Audio Normalization Answered

[zeroarmy27]

Are you constantly adjusting the volume in movies? Music, explosions, gunshots, etc. too loud? Conversations too quiet? If this is your problem, read on. I am combining information found in multiple threads for convenience.

Navigate to Tools>Preferences. Select Audio. Check the "Normalize volume to:" box and set the value to 1.6
Now switch to Advanced view by selecting "All" in the "Show Settings" box at the bottom left
Expand "Audio" and highlight "Filters". Check the "Volume Normalizer" box. You should see "normvol" added to the text box at the bottom
Expand "Filters" and highlight "Volume Normalizer". Set "Number of audio buffers" to 10 and "Maximal volume level" to 1.6
Hit the "Save" button at the bottom
Restart VLC, as settings are not applied until restart. As I did this in increments, you may have to apply one step, save, and restart VLC between for menu options to be present. I haven't tested applying all settings at once, but I believe you can do this all at once.
Double-check all settings are correct after VLC is restarted.

I hope this helps.

[SecludedBeing]

Yes It helps thank you very much....

[vecttra]

Thank you for your information

[crazygoji]

Thank you very much. This is great.

[Pingus]

Thank you This has been bugging me for years! Kudos for the clear and effective instructions.

[sunildetecvision]

Thank you very much for such a great information.
Keep it up

[aterimperator]

I created an account just to say: thank you very much.

[awl19]

Thanks so much for this. I actually created an account and I was about to post a thread when I saw this one. Should be stickied. Do you know if this runs across all videos you play? That's the actual problem I'm having. I'll put on like 15 episodes of South Park or something when I go to sleep and one episode will end up having ridiculously loud volume and I have to get out of bed after sleeping for 3 hours to take the episode out. So does this just work to normalize the particular video you are watching at that time or does it normalize all the videos you have in your playlist to 1 solitary volume?

Thanks again,
awl19

[geist04]

Thank you!!!

[angelacat]

Thank you for instruction! Very helpful

[dr_always]

This always used to drive me crazy but not anymore! Thank you thank you, I didn't know this was even possible until I saw this.

[rorybreaker]

Long time user and subscriber, signed up solely to thank you for this info.

[rxx2jp]

Just registered to say thank you so much for this!

I was trying to watch Thor earlier using the BluRay player in my PC but the dialogue was so quiet that when it reached the noisy fight scenes (which go on for quite some time!) the neighbours actually knocked on the door to ask us to turn it down. Mortifying! Meant we had to ride the volume meter for the rest of the film, somewhat diminishing my enjoyment.

This seems to have cured the issue. Thank you so much!

[Tracy Weissgerber]

Just wanted to let you know this audio answer helped immensely. Thank you videolan for these forums and thank you for this answer.

[Durso]

It's 5am here so i've just put on a film here to fall asleep and as per usual i'm worried about the volume waking people up on actions bits as i have to set it high to hear the conversations, But this has really helped even out the volumes, Again i'm one of the grateful one's who specificity signed up to say Thanks, So Thank You very much

[shpaint1]

worked great, thanks!

[ryanhutchings]

Thanks a lot. Been looking for this fix for a while.

[vato76]

Are you constantly adjusting the volume in movies? Music, explosions, gunshots, etc. too loud? Conversations too quiet? If this is your problem, read on. I am combining information found in multiple threads for convenience.

Navigate to Tools>Preferences. Select Audio. Check the "Normalize volume to:" box and set the value to 1.6

i dont have a "Normalize volume to" box in the audio tab of preferences. where is it?

[ruxp1n]

Registered specifically to thank you for this post. I've missed out on a lot over the years, with no fix or resolution for the maddening sound issue. Bravo!

[loninappleton]

This has been a helpful thread to show the intricacies of VLC. However I am having a problems after doing the procedure.

The content starts out low which I'm aware of from the source disk. I checked the source disk and it has some very wide volume variations.

After doing the procedure and experimenting up to a level of 10.0 I hear no change.

The only way I get the low volume up is jacking the on screen volume level up to 200%. But that simply makes the louder parts louder.

This particular original disk is, no doubt, an unusual case since its audio production values are pretty low and were not checked before the item was released.

Elsewhere I have asked at videohelp.com if there is a way to work on the audio portion copied from the original disk.
That requires demuxing a file and massaging it in a video editor such as Audacity which is a free program. But what occurs to me is that this is what the VLC player settings do as the media plays.

Admins at VLC please add remarks if you can think of anything.

[MrV001]

......

set the value to 1.6
......Set "Number of audio buffers" to 10 and ..."Maximal volume level" to 1.6

How does those settings affect the amount of Normalization?

For example. With perfect normalization every sound would be the same intensity. Right? If that were to occur then moments of quiet might get odd sounding as
the volume were equal to louder sounds like racing cars.

If it were less than perfect like = 0 then it would be off.

So are there settings between total normalization and the equivalent of no normalization?

Can someone explain how to set it on a little bit or on a lot ?

Thanks!

[loninappleton]

I have since seen another source on this and the settings are a bit different:

quoting:

"Some media players like Winamp have special plugins that bring all volume levels near an average you can decide. I use the VLC player for videos because I find it convenient, yet a dynamic volume plugin seems not to be available for this player. There is not such an option in VLC itself. However, you can make a few very easy adjustments to achieve almost perfect dynamic volume and avoid extreme loudness.

