Replaygain For Movies, Doom9 meets HA Options

[_Shorty]

dTb, do you not have a volume knob? There's something awfully wrong if you can't turn the volume up enough to make dialog sound as loud as people talking when you're dealing with a home theater/stereo. A laptop with headphones on a plane, I could see. But not at home with even a $200 home theatre receiver and cheapo speakers.

[tangent]

It's seems a simple enough solution turning the volume up on a low volume movie track.

Until you get an email alert or an instant message comes in.

[_Shorty]

you're watching a movie, avoid interruptions.

[dTb]

Maybe I haven't made myself clear, I don't have any trouble adjusting the volume, I just don't want to be doing it numerous times throughout a movie, that's all. Normal drc is usually good but I'm still adjusting the volume occasionally.

Like I've already said, the dynamic range on dvd's is no doubt great when you have the right setup, it just seems to me that on anything in the medium to low range it becomes a bit of a b**ch.

Btw, I playback movies through the 2.1 speakers on my samsung plano, granted not a great set up but pretty good imo. The progressive VGA input is excellent.

[smok3]

there are some 'interesting' docs about DD metadata found on dolby.com, basically it is about the dialog 'normalization' and drc and how all that applies on the 'stereo only' mode when needed....

http://www.dolby.com/metadata/pa.st.0102.MDGuide.pdf

Is this information (DRC and dail-norm) lost when people rip DVDs?

it is lost when you make 2 channel wav of course, but azid decoder is aware of the metadata and drc stuff, from azid (v1.8 build 825) help:

CODE

c COMPR, --dcompr=COMPR
------------------------

Default: none

This option sets the overall dynamic compression in the decoder. This
value is applied to every output speaker.

The bitstream contains information of how much to amplify or attenuate
the sound to decrease the overall dynamic variations (loudness) in the
program contents. Different options exists to choose the wanted
dynamic reduction:


 o none     No dynamic compression. The program contents is unchanged.

 o normal   Normal dynamic compression. Normal in-store decoders use
     this as an hardcoded default.

 o light    Light dynamic compression. This is 50% (-6db) of the
     reduction/gain that normal dynamic compression would give.

 o heavy    Heavy dynamic compression. Intended for poor listening
     environment with much background noise.

 o inverse  Dynamic expansion. This is the inverse value of the light
     dynamic compression, i.e. it makes strong sounds stronger
            and weaker sounds weaker.

since most of the consumer standalone dvd players are using 'normal' afaik the deafult here isnt really a good one i guess.

This post has been edited by smok3: Jul 9 2003, 10:35

[_Shorty]

Maybe I haven't made myself clear, I don't have any trouble adjusting the volume, I just don't want to be doing it numerous times throughout a movie, that's all. Normal drc is usually good but I'm still adjusting the volume occasionally.

Like I've already said, the dynamic range on dvd's is no doubt great when you have the right setup, it just seems to me that on anything in the medium to low range it becomes a bit of a b**ch.

Btw, I playback movies through the 2.1 speakers on my samsung plano, granted not a great set up but pretty good imo. The progressive VGA input is excellent.

well, even a hunk o' crap $299Cdn dvd player / receiver combo that comes with crap speakers is quite capable of playing back a movie with dialog at dialog volumes and everything else at proper volumes except for the bass (cuz of the crap sub), so I'd suspect your speakers you're currently listening to would have to be pretty damn bad. The fact that they're built into the set is a very good indicator that they probably are. I don't have one of those all-in-one-box $299 systems, mine's before those kinds of systems' time, but my system is still pretty low-end and I never touch the volume control after I set it to my "this is where I play every single movie" volume setting when I'm first throwing the disc in and sitting down to watch.

[pusle]

There is no need to mess with normalization and possible sound detoriation using other progs after azid. As the last poster pasted, azid has dynamic range options buildt in. If your comp can't handle full dynamic range ( none ), then use light or normal. Then use the gain option to boost the max level so it just clips during the loudest passages.
Azid prints out the amout of overload/clipping in db. If it's less than 3dB on stuff like explosion and gun shots, it's just fine.
If you wanna be sure it sounds right, do it like me and write down the time stamps when overload occurs and listen to the wav with winamp. If it sounds ok, leave it. Many audio cd's comes with massive amounts of clipping straight from the studio. If it was something like a loud sopran at an opera that cause it to clip, it will usually NOT sound ok and you should use less gain. Like if you use -G 4, reduce it to -G 3 (linear multiplier factor).
As ac3 tracks has more than 16bits of dynamic range, you utilize the final 16 bits in the wav much better aswell. Using average loudness in some prog after azid to normalize will lead to excessive clipping and/or dynamic compression.
When you are happy with the loud and clear .wav , encode it with your favorite lossy coder, mux the mofo and pesto! :>

[dTb]

Well it's hard for me to comment on the quality of the speakers in my tv because I don't have the experience some people around here do. So with nothing to really back it up all I'll say is I find them quite good, and there are other factors like background noise and neighbours to take into consideration when I'm watching dvd's or divx.
Thinking about all this I suddenly realised that in besweet I have the option to adjust the Center Downmix Level, so I think I'll experiment a little with that and see if I can't come to a satisfactory outcome for myself. Not sure why I didn't think of it long ago and maybe I can retain more dymanic range this way, eg. use light drc and raise the center channel volume in the downmix.

Thanks for the link smok3, I'll do some reading like I should have done long ago.

[Kent Wang]

I got the Logitech Z-560. Now that you mention it, the range problem was much more apparent with the shitty-ass Cambridge set that I had a long time ago. So I do suppose that it's my speaker's fault, but then again very few people who I "share" my rips with have good systems. So now it's a case of making a rip that works better for the mainstream but is worse for the audiophile. Kind of like the compression in today's music CD's, eh?

[Kent Wang]

Oh, yeah, I forgot to post about how my current technique (BeSweet DRC + VorbisGain only) worked out.

After ripping and encoding about 15 more films, I've found that ReplayGain is a terrific solution. I never have to adjust my volume between films, nor when switching from films to music.

The dynamic range after DRC is also quite good for my Z-560's. With the dialogue turned to a good volume, gunfire and explosions are just below intolerably loud.

When using my Sony V6 to listen though, I find that the range could tolerate less compression as explosions sound a bit weak. I think headphones are a good approximation of what a great neighborless HT speaker setup would be like.

In summary, I'm quite pleased with this technique and will continue to use it until I switch to AAC.