help a lot in some situations. If the entire clip is soft except for one sneeze that peaks way above the rest, then normalize will use that loud peak and won't raise the volume much. You may want to investigate compression. Compression will soften the loudest peaks so that there's less dynamic range between the loud peaks and the quieter parts. After that normalize can bring the quieter parts up more.