balance sound level to be equal from two cameras/sources on final edit

spuddy13 wrote on 10/18/2025, 7:06 AM

(I have MAGIX Video deluxe 2026 Premium)

i was on earlier and got help to remove dogs and cars from audio...thanks for that help :-)

this is first movie i have used two cameras to do an interview with two people

as the video switches the sound from each is at different strenghs...and if you set both people at same audio level

you know its not balanaced...i can go through film and set it manually is there an auto way to set a consistent audio level

that will flow through the full film

again if this is automated or easier done by others i would value your input

thanks

Brian

Comments

Bol wrote on 10/18/2025, 8:36 AM

@spuddy13

Hi Brian,

Select all the audio files you want to balance.
Place the mouse cursor anywhere on the audio track, right-click, and choose Normalize Maximum Level (shortcut Alt+N).

HTH
Rob

spuddy13 wrote on 10/18/2025, 8:59 AM

Rob,

Currently in the gym

I was so excited to see i had a reply

This forum great for help vis folk like yourself..this should save me hours of manual shifting... appreciate you time

Will try at home later

Thanks

Brian

emmrecs wrote on 10/18/2025, 9:35 AM

@spuddy13 @Bol

Hi Rob, hi Brian,

Normalisation of the two files to a set level will work IF the ambient "background" audio on both tracks is very similar in type and level or, better still, the same! If it is not, e.g., the ambient sound on one track is different in level or content to the ambient sound on the other track, there is a danger of the "differences" between the two tracks actually being accentuated; the human ear is very sensitive to even quite small changes in ambient sound and will notice as the switch between the two audio tracks occurs. "Normalisation", by definition, increases the level of everything in the audio such that its peak is at whatever level is pre-set in the normalisation settings.

The resulting final audio may not be "pleasant" to listen to!

Jeff

browj2 wrote on 10/18/2025, 9:48 AM

@spuddy13

Hi Brian,

When editing two or more cameras shooting at the same time, one normally uses multi-cam mode to make the cuts from one camera to another whilst watching the playback. At the same time, you have to choose which audio to use as the master audio track. This means you use the audio from one camera only, thus reducing the problems of inconsistent audio. You can always change later.

Here is what my timeline looks like in multicam mode - 3 camera, master on tracks 1 and 2:

Here is multicam mode showing the 3 cameras for playback above and the selected camera and what you will see on track 1:

If you've never used multicam mode, you may want to watch my video on how to do, from 2015 and still the same procedure:

As for normalizing the volume, this works to a certain extent and it helps to understand what is happening with the volume. If you have one audio file with a sudden loud sound, then when you normalize, that loud sound will be what goes to 0 db. The rest of the audio, say your interview speakers, will be weaker. If you add a second audio file of the same interview speakers but there is no loud sound, when you normalize, the audio will be much louder and you will have mismatched or inconsistent audio volume. The trick here is to find the audio file that has normal levels overall, normalize it and look at what the volume is raised to, say +8 db. Then, look at the other audio files, normalize them and look at the level. If it's not +8 db, say, +2 db, then, you need to adjust the peaks downwards (see image below) using the object volume curve so that you don't get clipping, and then raise the object level to +8 db. And/or, you can apply Compression to the object to lower the louder sounds to get closer to the normal audio.

To get the compressor, double-click on the audio object to open the Audio Cleaning tools, or apply a compressor to the track using the Mixer fx.

Ever wonder what audio engineers do? This is just very basic audio editing.

John CB