DVDA How to keep Audio Volume

[Edward Troxel]

[qivideo] “When I render the movie in Vegas6 to mpeg-2 the volume sounds perfect. When I burn with DVDA3 then the volume is not sufficient.”

Too lazy to type it out again.

[qivideo] “Also, is there anyway to turn off re-compress in DVDA3?”

Recompressing what? Neither the MPEG2 or AC3 file from Vegas should be recompressed UNLESS they’re too big to fit on the DVD.

Edward Troxel

[Terry Esslinger]

Copied from another forum:

The reason the volume is lower is because of the AC3 template in vegas…specifically the dynamic range compression settings in the preprocessing tab. By default the setting is at “Film Standard”. Setting the line & RF mode to “None” will bring the level of volume back/close to original

That is really misleading. The DRC does NOT affect levels during render. It is a metadata flag that tells the DVD decoder what dynamic range curve to apply, but only IF the DRC (often called night mode, et al) is engaged on the playback device. In other words, the consumer playing back the DVD must turn on the night mode for the DRC setting to be applied.

The real level culprit is the infamous Dialog Normalization (DialNorm) setting. The Vegas default assumes your dialog (average) is -27 and essentially pulls your level down 4 dB to match the -31 standard. This is so TV programs maintain a consistent dialog level from show to show, regardless of content. For example, a rock concert might have a DialNorm setting of -15, therefore its level will be pulled down accordingly.

If you set the Vegas Dialnorm to -31, there will be no change in the level, BUT you are defeating the purpose of the setting. For a standalone DVD, it’s not an issue. For broadcast, it is.

I hope that clarifies this often misunderstood topic.

[Qivideo]

[qivideo] “Also, is there anyway to turn off re-compress in DVDA3?”

[jetdv] “Recompressing what? Neither the MPEG2 or AC3 file from Vegas should be recompressed UNLESS they’re too big to fit on the DVD.”

In DVDA select “make dcd” then “prepare to folder” then I get a message “audio on moviename track 1 will be re-compressed”

I was rendering the file as NTSC DVD so the video and audio are together.
So, I re-rendered as an ac3 file with the new setting of -31 db.
How do I replace the audio in the existing dvda project with this new audio, or, how do I associate this file with the DVD mpeg2 file so I can start over in DVda?

Thanks for your reply,
Michael

[Edward Troxel]

[qivideo] “In DVDA select “make dcd” then “prepare to folder” then I get a message “audio on moviename track 1 will be re-compressed””

Sounds like you are giving it a single MPEG2 file with both video and audio and the audio is being decompressed from MPEG2 and then recompressed to AC3. Render the audio to AC3 separately in Vegas and make sure DVDA is using that file. Look at Vol 4 #1 of my newsletter where I talk about this. But the basics are: double-click the video on the menu, look at the properties, and make sure the “Audio” entry is using the AC3 file.

Edward Troxel

[Qivideo]

That did the trick!
This software is powerful – but I don’t think the developers had their “intuitive” hats on the day they wrote the code.
Thanks,
Michael

[Qivideo]

Thanks for the reply,
Michael

[Peter Wright]

One other thing.

Unless you are trying to squeeze “lots” of video onto a disc, you can often use PCM .wav audio instead of AC3. This avoids the loss of volume without making the adjustments above.

I generally put out programs around 30 mins so I use PCM most of the time.

[Dan Sherman]

Just did a project for a friend’s parent’s 50th.
Shot on one of those disc recorders.
Anyway,—the usual poor-quality consumer on-camera mic way to far from the soft spoken mother.
Had BG music pulled down to 12.9 db.
Voice pumped up high enough to hear the little disc spinning around on that nasy little camcorder.
Levels sounded acceptable during editing.
But from stand alone DVD player the soft spoken mom was often drowned out by BG music.
Why the difference?
Rendering in PCM rectify that?
Or changing the AC-3 settings?

[Ted Snow]

I wouldn’t think the settings would change your mix, just the overall level of the audio. You might try adding a parametric EQ to the audio track from the camera and try to pull out the noise of the camera. I have done this before with the audio of my old Digital8 camera. It always has a “whining” noise from the head spinning that is picked up by the onboard mic. Find a segment of the event that is quiet and loop that segment. Then do a pretty narrow cut with the EQ and sweep that cut back and forth while playing the loop until you find the offending noise.