I have 7 sessions of video/audio presentations each being 3 hours long. Does anyone have any ideas of a simple and time effective way to apply compression to the audio?

The files are roughly 1 to 1.5 gig each. Not terrible; but not overly simple to work with at times either.

Some of the speakers are fairly loud and project well. Others are more quiet. And of course the MC does a few LOUD shout outs to the crowd.

Any help/suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Unfortunately, unless you have a supercomputer, you will probably need to break those 7 clips down to more clips to allow you to open them in the DAW that you use. Whatever compression settings you end up using, you'll need to save those to a preset so you can apply them to the other clips. What video editor are you using? Are you just splitting the audio out in your video editor, then handling the compression in an audio editor? Does your video editor have an audio tool to handle compression right in there so you don't have to use a separate DAW?

Looking forward to hearing your responses on this.

Hi
I guess that is the video size not the sound file.
As Steve says this is some task ,
Do you still have the sound available from a separate track in the original videos,
Was it ever available post video production as an audio recording or did the camera embed it in the video.
Or has it already been rendered into the composite video MP4 file or what other movie format you use.

Worse case would be to record the sound off the clip then work on the audio do not change its time of cut in any way . but you should be able to compress .
You would then have to make a new Video from your original with the sound muted,
Then overdub your new Audio in Sync.
This is why it is so important not to edit the sound or video while they are separated.
Let us know how you get on
Mike

Once the audio is broken out from the video and open in your preferred audio software program.

Here's how I think I'd approach it with the information you've provided so far:


. Set your DAW's waveform zoom levels so you can easily distinguish between high passages and low passages in the waveform.
. Highlight the higher passages and apply negative amplification to lower the gain of the high section to be more in level with the lower sections without losing vocal
clarity. It's trial and error. Use your ears and work your way through the entire file. In this step, you're manually adjusting the overall track gain.
. Normalize the entire file to -6 to -12 db
. Lightly compress the entire file to further tame peaks and gently level the amplification edits.
. Apply a limiter to bring the overall level up.

This should allow you to equalize the volume levels without raising up the noise floor and ambient background noise to much.

Great stuff Mike and Charlie....



Mike, I'm a little confused on your answer on this one. Some of the video editors I've worked with allow you to split off audio from the video clip so you wouldn't have to lose a generation of the original to a copy. I swap in updated audio files all the time with Cyberlink Power Director video tool. That one also has a nice audio sync feature that allows you to sync up original and edited audio tracks to the frame before you delete the original.

Thanks for what you've provided so far!

HI Steve
Yes indeed some video editors are very good, at teasing it out.
But getting hold of the audio separately from some previous merges and interleave into the video, Is not always easy.
Great if you have a separate in sync Audio recording from the film but that’s the stuff of movies and Clapperboards lol. Spent a bit of time as a film extra over the years on odd occasions. So a bit spoilt for sound on film and video production.
None the less the original task should be a possibility with care.

Mike

Thanks sir! Hope all this helps HTL.

Ok, reporting back. I ended up using a number of ideas from the post. Overall, I simply dragged each video into a daw, added compression to the audio track end exported with the effect. Then I imported that track into the video editor and muted the original audio track. It was very easy to line up because I didn't change anything in the audio beyond compression.

It really is one of those pull it in, walk away, save and walk away. It takes time for sure.

I used less taxing software to help speed things up...Reaper and Vegas. I'm running Win 10 w/ 64 Gig of ram, so not the most but not a Timex Sinclair 1000 either. I'm hoping some of you will laugh at that.

Thank you VERY much for the helpful suggestions. I, at best, had ideas. It's so much better starting with words of wisdom like I got here. Experience is type of thing. I greatly appreciate it.

Glad it worked out for you.

Owned a couple of those in the day...… Hehe.... Glad you got it handled sir!

Audacity could probably do this for you. I never tried on a long clip though.

I always wanted a Sinclair but Moore’s law outpaced my desire!