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Question to track compressor
What setting could you recommend me for voiceovers? When my narrator speaks – some words are very loud and some of them are very quiet (I told her about it, but it seem she cant do anything about it ). I could correct it manually, but its very time consuming. I heard audio compressor may help, but I have no experience with it.
What settings could you recommend me? Important notice: according to my client, my video has follow some technical parameters: the audio has to be at -12db audio level (and can reach -9db only occasionally).
Thanks for any help! -
7 Replies
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You can start with a 2:1 compression at -18db and if you need more increase the Amount slider. If you set your Output gain to -12db it will not exceed that. If some of the audio is still too low, decrease the Threshold. This sets the point at which the compressor kicks in.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
Thanks John!
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One more question – if I want to raise overall audio level I will do that by increasing input gain?
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Overall audio level = I mean overall volume of the voiceover…
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The first thing I would do is turn normalize on for the audio event. That will make sure that the audio you have is using the full volume available. If there are areas that have loud peaks you could split them into their own events to get more normalization on the lower parts. You can also raise the volume on the track itself. If none of that is enough, then you can raise the input gain but make sure that it doesn’t cause any digital clipping.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
Thanks. That’s a good comment. I’m shooting interviews with movie critics and I’m using movie trailers and clips between those interviews. Movie trailers have sometimes very high dynamic range – some shots are very quiet and then something explodes and the sound is suddenly too loud. I was using the volume envelope for adjusting audio level of some parts (where dynamic range was too extreme), but thats really time consuming. I’ll try that normalize trick…
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You also might want to download a free tool called The Levalator. It is a specialized normalizer for podcast work which is mostly interviews and should work really well in your case. I use it for live stage plays and it really works well in most cases with minimal tweaking afterward.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com
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