adjusting ac3 volume

[mescalino]

how do you do it?
when i set audio to full processing mode and adjust volume to higher value in nandub and try to start encoding process i get error message saying:
ACM failed to suggest audio decrompression format

[Enchanter]

You can't do that with nandub and any other versions of Virtualdub. What you should do is extract the AC3 file out as a file and input it into AC3Machine (A part of BeSweet).

[mescalino]

how do i need to set ac3machine up?
i want to set the volume to about 200% of its original strenght.

[Enchanter]

Originally posted by mescalino
how do i need to set ac3machine up?
i want to set the volume to about 200% of its original strenght.

It has to be installed into the folder where BeSweet resides (It uses a component of BeSweet, or perhaps the GUI).

[mescalino]

yeah, i already done that, i meant about the settings in the program itself.

[RMCF]

The reason Ac3 volume is low, is because of the higher range a good AC3 speaker set can do.

If you want to listen on a normal pc system, why not do mp3?

[mescalino]

i usualy convert to mp3 but with this specific rip i had problems. mp3 turned out bit distorted so i tried ac3 and the sound was now great but it was a bit low (now i understand why, thanks RMCF). i tried ac3machine but i don't know how to make it louder with it.

[Rich 2]

I always use ac3filter. It is a direct show filter. If you play an AVI which uses AC3 in media player you can increase the volume while the movie is playing. This filter can give you the volume increase you need. I usually use 200% overall volume and 200% just for the center speaker meaning you get a 400% increase in dialog volume.

You can also use ac3filter with graphedit to give you an increase in volume when you convert to WAV or MP3. It's a bit more work but the sound couldn't be better, much better than with other tools like normalise.

[mescalino]

excellent
thanks a lot rich 2

[martinlw]

You can use besweet and azid, or if that doesn't work, just get the azid.exe and use the command line. It can downmix 5.1 into a 2 channel wav file, and you can set a gain to ramp up the volume, but to avoid clipping i'd recommend using --maximise which will force it to do 2 passes (first one to find the highest level) and set the gain accordingly.

Then I'd just use lame to mp3 it using the (great) r3mix preset and nandub to put it together with the video. The extra compression afforded by mp3 is not huge, and depending on what you want, you might wanna just skip the entire thing altogether and just keep the original unmodified (and higher quality) ac3.

You may find it is still not loud enough for your tastes, but its not a good idea to turn the gain up too high (cos of clipping). If you do need it to be louder you can use range compression but i'd advise against that - its not how the sound engineers wanted it to be heard, you'll lose the difference between a teeny soft sound and a big loud sound - you'll just hear a loud sound and a louder sound. Its much better just to turn up the volume on your amp.

[inthehizzouse]

I might be off here, but I have accomplished this using Vdub_148_AC3.exe - just use this version of vdub and adjust volume as you did before. It has worked for me.

[mescalino]

could you give us a link, i can't find it on internet

[setarip]

Go to:

http://www.digital-digest.net/downloads/files/virtualdub/VirtualDub_148_AC3.exe

[mescalino]

thanks setarip