Applied Compressor and Normalize and Audio is Muted

When I do playback from timeline, the audio sounds pretty good, but when I export it, I have a lot of variance on volume, etc. So I decided to try Normalize and Compressor on the entire audio track, which consists of many short voice over clips.

When I export to either a mp5 or mov file, the audio goes mute. I feel I’m not correctly applying the filter, but from what I have watched and read, it looks correct.

I clicked on the track header for highlight the entire track and then added the filters. I thought this would cover all audio tracks… however, I do note that if I do this and then go back into one individual audio clip, it doesn’t look like the filters have been applied. (Not sure if it should, but it doesn’t.)

I’m not sure how to solve this problem.

Perhaps related (perhaps not?). When I add a video clip and I mute the video (so that my voice over track will play without interference from video audio, IF the video has a long pause at the front, then it impacts my voice over (basically mutes my voice over, but since it is a pause on the front of the video, I end up with dead air.). I work around this by clipping the pause from the video, but not sure why this happens.

Anyway, maybe too many questions in one post. Most important is trying to get the exported audio to sound correct.

Thanks very much for any help!

Can you share a screenshot of the project where you see the tracks?
Sometimes, users include by mistake some filter in the “output” track and that modifies all the behavior of the tracks below (V1-V2-A1-etc).
The other queries, you should look more deeply into what is happening, but more data is needed on what effects are included in the clips and the order in which they are placed.

Sorry for delay.

Not sure if this is what you need. I can also send you the mlt file if I need to. This is for a university project I am doing (I am not a student; I work in the Continuing Education department.)

On this one:
I have a three video tracks; LOGO is what I use when I want the Logos of companies we use on the screen at the same time as the main video track.

Text is the track I use to emphasize the main audio when I need to.

Main is just the main video track. It consists of the university mascot doing different things (the premise of the video is that the university mascot is explaining various tools and processes the Cont Ed group uses.). For this track I’m using just different clips from the university site and / or from youtube/facebook. Some of these clips are pretty poor quality (low res) which doesn’t help the overall look of the project, but working with what I have.

Video track 4 is just a screen saver I use to “pad” the main videos when needed.

Audio track 1 is the main audio track. I’m using an AI voice and recording each sentence as a separate file in order to easily be able to change them later if needed.

Audio track 2 is my background music.

Since I’m recording all sentences in Aud1 separately, they have a lot of variance in them (I’m not sure why since I did them all at the same time using the AI program and Soundflower to directly input the audio into a file.). To correct the variance, I tried to use Compress and/or Normalize. One problem is that I probably don’t know/understand the setting in Normalize. However, if I use Normalize (or compress), it mutes the entire clip instead of correcting it.

I tried to apply these audio filters to the entire track by clicking on the track header, but that didn’t seem to work. So I applied to the first audio clip, then did a copy / paste of the filters to the other clips. But then I had all of the clips being muted.

OK So wrote this last night and tried again, with just compressor on all audio clips… seems better but there are big “cracks” or "clicks: between audio clips. I’m playing with it today and will see how it goes. Let me know if you have suggestions.

I may try and just do audio by itself then video and put together… does that ever seem to work?

Thanks much.

I made a simple audio project with m4a and mp3 files.
Apply the compressor filter to the A1 track. The settings responded as expected (you can see how the Gain Reduction meter is reacting when I play the track)


The export (Youtube video profile) did not produce any crunching or additional problems.
I also did a test with the normalizing filter 1 pass.
I made some adjustments to make the operation evident (low target sonority and a wide measurement range or analysis window). As in the previous case, the Gain Reduction meter is working. No problem in exporting with the same Youtube profile.

In the animated GIFs, you can see that I used clips with different input loudness (which require more volume reduction.
Although the A2 track is muted, before export I enable it and the audio worked fine.

This topic was automatically closed after 90 days. New replies are no longer allowed.