Voices too low after converting to DiVX

[cinoaz]

I'm not a pure videophile, I'm using Lame 3.92 Audio, DiVX 4.12, and XMPEG 4.5. I rip using CladDVDXP. I notice that when I'm watching the video, the voices seem low so I turn up the volume to hear them. Then a scene comes on with an explosion or music and my ear drums are ringing. So I lower the volume. Once the characters begin speaking again, I'm turning up the volume.

I tried normalization and Dynamic Range Conversion but I truly don't know what it is they are doing. I was hoping someone could let me know what those settings are and what would be best to raise the volume of people speaking while not increasing the other sounds.

THanks

[Batman]

I don't know, but I've seen this happen in lots of movies (divx movies and hollywood vhs, and dvd's) maybe that's how they make them?

[benderman]

Thats cinema-feeling. The voices are on normal level and the explosions kill your soundcard. There are ac3-decoders that allow to adjust the volume for each channel. If the explosions and other loud sounds are mostely on the center-channel you can lower the volume of that channel seperately. I do it with AC3decode.

[cinoaz]

Thanks guys,

I wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something during the encoding process before I start tweaking with my audio equipment.

I still would like to know the skinny on the normalization and other audio settings in XMPEG and what it is they are actually doing.

Thanks again

[Alien]

Try to use Azid to decode AC3 to wav, it can run in 2-pass mode, in first one it finds max. gain level, in second one it decodes AC3 and does some normalization too, i think, so dialogs are very clear in the result and explosions don't break your windows. Gordian Knot has very nice and simple GUI for audio encoding, using Azid(2-pass) and lame.