Equalizing

[Jerry Hofmann]

Add a gain filter to the clips that you want to make louder. You can do it in FCP too.

Jerry

Apple Certified Trainer, Producer, Writer, Director Editor, Gun for Hire and other things. I ski. My Blog: https://blogs.creativecow.net/Jerry-Hofmann

Current DVD:
https://store.creativecow.net/p/81/jerry_hofmanns_final_cut_system_setup

8-Core 3.0 Intel Mac Pro, Dual 2 gig G5, AJA Kona SD, AJA Kona 2, Huge Systems Array UL3D, AJA Io HD, 17″ MBP, Matrox MXO2 with MAX – Cinema Displays I have a 22″ that I paid 4k for still working. G4 with Kona SD card, and SCSI card.

[Andrew Zador]

Thank you, but it is a little more complicated. I want to equalize several different clips with different level of background tones. I want the spoken words louder, while the background tone does not change, or changes very little.

[Andrew Rendell]

You could try using an expander effect, in principle you can set the threshold a little higher than the background noise and put more gain in for louder sounds, i.e., the speech. Alternatively, you could use an expander in noise-gate mode (or use a simple noise gate) to reduce the gain for sound below the threshold level, setting the gain for the speech manually, then mixing in some background noise on another track to even that out (because your gated track will sound rather unnatural if you don’t).

Either way, my experience is that it’s quite fiddly to find the sweet spot that sounds “right” though. TBH, keyframing gain levels can often get a better sounding result but that’s enormously time consuming.

Good luck.