How do I set audio levels in vegas 11?

[Danny Hays]

We need more specifics. You can Normalize, use a Volume envelope or a compressor can automatically lower the louder portions of an audio track or event.

[Raf Erosa]

yes, that is what i was trying to say.. NORMALIZE.
Ok. I have tried the compressor, but it doesnt really do the trick for me. What are the standard ways to normalize audio in vegas? What settings should be used?

[Roger Bansemer]

Here is what we do for broadcast and maybe John Rofrano who is the expert can add to this.
1. Normalize if necessary but only if the audio is so low that it really doesn’t register on as a wavform on the timeline.
2. On each track level of audio use a compressor and set the threshhold to -24db.
(note: PBS requires that the audio average -24dB not to exceed anything within 2dB of that.
3. On the master bus use the wave hammer plugin and in the case of PBS it’s set to -6.0 dB for threshold, 2.0:1 Ratio, and Output Gain to 0.0dB.
This will keep the level from over going above -24dB no matter what.

4. Then the levels are checked using a loudness meter. This is totally different from setting the levels as this is for measuring the LEVELS OVER TIME but something required by PBS. This plugin is not a part of Vegas but there are free ones out there. Let me know if you need info about them. I then let the program run and see where the levels come out. Hopefully to -24dB. If they are high or low at that point I adjust the volume slider on each track and run the meter again.

I’m not an expert here. I have just enough knowledge to get the PBS technical evaluation to pass PBS standards. Maybe someone like John will be able to add to this complicated issue. This is a start and thanks to the forum to have gotten me past just such question.

[Raf Erosa]

ok, when you say normalize, are you saying that is a separate process than what is mentioned in steps 2 and 3? If normalization is different than those steps, how do I normalize and what are the steps?

Is there a loudness meter built into vegas? or do i need a separate system?

Ok, I am courious about programs like Wave hammer and other free software. (but if paid is better, then feel free to give me your suggestions.)
Thanx a bunch!

[Stephen Mann]

If it’s simple dialogue, I just use Levelator. It’s free and it just works.

Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com

[Danny Hays]

Right click on an audio event, switches, normalize. This will analize the whole waveform and boost it just before it clips. You can always just click on the top of each audio event and lower the blue line for the volume of that event. If you have a spike in a waveform, you may need to use and audio compresor or audio editor like Sound Forge to edit that spike.

[Roger Bansemer]

The trouble with just normalizing each clip is that you may get a lot more background noise in one event and less in another and the audio won’t be consistent. It really doesn’t solve the problem.
The wave hammer on the master bus will prevent any audio from going over a certain dB limit. That tab on the wave hammer is listed as “volume Maximizer” and the setting would be on the slider marked “output level”.
There is no easy solution for this at least doing stuff for PBS. There are a whole lot of steps involved in getting it right. They have a set of complicated and hard to understand guidelines which must be followed or the show will be rejected when they do a technical evaluation of the program that is sent to them for broadcast. Believe me, I know. I think local TV stations may have less stringent guidelines so it may be wise to ask the station what their audio limits and guidelines are. As I said before PBS requires not only that levels be set correctly, but the “levels over time” which is totally different be set correctly as well.
On the bright side, I have a friend who produced a show in Tampa and didn’t bother with audio levels at all and the station put whatever filters and clamps on it at the time of airing that were needed and it was was good to go.

[John Rofrano]

[Raf Erosa] “This is for broadcast TV. How do you pros do it?”

I was the finishing editor for Roger’s PBS series “Painting & Travel with Roger and Sarah Bansemer“. I have been wanting to put together a video tutorial on how to finish edit video and audio for Broadcast TV and your post makes me want to find the time to do it even more because this is way easier to show you in a video than explain it in text. Here are the basics:

NORMALIZE: is used to bring the loudest audio signal up to a certain level (usually 0dB) and raise the rest of the audio in direct proportion. This is NOT the way to make audio ready for broadcast. It is a FIX for poorly recorded audio. Use it only on audio that is significantly lower than the rest or if the whole recording was too low. Unfortunately, Normalize is very limited in Vegas Pro because it works at the individual event level and can make your audio very uneven across events as Roger pointed out. Only use it to fix really low audio.

WAVE HAMMER: This is a volume maximizer and brick wall limiter. We place Wave Hammer on the master audio bus as a brick wall limiter to make sure that nothing exceeds -10dB which is the maximum that any audio can be for PBS. Your broadcast station could be different.

TRACK COMPRESSOR: This is used to smooth out the volume on the audio tracks. I created a preset for Roger that uses 2:1 compression starting at -24dB because PBS requires all audio to have an average loudness of -24dB +/- 2dB. Your broadcast station may have different requirements. You need to understand them and stay within them. I use the Amount fader to apply more or less compression to bring the audio within -24dB as needed. If you pick up too much background noise when compressing you may need a plug-in like iZotope RX 2 Denoise to remove it.

LOUDNESS METER: This is the part that Vegas Pro doesn’t have. Please go to the Product Suggestion page and ask for one. You need to download a 3rd party loudness meter like ToneBoosters EBULoudness or the T-RackS Metering Suite in IK Multimedia T-RackS CS to measure loudness. It needs to be measured in the context of the whole show so if it’s a 30 minute show you need to measure the loudness over 30 minutes. Then you need to go back and adjust the parts that may be too low or too loud and measure again. It’s a long laborious process but over time you will get a feel for what compressor settings work for your program material and you will get better at it until you hit the mark on the first measure. Be prepared to be very frustrated at first or hire a finishing editor who knows what they are doing.

OTHER THINGS TO CONSIDER: You need to be careful that you don’t swap stereo channels and throw your audio out of phase. This will get your program rejected. This usually happens when you use the stereo input of your camera to record two mono tracks and you don’t split them out into mono in Vegas. I recently started using Waves Vocal Rider on the voice tracks to further smooth out the levels. It does a great job. If the broadcast specs say that music levels need to be different than dialog levels then you’ll need to use audio buses in Vegas to route your tracks to and place the compressors on the buses to make the levels comply. Make sure that anything you place on the Master Audio Bus (like Wave Hammer) doesn’t alter your -20dB Test Tone under your bars & tone. You’ll need to compensate for that with the volume maximizer in Wave Hammer so that -20dB always reads -20dB. Of course any settings I have discussed must match the settings that the broadcaster gives you for their station. Every broadcaster is slightly different (you didn’t think there was a standard that everyone uses did you… that would be too easy. lol)

Good luck and feel free to ask more questions.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Grzegorz Kwiatkowski]

Wow, I just checked Levelator and it’s a fine tool with good algorithms but it doesn’t process audio in video files, so it’s actually useless for me. It doesn’t work as a vst plugin too or maybe I am wrong?

[John Rofrano]

[Grzegorz Kwiatkowski] “Wow, I just checked Levelator and it’s a fine tool with good algorithms but it doesn’t process audio in video files, so it’s actually useless for me. It doesn’t work as a vst plugin too or maybe I am wrong?”

You are not wrong. Levelator was written to process podcasts. It’s prime function is to make all of the voices in the podcast be the same volume. As such is knows nothing about video and expects to get an audio file in and produces an audio file out. Therefore it is not a VST plug-in or anything.

What you must do is render your audio to a wav file, feed it to Levelator and then replace your audio with the Levelator output. The output is sometimes acceptable but sometimes a lot of the background noise gets raised too high and you need to denoise it. It’s still a good tool to have in your kit. Once again, it’s a fix for poorly recorded audio.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com