[Kevin Mccarthy]

Debbie,
I have been doing audio for more than 30 years and some of the information you have gotten is completely backwards to the way
I do things. 1st do your noise reduction. Noise is much easier to remove before you boost the noise floor by compressing and normalizing. If you do those first you will be increasing the noise floor and asking your noise reduction program to do double or triple duty.

One thing to remember is that audio recorded in different locations will have different noise levels, so you should do the noise reduction for each location separately.

At this point I render all audio to a single track and go to my external audio editor to work on it as a single file. John is correct that Vegas does normalization piece by piece and that is definitely not what you want to do. It is way too time consuming.

Then I compress the files. Compression levels the audio by boosting low volumes and knocking down high peaks. This reduces the overall frequency band width so I never compress more than a 5:1 ratio. Anything more than that can make your audio sound muddy.

Higher compression ratios will give a thin voice more “balls” but will squish your audio to a point you won’t like.

Now is the time to adjust various volume levels within the file to your liking. Do this before normalizing..more on that later. Then IF, and ONLY IF, you have severe noise problems you might try another noise reduction on only those areas. This is very seldom needed unless you have a really poor audio recording, ie; on-board camera mic instead of a lav or shotgun mic.

If the noise source is similar to a “hiss” you may be able to correct this with equalization by rolling off the high end frequencies rather than another noise reduction effort.

If you have done a good job adjusting the volume of the different areas and then the overall volume of the track, you may not need to normalize.

Normalization doesn’t make your volume levels go “all over the place” It merely brings all the audio, proportionately, to the max level you set.

If you highest volume in the track is at 75db and your lowest level is at 50db and you then normalize to 90db, the high level will be boosted by 15db to 90db and the lowest level will be boosted by the same 15db to 65db. It bring the total volume to a specific level but it does not change the levels between segments by different amounts.

I then open a new audio track in Vegas and place the single file on it and mute the original, multiple segment, audio track.

Rule of thumb 1. noise reduction 2.compress 3. level your volumes 4. normalize if needed.

Cheers

Kevin

[Kevin Mccarthy]

If you have a music only video with no narration I would compress and then normalize the track to about 90% as the final action. Normalization will bring you audio to a set level, in this case 90%. It boosts all levels in the same amount, so, if the loudest part gets raised by 15db to get to the 90% level, the lowest level will also be raised by 15%, so it will not affect the dynamics of the music. It simply bring the overall level to the most efficient level for replay.

I very seldom ever compress anything more that 5:1 ratio. Above that level, compression will make any file start to sound “muddy”

If you are doing music videos you should do this separately for each song. That way the volume level will be close to the same for each song, making it easier to listen to. The listener will not have to adjust the volume level for each song to his/her preference.

If your video includes a narration and you are speaking of compressing only the music bed, I would say no to compressing it as a separate track.

Compression “averages” the high and low dynamic peaks. It will therefore change the perceived volume level for the music track and you will probably find that you will have to remix the narration with this new level.

Compression will “thicken” the sound of an audio track and in the case of a narration, give the voice more “balls”. This will make it seem to have a more constant level. I compress a voice track after doing any needed noise level reduction. (if you compress and then try to remove noise it won’t work as well because the noise level will be “sucked up” by the compression making even harder to remove the noise levels) I then normalize the audio to about 90% a to give me a more consistent voice level. That will make it much easier to mix my music levels.

In that scenario I don’t compress the music at all unless it has really wild dynamic peaks. But, if I did a good mix, I probably will not have to do that anyway.

When I have the mix I like I simply do another 90% normalization if needed to set my final levels.

Think of compression as putting your thumb over a garden hose to increase the distance the water will squirt. It doesn’t really change the amount of water coming out of the hose, it simply squeezes it into a different pattern.

[Kevin Mccarthy]

I would normalize after I had done my noise reduction, and compression at about 5 to 1. If your track still has some noise and the compression may bring up that noise level but if you can live with that it will level your a great deal. The normalizing should be the last processing you do.

It is much easier to normalize in you audio program as it will do the whole file at the same time. If you have a number of clips in vegas you would have to normalize each clip and the levels from clip to clip will give you a different over-all level after normalizing.

Cheers

Kevin

[Kevin Mccarthy]

Debbie

You are making a BIG mistake by normalizing first. That brings up the noise floor and then the noise reduction is trying to remove 5 “pounds” of noise instead of 5 “ounces”

The noise reduction programs will analyze the noise floor without having to normalize. It will hear the noise even if you can’t. Also, make sure you are analyzing a portion of your track that has no dialog otherwise it will be removing dialog as well as noise.

Normalizing should be the last thing you do to an audio file.

[Kevin Mccarthy]

Deb

One thing to remember, before you compress a sound file, be sure to do a noise reduction. When you compress an audio file it not only brings up the low volumes it also brings up the noise floor. Noise that may not be heard in the original file will be very evident after compressing the file.

I would then “normalize” all files to 90db. That way you will keep any file from going into distortion and will set all tracks to the same peak level

[Kevin Mccarthy]

I am reffering to the link in Steve Rohden’s post to download the youtube encoder

“Try this free plugin for your Sony AVC mp4 renders:
https://vegasaur.com/Video4YouTube
I use it for all my mp4 output.”

[Kevin Mccarthy]

MORE BAD NEWS…I ran a malware scan and found 5 pieces of malware installed by this attempt at downloading!!

COME ON GUYS…do you have to load up your downloads with this kind of crap!!

[Kevin Mccarthy]

DOWNLOAD LINK INSTALLED FOUR BS PROGRAMS AND DESTROYED MY DESKTOP!!!

I tried to download the programs and got Arcade Parlor, Blitz Media Player, Genio and PC Optimizer installed instead.

It destroyed my desktop and stole my homepage!

It took me almost two hours with my IT guy to get my computer back to normal!!

THIS REALLY SUCKS!!

btw; I never did get the Mp4 program!!!

[Kevin Mccarthy]

Thanks Steve.

It’s a precision T3500 with lots of fans, so I’m not too concerned about heat.

Thanks for your input, let me know when you need another voice-over.

Cheers

Kevin

[Kevin Mccarthy]

GoPro studio loads a lot of junk when installed. I could never get it to open properly and after uninstalling GoPro studio, none of my ote4r programs could use the CD/DVD drive. GoPro support sent me the following suggestion;

In some cases after installing GoPro Studio, other applications may report an error that states: “Error at loading if ippSP library – No DLLS were Found in the Waterfall procedure”.

If this occurs the solution is to browse to: C:\Windows\SysWOW64 and then remove these files:
1.ippcore-6.1
2.ippj-6.1
3.ippjw7-6 .. 1
4.IPPS-6.1
5.ippvc-6.1

After manually removing these files everything seems to be OK