NORMALIZE Audio Levels VS DYNAMICS (Compressor/Makeup) in DaVinci Resolve | Are they the SAME?

to normalize or not to normalize that is the question and what got me thinking about that question is a video I put out just today talking about how we can improve the Dynamics of our audio just to create a better listening experience for our viewers and somebody had a great comment on the video they said well hey can I just normalize my audio isn't that the same thing as working with the Dynamics that you're doing in this video and the answer is no normalizing your audio is not working with your Dynamics at all and to say it best I think I should just tell you exactly what the Denture resolve manual says on page 3,668 it says this the change made by the normalized audio volume command is only a volume adjustment no Dynamics are applied so the result of using this command is that the loudest parts of each clip are going to match one another at the Target level so that's directly out of the manual now what does that mean well if we take a look indiv ventes off let's jump in there real quick so what normal ation is in case you're not familiar with it you come to your clip either in the edit tab or in fairet you can right click on it and we have normalize audio levels now when we go ahead and open that up we've got different ways we can normalize our audio and if we click this little drop down you can see there's all these different uh methods of normalizing our audio Netflix YouTube Disney all kinds of different ways to do it so let's say for example I picked the YouTube one and now it's going to show me that the target level is minus1 dbtp and the target loudness is-4 Lofts or l k FS so I can go ahead and hit normalize on here but watch what's going to happen to my waveforms here going to hit normalize it's going to analyze the clip now it did meet those Target levels that we talked about right but look at what we have here the way that the waveforms look so our louder parts of our clip right here in the beginning versus our quiet Parts the ratio is the same it just took everything and expanded up our waveforms relative to each other it didn't apply any Dynamics now if we were to use something like the compressor for example and just to show you kind of what it would look like here if we did use the compressor I'm going to make my track a little bit bigger here so we can see it a little bit better a compressor kind of does something that looks like this right it's going to compress the louder parts right so I'm just going to add some key frames to demonstrate what the compressor is doing so I'm going to add key frames on either side of our quiet Parts there so a compressor is essentially going to bring down the loud Parts a little bit and if you use the makeup slider in the compressor it's going to bring up the quiet parts right so what we're getting is a more even audio track here for our dialogue so if I you know bring that down a little bit if I just zoom out so now you can see our dialogue track looks a little bit more even than it originally did even though we normalized it because normalizing is only changing the volume right we're not adding any kind of Dynamics in there if we jump over into Fair light real quick Fair light right here I've got my clip right here and I kind of just demonstrated kind of what a compressor is doing okay it's not actually key framing stuff but if I copy this down into a new track here and I'm just going to select my audio clip here I'm going to right click and save remove attributes then I'm going to remove everything that's on there we're back to normal so when it comes to Dynamics let's say on track two here I was going to work with some Dynamics so I would come into my mixer mixer right here double click our Dynamics now I would turn on the compressor right so the compressor allows me to limit the loud Parts a little bit and then by using the makeup slider right here I can make the quiet Parts a little bit louder grab my headphones here so we can hear the difference so let's do this we are going to apply Dynamics to our bottom clip right here see how that sounds and then compare that to the normalized clip and see how that sounds I'm going to mute my track number one here cuz we're only working with our second track currently I'm going to play through it I'm going to set my Dynamics in a Range that I think sounds good I'm going to make the quiet Parts a little louder I'm going to make the loud Parts a little bit quieter and kind of get a more balanced type of audio or dialogue from this track so here we go so sometimes in our videos we talk loud like this we set our levels based on us talking loud or our subject talking loud but then there's times where people maybe they're a little farther away maybe they just decide to talk a little bit quieter because I got to tell you something about the game that's going on here that I don't want everybody else to know about well for your viewer they may need to adjust the volume on your video and a little farther away maybe they just decide to talk a little bit quieter because I got to tell you something about the game that's going on here that I don't want everybody else to know about well for your viewer they may need to adjust the volume on your video and you don't want them to have to do that so we can use compression here in divin resolve to help reduce our dynamic range and make it a better listening experience okay so there we go now I just edited the Audio I applied a little bit of compression a little bit of makeup there to make the quiet Parts louder and this is the kind of result we have so let's go back to our first clip here I'm going to close my Dynamics window and I'm just going to go ahead and reset everything here I'm going to remove attributes remove everything apply and now I'm just going to right click and we're going to go normalize