Audio volume

[Quentinstjames]

I have a problem and I am new to using Premiere Pro.  I recorded some video messages for my grandmothers birthday and using Premiere to edit them.  I added some music tracks she likes as background music but they are too loud and its hard to hear anything being said.  And how can I adjust the audio of different video so that some are not too loud while others are not too quiet?

 

Thanks,

Quentin St-James

[AkiraDaarkst]

13 minutes ago, Quentinstjames said:

I have a problem and I am new to using Premiere Pro.  I recorded some video messages for my grandmothers birthday and using Premiere to edit them.  I added some music tracks she likes as background music but they are too loud and its hard to hear anything being said.  And how can I adjust the audio of different video so that some are not too loud while others are not too quiet?

 

Thanks,

Quentin St-James

For the music tracks, what you can do:

• Select the music tracks in the Sequence's timeline
• Right click on it, select Audio Gain
• Select "Adjust Gain by" and set a negative value.  Don't go for a large decrease, usually something like -10dB should be more than enough.
• Look at the audio levels in the Premiere panel
• You can also preview the audio tracks one track at a time by muting other tracks or soloing only one track to be heard.
• If your dialog tracks' audio peaks at around -10dB it will be fine and if your music tracks peak at around -15dB or -20dB, give or take a few decibels, it should be OK.  Play around with the Audio Gain settings until you think it sounds right.  The music tracks' audio should be sufficiently lower than the dialog tracks for the dialog to be audible.

For equalizing the audio levels of the various audio tracks from different video clips, similarly just play around with the Audio Gain settings until they sound right to you.  Also, when I say "sound right" I mean they sound loud enough without having to crank up the volume control on your computer or speakers to the maximum.

 

By the way, if you used the same audio settings when filming you shouldn't really have video clips with too big a difference in loudness levels.

[Quentinstjames]

Is there any way to adjust volume levels to match automatically?  Also is there any way to fade in and fade out audio in Premiere?

 

6 minutes ago, AkiraDaarkst said:

By the way, if you used the same audio settings when filming you shouldn't really have video clips with too big a difference in loudness levels.

I used the same settings.  Nothing on the camera was changed, it's just my dad and brother have a loud voice and my mom and sister are quiet.

[AkiraDaarkst]

12 minutes ago, Quentinstjames said:

Is there any way to adjust volume levels to match automatically?  Also is there any way to fade in and fade out audio in Premiere?

 

I used the same settings.  Nothing on the camera was changed, it's just my dad and brother have a loud voice and my mom and sister are quiet.

You should always check the audio levels before filming, and adjust as necessary for the person speaking if you have different speakers.  I thought you were recording only yourself.

 

Look under Audio Transitions in the Effects Panel, you have three options available to you.  Try out each one, though I tend to prefer Constant Power and Exponential Fade more than Constant Gain.

 

There is something called Loudness Equalization you can apply when rendering out the final video, but if you played around with Audio Gain settings correctly you wouldn't really need to apply Loudness Equalization.  Also, Loudness Equalization is mainly intended for videos that will be broadcasted, for home videos it may not be necessary if you adjusted the gain correctly to your taste because equalizing loudness with a preset can alter what you have done.

 

You can also do more advanced stuff in Adobe Audition, which is the tool for sound editing.

 

Play around with the manual adjustments first, in Premiere you can even set keyframes to the Audio tracks' volume and have the volume change at different timecodes.  I find manually editing to produce much better results than quickly jumping to use automatic adjust tools.

[Quentinstjames]

Thanks AkiraDaarkst.  I'm still new to the whole video editing thing.  Should I download Audition?  I am using Premiere with the trial period.

 

I'll try out the stuff you said and come back later if more questions pop up.

[AkiraDaarkst]

6 minutes ago, Quentinstjames said:

Thanks AkiraDaarkst.  I'm still new to the whole video editing thing.  Should I download Audition?  I am using Premiere with the trial period.

 

I'll try out the stuff you said and come back later if more questions pop up.

Try just the tools in Premiere first, if it doesn't give you the results you want then, only then, get Audition.  Otherwise you will be overwhelmed with so many options you won't know what to do.  It takes time to learn.