Go to the *Audio Preferences* of VLC (in *simple* mode) and make these adjustments:

*1*) Set the default volume to 200%, *2*) Set “replay gain mode” to None, *3*) Check the “Volume normalize” option, and *4*) Set the value at the right of Volume Normalize to “0.50?.

This configuration will work at least when you use *Wave* output.

It will not make the soft sounds louder, it will only decrease automatically the volume when it becomes too high. This way you can have the master volume (of the amplifier or the PC) loud enough in order to hear normal dialogues, and when someone in the movie shouts, or there is gunshot, etc, sound volume will automatically decrease. You will enjoy the goods of an auto gain function, without losing completely the dynamics of a movie.

If my configuration is not “exactly” what you need, just play with the Normalizer value, set it to 0.30, or to 0.80, etc., leaving the other adjustments as they are."

[ends]


These settings are different and do not require going into the complex (as opposed to simple) setup that VLC offers as options. The volume is raised and the normalization halved which is a substantial difference. I would add turn off multichannel sound as well and select simple stereo.


Also Media Player Classic Home Cinema (MPC-HC) is described as having an on-the fly normalization by videohelp regular hello_hello here:

This thread is located at:
http://forum.videohelp.com/threads/3478 ... to=newpost

***************
I don't know of any encoding programs which "compress" the audio, if that's what you mean by normalization.

MPC-HC does "on the fly" volume normalizing. It's under Audio Switcher in options. I've never used it myself.
If you disable the types of audio you'll find in video files under Internal Filters/Transform Filters (AC3, AAC, MP3 etc) it stops MPC-HC from decoding those audio types itself, and if you have ffdshow (http://www.videohelp.com/tools/ffdshow) installed, it can be used to decode the audio. That's generally what I do.

ffdshow also does the same "on the fly" normalizing as MPC-HC (you'll find it under the Volume filter). The "on the fly" normalizing is better than nothing, but I'm not crazy about it. Basically it slowly turns the volume up until a set level is reached, then when a louder peak occurs it quickly turns it down again, then it slowly turns it up...... I can often hear it and find it annoying, but I guess it's better than keeping everyone awake. Something else to try......

ffdshow can use Winamp (http://www.videohelp.com/tools/Winamp) plugins, so that gave me an idea to look for a Winamp audio compressor, and after trying a few, settled on this one: http://www.winamp.com/plugin/rocksteady-2-1/1099
Once it's "installed" in the ffdshow audio decoder (there's a Winamp2 filter in ffdshow) you can then configure the compressor. I tried lots of settings, and eventually settled on these. They turn the volume up and down so fast I can't tell it's happening.

Amplify up to level of: -1db
Full amplification up to: 25%
Maximum amplification: 15db
Amplification gain time: 10ms
Smart limiting: Yes
Joint stereo: yes
RMS window width: 75ms
Position in rms window: 100%
Calculate rms level per: 32 samples

If you want more compression, just crank up the maximum amplification, but I find once you go over about 15db, you'll start to hear the volume of really low background noise "pumping" at times.

I have ffdshow's filters ordered this way (you can drag and drop them to change position).
Volume: I have it set to -6db as the compressor plugin seems to work better if the peaks and already at 0db.
Mixer: Set to mix to stereo. I don't know if the compressor will work for multichannel audio, I've never tried it.
Winamp 2: Runs the Rock Steady plugin
Equalizer: Optional, of course.
..... snip .....
Forum

[ends]

I have not considered switching to MPC-HC but there might be benefits of doing so. Or FFdshow which I'm not familiar with at all. In any case once the problem is solved we should no longer have to reinvent the wheel.
Note where hello-hello says the volumes goes up and down noticeably (as the processing is taking place no doubt.)

After making the adjustments as described for VLC I thought I heard something similar and it is distracting. But to really get the full effect, I've noticed action shows like the anime Appleseed which as a lot of shooting various things would really provide an obvious test. I was jumping up and down all through Appleseed ExMachina.

[loninappleton]

Keeping this thread going I think I have the hang of it now.

But raising the volume to 200% default will blast you out at restart. Also I find that any bright colors on the
player window such that which displays if 200% is used is distracting. I don't like the time index bubble on the new version for the same reason.

Back on topic: I settled on keeping the volume out of the red range and in the less distracting yellow. This means you can set the default volume to something like 17%. Then decrease the Normalization even more to below 50%: I'm using 30% and intend to try 20%.

I don't know if there is some "primo" way to test this: some DVD which has outrageous variations in levels? Recently I viewed the anime "Appleseed" and was jumping up and down during the late night to keep peace in the apartment building. I may try that one again just to see if this is starting to work consistently and with no dropdowns as described previously.

[kartal]

Hi

This fix does not work on 2.1.0. It feels like the frigging thing is hardcoded

[loninappleton]

I hope others respond to this since I've had on mostly old movies -- black and white ones from the 40's and 50's where this was much less of an issue unless someone botched the AVI or MKV to begin with.

I am using the current version (8-30-12) of 2.02 -- one of the few progs. whose updates I accept with no fuss.