Correct me if I’m wrong, but there is no way to change the volume from X dB to Y dB.
I know of the Audio Fade In and Audio Fade Out, but those go from 0 to X or Y to 0.
I’ve also see the volume/gain option, but that changes the volume of the entire track to a given value, say from X to X.
What I’d like to be able to do is lower the audio as I start talking and then bring it back up later. What I am thinking to have is a Gain at the start and another Gain at the end of the section I’m on.
So say you have a timeline that looks like this. The | represents locations where I cut the audio.
The H represents high volume (default, audio not modified)
The D means I want to bring it down. So from 0 dB Gain to -20 dB for example.
The L means now we have a low volume (i.e. -20 dB for the whole duration)
The U means I want to bring it up. So from -20 dB to 0 dB Gain. The opposite of the D earlier.
The H at the end is the same as at the beginning.
Of course, having a nice curve for the D and U (i.e. a sine instead of linear change) would be wonderful, but even with just a linear ramp it would work much better than jumping from 0 dB to -20 dB all of a sudden. Many other tools are able to do that so I would hope it will be available in Shotcut at some point. If it is already here and I missed it, well… let me know!
Press ‘S’ to slice the selected video track at each point you want to adjust the volume, then use the Gain/Volume filter on that (selected) section only… (you can also in addition use the fade in/out to make the volume change less abrupt) The split won’t be noticed visually.
If you want to dynamically change the gain for artistic reasons, you will have to wait for the keyframe feature to be implemented one day - or settle for gain jumps at clip slices.
But if you just want to normalize the audio so that it is roughly the same level all the time, then I suggest you look into the “Normalize (One Pass)” and “Compressor” filters. They can automatically increase/decrease the gain based on the level of the audio in the clip.
There is a video here where I explain how I use those filters on a track to normalize my own videos:
Yeah, that’s why I posted this as a suggestion. I have used the S key and various levels, but it’s not practical. The audio fade in/out goes to silence (or start there) so it’s not well adapted. Many people have some music at the start, then it fades down, they talk for a while, and finally the music comes back. It would be great to be able to do that with Shotcut. “all we’d need” is a filter where I can indicate the start and end dB difference and a duration. It should be the same as the existing Fade In/Out, except that we indicate the change in dB instead of using the existing volume and no volume at all… Anyway, I don’t know what the fades are implemented, but I would imagine that this should not be that hard.
I know this is an old thread but I was just looking for the exact same thing. Just figured it out with key-frames. Cut either side of where you want to the fade to start and end, select gain/volume filter then key frames and it lets your drag the volume across as a straight line, no S curve I’m afraid but it still works well!
