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MPG-2 Audio levels
Hello,
We are a small TV station and right now I burn a DVD of our tv show and then encode the dvd to MPEG-2 so we can air it off a hard drive. I’m trying to skip the DVD burning step and create the MPEG-2 by exporting it from Final Cut.I have learned that I get two files, one for audio and one for video. I use MPEG Stream Clip to combine them into one MPEG-2 file.
Here is my question: When I play the MPEG file on-air the volume is low, about a 4 on our Mackie mixer. I would like to to be at 0. I can’t adjust the levels on the mixer since all our other programming/feeds seem to be ok. The sliders are set a U (where they should be) and the Trim or gain is up about 1/4th of the way.
The meters in Final Cut show -12 when I’m working on the program.
Why would the volume be so low? I guess I could always go into final cut and raise the volume, but if it is at -12 in the digital world shouldn’t that equate to 0 on the mackie mixer?
(I did this test by exporting bars and tone from final cut)
Any ideas would be appreciated!
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2 Replies
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We use FCP/DVDSP, but are not impressed with the performance of ANY of the available software MPEG2/AC3 encoders, one reason being that you can’t control audio levels during the encoding process.
For our workflow, we lay video back to tape, then encode via the Optibase Moviemaker 200 hardware MPEG2/AC3 encoder. The MPEG manager software inlcuded with the board allows you to adjust the audio input up to 12dB, which is more than enough to get you back to 0 (or -20 in digital audio) but we tend to ride our levels a little higher than that.
The boost in audio levels in the encoding process brings the DVD (AC3) up to pre-encoded levels, but does not introduce any extra noise.
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When I export for a ref movie for DVD, i always bring up the audio levels in soundtrack pro. Since the broadcast levels and DVD levels seem to vary wildly it helps out a ton. I then encode whatever I need form that file. If working in AC3 i turn off the normalization from -27db (default) to -30db. This gets rid of any further compression and is essentially a levels pass through when encoding to AC3.
Also, you don’t have to use Mpeg streamclip to make a transport stream. Look in compressor 2 and you can find that Compressor will mux the files for you. Select a video setting, click on the encoder button and then click the extras tab.
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