ASK & DISCUSS INDEX

6 years, 1 month ago - Alwyne Kennedy

Why not adjust the volume levels of each song in Premiere so that they sound equally loud?

6 years, 1 month ago - Andrew Ionides

Thanks Alwyne. You mean just adjust the gain/decibel setting whilst in edit mode?

6 years, 1 month ago - Alwyne Kennedy

Yes. With the songs in individual clips, each clip will have a Volume effect showing in the Effects Controls panel. Adjust the level to whatever you want. Do understand that you should aim to have the song stay under 0db on the Level Meter. That is, no song should should ever go over 0db at any time. Better still, make -3dB your top limit to give a bit of headroom.

6 years, 1 month ago - Andrew Ionides

Wonderful. Thank you Alwyne I'll try that.

I don't suppose you know the best export settings or does that not really matter? It will be played on two screens from a sound technician's laptop so not sure if that makes a difference to settings.

6 years, 1 month ago - Barry Ryerson

This is quite a common problem with playlists because all songs have a different volumes. I don't know if Premier has an audio compressor effect you can apply to the audio tracks, but compressing it gently can help even out the dynamics. That said, if you're not sure what you're doing with compressor settings it's far too easy to make it sound worse, not better!

6 years, 1 month ago - Andrew Ionides

Thanks Barry. Yes I think you're right about the compressor effect. I think it's a multi-band compressor effect. I may have to try it with each track but another good tip! Thank you

6 years, 1 month ago - Tim Benjamin

It's not as simple as adjusting the volume, although if this works for you, then fine, read no further :-) I'm assuming they are pop / dance / mass-market tracks, right? Then each track will probably have been mastered in order to give a maximum perceived attention-grabbing "loudness", even though they all probably peak at the same level. Perceived loudness is a whole complex topic... And if not commercial pop tracks, some may have been mastered to -1db, some to 0db, some might be clipped as they've been recycled from elsewhere, etc etc. But basically, I think the answer above which recommends a compressor rather than merely adjusting the volume levels is the best way forward. Or a mastering plugin such as Ozone that has several tools built in (including a compressor), with easy-to-use presets.

Another (easier?) approach would be to record the music for each song from Spotify, onto your computer. There, all this volume-matching magic is more or less done for you as part of their ingestion process. Hence a playlist on Spotify generally sounds at the same perceived loudness throughout, and they have a "normalize volume" option in their settings panel to help things further if not. Then just lay the Spotify-sourced audio tracks over the video (and hope that the Spotify release is the same version of the track as the video release!)

6 years, 1 month ago - Andrew Ionides

Thank you Tim. I'm guessing that is why some songs are louder than others because they have been mastered differently (some songs have been ripped from a mixture of old and re-mastered albums). The Spotify technique is interesting and I shall certainly try that if the compressor technique is too time-consuming.

I should've said at the beginning of the post but we do actually have a sound technician at our wedding who will be playing the playlist off a laptop which will be connected to two screens. We're hoping that perhaps he can simply adjust the levels while the playlist is playing. I think I just wanted to create less work for him by getting the sound levels right in the first place (I guess that's my filmmaker-perfectionist mentality kicking in! ha).