audio levels I'm going to choose the YouTube standard here and see what we get so I'm going to go ahead and hit normalize so now you can see everything got increased but it's all kind of relative to each other right our our middle section here with the quieter audio didn't get any different but let's listen to it and see how it sounds so I'm going to just solo out my first track here let's see how it sounds so sometimes in our videos we talk loud like this we set our levels based on us talking loud or our subject talking loud but then there's times where people maybe they're a little farther away maybe they just decide to talk a little bit quieter because I got to tell you something about the game that's going on here that I don't want everybody else to know about well for your viewer they may need to adjust the volume on your video and you don't want them to have to do that so we can use compression here in eventure resolve so that's what it sounds like normalized now let's try it again with the Dynamics one let's hear that track again going to mute the track one solo track two here's how it sounds with Dynamics in and how I would adjust the levels so sometimes in our videos we talk loud like this we set our levels based on us talking loud or our subject talking loud but then there's times where people maybe they're a little farther away maybe they just decide to talk a little bit quieter because I got to tell you something about the game that's going on here that I don't want everybody else to know about well for your viewer they may need to adjust the volume on your video and you don't so can you hear the difference there I in the first example it normalized yeah but it pushed everything way up right so the loud Parts got quite a bit louder and yeah we can hear the quiet Parts a little bit better but it doesn't sound as balanced as it does if you use some of the Dynamics there when you combine compression with the makeup right and for me if I were to uh look at track number one here I'm actually going to mute my audio here we going to come back uh and I'm going to unmute my track so we can just watch The Meters here but look at where track number one is is versus track number two track number one is getting way up there like when I'm editing my dialogue levels I don't want it to be that high now I could pick a a different um method of normalizing and it might work a little bit better but the technique is going to be similar where it's going to adjust all the volume of those clips relative to each other right it's not going to make the quiet Parts a little louder and make the loud Parts a little quieter and kind of balance it it's just going to take everything and adjust it you know based on the the method that you pick whether it's the peak program the sample program or you know Netflix Disney whatever um we can even try looking in resolve here is try a different one normalized audio levels if I go to uh let's say Netflix right now it brings everything way down but it's all still relative to each other so it doesn't affect the Dynamics of your clip it only affects the volume and it says that right in the Denture resolve manual so I think normalizing if you don't know anything about audio is a Fine Place to Start go ahead do it pop it on there it's going to help you you at least get some good basic uh you know levels and stuff um but you know I would prefer myself as an audio guide to jump in there and use the Dynamics a little bit but I think it's an important distinction that normalizing is not the same as using the Dynamics panel using compression using the makeup slider there it's not the same thing can it help your audio absolutely yes it can definitely help your audio and it's a great way to get started but if you really want to fine-tune stuff the Dynamics panel is the way to go it just gives you more control over what that audio sounds like adjusting your levels and just really doing it the way that you want to do it and the way that you want your audio to sound and meeting those levels that you want to meet so just some quick thoughts there on normalizing your audio versus using the Dynamics compression makeup they're different and it's important that you guys kind of understand a little bit of the difference there so I hope this was helpful and just kind of clarifying it a little bit um if you want to know more about it let me know if you got questions let me know drop a comment down below I'm happy to try and answer any questions that you guys might have the other thing I did want to mention real quickly with the normalization is that you can normalize the entire track to one level or you can normalize every individual clip on the entire track so you've got that option too to kind of set things individually or all relative to each other but still if you really want that um the uh the ability to fine-tune things and really make it the way that you want the way to do it is with your Dynamics using compression using a little bit of the makeup there and just kind of balancing everything out better so that way your viewer has a better viewing experience while they're watching your videos all right with that said I am done I am out of here guys I will see you in the next video [Music] peace

Channel: Jason Yadlovski

Views: 12,501

Keywords: normalize audio levels, Normalize audio in davinci resolve, audio normalization, normalize audio, normalize audio levels davinci resolve, resolve normalize audio levels, davinci resolve normalize audio levels for youtube, Fairlight, Compressor, Dynamics in davinci resolve, what is audio normalization, should I normalize my audio?, Is normalization the same as dynamics?, Compressor vs normalization in davinci resolve, normalize audio to get consistent audio levels in davinci resolve

Id: N1Uy7E8nF8A

Length: 9min 48sec (588 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 04 2023