Normalising Audio Levels for SVCD

[zilog jones]

I'm making an SVCD using several different short clips. The videos either have soundtracks taken from DVD videos (stereo AC3) or just music from a CD or MP3. I've been converting them to MP2 (224kb/s) using BeSweetGUI, with HybridGain turned on. But it seems the tracks converted from AC3 are considerably quiter than the ones taken from CDs, and even some of the CD ones are quiter than others.

What would be the best way to keep the sound levels roughly the same for all the different videos? Can it be done with BeSweet(or even -GUI)?

[trapvector]

Hey There. For the AC3 tracks, use AC3 Machine, and set "Dynamic Range Compression" to "Normal", also check the "Gain" box and use a setting of -6db to -10db (or greater negative number if it's still too quiet)

If you wanted to get all the audio tracks exactly the same volume, you could use an audio editing software like Acoustica or Adobe Audition.
The way to do it would be to convert them all to the same format (probably WAV), then mix them together as one track, then normalise that track, and then split the track back to its component parts.

Hope this helps.

P.S. If you go the route of mixing everything to one track, I would append 3 seconds of silence when you convert the tracks in BeSweet.
This will make it easier to split them back after normalisation.