Comments

AlistairLock wrote on 12/10/2003, 5:34 AM
If your sound card has meters you can use them, but they may not give you much relevant information, depending on the sound card.

In my studio all output from my soundcard (an RME Hammerfall DIGI 96) goes through my DAT machine, which is permanently hooked up via balanced XLR to my PPM meters. I have various mixer set-ups for DVD monitoring, and general sound monitoring for when I am working on sound, or recording music.

SF7 (when you're not having trouble with effects working as demos, MPEG encoders working/not working) now has an internal PPM as well as the straightforward digital level meter. If you have a multi-channel sound card you can get SF (when etc. etc...) to monitor and display on the PPMs the output from your (I'm presuming here) software DVD player.

By the way, PPM = Peak Program Meter.

On the PPM, nothing should go above 6 (the loudest bang, the loudest music), and on a commercial film dialogue levels would be around 2.5 to 4, whereas television programme dialogue would hover around 4.

Is this the sort of information you're looking for?
craftech wrote on 12/10/2003, 6:22 AM
It is based upon a dialog normalization level of -31db. See my earlier post:
http://www.mediasoftware.sonypictures.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?Forum=4&MessageID=232062

John
Maxter wrote on 12/10/2003, 1:48 PM
Heres what I have been doing, This is from the posts I have been reading on the Pro tools post audio forum-regarding post levels (which i still dont fully understand)



I have the Waves L2 on my master bus set to -8 threshold and -8 Out ceiling. Then on my dialog bus I watch to see the levels push right up to the L2 out ceiling. On the music buses, I watch to see that they peak just below the L2 out ceiling so the music doent get as squahed.

This seems to be working inside VV but I have no ac3 experience so I have no way of knowing if this will render well.

I wasnt even aware that the ac3 encoded did all that to the audio levels.

this DVD has ALOT of music; and narration. Some parts are just background music and others the music will play by itself.

Im not even sure if I should use ac3 only for the 5.1 and PCM for the stereo audio. (there is only 1 chapter of 20 chapters that has a 5.1 mix. the rest is stereo.




any other advice is appreciated.


Maxter wrote on 12/10/2003, 5:03 PM
OK so I read

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=0a1599cbc26dc2c008d05f742ebbcb46&threadid=56020

and it says to set dialog normilasation in the AC3 encoder to the Sound Forge RMS Level (the one the comes from running the "scan levels" in Normilization in SF)

Is this right?

My RMS level is -14.8- Posssibly because I have brick Wall limiting with the L2 in VV on the master bus. Should I try to raise my RMS level in VV to get it closer to the default -27 db of the ac3 encoder?
thrillcat wrote on 12/11/2003, 8:47 AM
If your level is -14.8, just set the dialog normalization level in the ac3 render dialog to -15, from the default of -27.

craftech wrote on 12/11/2003, 9:46 AM
If your level is -14.8, just set the dialog normalization level in the ac3 render dialog to -15, from the default of -27
=========
That will LOWER the overall volume. See my post.

John