Normalizing Audio of DivX-Movies

[kagoru]

I have some movies that are really really quiet, you can hardly hear something.

I thought about normalizing.
As I read there are 2 ways to do that:
1) set peak value to 0db
2) use RMS

Which one is better? For raising you have to use RMS I think. What value is suggested? I tried -16db, but Soundforge had to apply dynamic compression to get RMS to 16. Does the audio lose quality when you do that?


I did the following:

1) extracted the wav (which actually is VBR-MP3(!) )
2) edited it in soundforge, set RMS to -16db
3) saved the result (Had to wait pretty long until it was finished. Does SF recompress the mp3, or why does it take so long?)

Now I'd merge audio in video in nandub. Can I be sure that audio and video are still in sync? I don't have to enter a delay value for the audio, do I?



How do you normalize the sound of your movies? What tools do you use?


TIA for every answer!!

[ChristianHJW]

... yes, soundforge reencoded the whole thing ... not a good idea though ...

Try programs like MP3Gain or MP3Edit, at least one of them should be found at Doom9 download section, MP3Gain is to be found at R3MIX forum members ( Glen ). They will allow you to raise volume of the MP3 ( demuxed from AVI as you did already and renamed to 'audio.mp3' or similar ) by changing volume tags of the blocks in the MP3's ( poor description i know, but i'm not an expert ) without de/encoding .... then simply mux them again using Nandub ...

[kagoru]

Hey thanks for your quick reply!

But is normalizing the same as "changing volume tags of the blocks in the MP3's" ?

Do I lose quality if I do that?