I'm looking for suggestions on how to equalize the volume level on a set of narration audios. Are there any post production techniques or tools you'd recommend?
Currently, I just use the Amplify effect in audacity to boost or lower by ear, but there's got to be a better way.
Hi Joseph. You should check out the Levelator first--which performs volume compression. It is very easy to use and free. In most cases, that does the trick.
I will second the Levelator recommendation. I have had projects with varying amounts of volume and it smoothed things out perfectly. Once you've got the program open, you just drag and drop your audio files onto the interface and it spits out a new file in the same location as the original. The only time it becomes a problem is if you've already got files imported into another program so I would suggest running everything through Levelator before importing just to save the trouble!
would that work with video files as well? I have different audio volumes in different videos and I can't find a way to increase or decrease them to the same level?
Unfortunately, it's not so simple with video files. Depending on the video files you're working with, you MIGHT be able to--with a good video ediiting application--export the audio from the videos into WAV files and run those files through Levelator. You would then replace the old audio with the new and encode the videos.
If you have the original video source files to work with, that's ideal and you don't have to worry about quality issues. However, if the files you're working with are heavily compressed files, your files will lose quality--as the video have to be encoded a second time.
6 Replies
Hi Joseph. You should check out the Levelator first--which performs volume compression. It is very easy to use and free. In most cases, that does the trick.
-Phil
I will second the Levelator recommendation. I have had projects with varying amounts of volume and it smoothed things out perfectly. Once you've got the program open, you just drag and drop your audio files onto the interface and it spits out a new file in the same location as the original. The only time it becomes a problem is if you've already got files imported into another program so I would suggest running everything through Levelator before importing just to save the trouble!
Thanks guys! That's exactly what I was looking for.
Hi,
would that work with video files as well? I have different audio volumes in different videos and I can't find a way to increase or decrease them to the same level?
Unfortunately, it's not so simple with video files. Depending on the video files you're working with, you MIGHT be able to--with a good video ediiting application--export the audio from the videos into WAV files and run those files through Levelator. You would then replace the old audio with the new and encode the videos.
If you have the original video source files to work with, that's ideal and you don't have to worry about quality issues. However, if the files you're working with are heavily compressed files, your files will lose quality--as the video have to be encoded a second time.
You might have some luck using MP4gain.
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