Increasing audio volume in AVI/resulting video file?

[CZroe]

For some reason, most DVD rips are inaudible on my Samsung YH-999 Portable Media Center. The volume is simply too low! It's a night-and-day difference compared to all the music videos, TV and other clips I have on the device. I assume that the volume from DVDs is low for quality reasons and relies on a good sound system for amplification.

I've been using GordianKnot to rip my DVDs to a low resolution H.264 file (ie, 320x176 for a 320x240 display... No reason to encode at a higher resolution for a device that can't show more detail!). From there, I usually use WMP10's sync feature to transcode to WMV on the PMC video player (The only format it supports) or I use M2PMCEncoderZX/WMEncoder9 to make compatible files of higher quality. Because I still have to convert to WMV, it makes no sense to waste time encoding the audio to MP3 or anything so I just mux the AC3.

I finally figured out how to raise the audio volume using VirtualDubMod but it only works with MP3/WAV and such! Even then, I get messages about losing audio sync because it's VBR or something. What is the best method for raising the audio volume of a DVD rip? Is it possible to do before encoding to AVI while working with just the AC3? Thanks!

[mic]

Usually DVD ac3 audio has a pretty large dynamic range, meaning some stuff is whisper quiet while things like explosions are close to the highest levels possible. There are all sort of tools that can reduce dynamic range, including DGIndex which will demux the audio, convert the ac3 to wav, & normalize (basically raise the entire volume level) if needed.