FCP to DVDSP sound issue

S

Sajc05

Active member
I was wondering if anybody could venture a guess as to this sound problem i can't wrap my head around.

I've exported my movie into compressor made an mpeg2 for dvd and the audio file that accompanies it...

when i play the dvd back the sound is much lower than what my levels in FCP indicated they were which was between -12 and -6 ... so i went back to FCP and brought my levels up, made a new audio file for DVDSP brought it in and it was still low. so now i've taken my levels in FCP past where they should go, some peaks going into the red. my play back in FCP is loud, but not in DVDSP.

am i missing something?
 
it's normal and is due to the Dialog Normalization setting when encoding to AC-3 audio.

In Compressor, apply any of the DVD presets and select the audio encoding. In the Inspector under the Audio tab you will find the Dialog Normalization setting, which by default is set to -27 dBFS.

Basically, the idea behind dialog normalization is to tell the player of the DVD what the average level is of your audio so it can try and make the audio levels roughly the same between DVDs so the end user doesn't have to scramble for the remote each time. Dobly found that -31 dBFS is a good average level (not peak) for content and is the base.

If you know what the average level is, set it to that (remember that average level is not the same as peak level which is what the meter in FCP shows). For example, if your content averages at around -20, set it to that. Then your audio will be attenuated (reduced) by 11 dB by the player to match the -31 dBFS "normal" (since your source is louder).

If you don't want dialog normalization or don't know the average of your audio, then set it to -31 and no change will happen.

You can read more about it in the Compressor manual.
 
thanks a lot for the help, i'll try that out. hate popping in the dvd and having to crank the volume to hear at a decent level.
 
setting the dialogue norm to -31 didn't make much of a difference, could there be a setting in fcp that i'm missing in the export?

I have a lot of tracks with varying degrees of audio levels... would it help maybe if i take my music tracks and exported them as a different file on their own then brought it into dvdsp?
 
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