It seems like there is two places to edit volume, one is the green volume curve, and the 2nd is a horizontal line which can be moved up or down. Can anyone here explain what the best practice is for using these?
I believe the horizontal line affects the entire track. The volume curve, is just that. It's a curve in which keyframes can be added (mine defaults to a red volume curve)
Promidi has it. If you want to adjust the whole object, just drag the line up and down.
If you want to make a small (timewise) volume adjustment without splitting into separate objects, get the volume curve up and then hover the mouse pointer over the "curve" until the pointer turns black. Click to make a node/keyframe. Then just click to make more nodes as required, dragging each node up and down to suit your volume requirements.
I am trying to get the OP to do some homework and to formulate his questions better. For someone who claims to be a "VideoPro" I expect better.
How did he get the green and white curves (actually lines)? He should tell us. He probably turned on track curves. If he just turned on Volume curve, then he would have only a green line. So, why make us guess?
If he turned on Track curves, the green is for volume, the white for panning (Balance). They will be all the way along the track, whether or not anything is on the track. I cannot drag either of these lines up or down. I can put a node on the panning curve (white) and then I can drag that up and down and it brings the line with it. I cannot put a node on the track volume curve, so I cannot drag it up or down. To do so, I have to go to the Mixer, turn on automation, start playback and play with the volume slider and the pan knob. You will see nodes and the curves move up and down. Now you can edit these with the mouse.
Note that the track curves nodes remain where they are on the track, so moving an object will not move the track curves nodes.
The Damping or ducking feature uses the track volume curve.
Reset both track curves - Volume and Balance - and turn off Display track curves.
Turn on Volume curve and a green line will appear. This is for the audio object only, not for the track. This you can select and drag up and down. When you do this, a node will be placed on the line. Just drag the node up and down. Clicking elsewhere on the line will add a node and now only that node will move up and down when dragged. If you now go to Effects, Audio effects, General, you can see that there keyframes for Volume and you can make adjustments here by using the Volume slider at the top. You can get curves for the other object effects. Right-click on the audio object, Audio Effects Curves, and you'll see the list. Select Sharp Filter and a curve will turn on and you'll see this show up in the keyframe area. If you turn on Panorama, you'll get a white line, just like for the Track Panorama line. You can change the line colours in the keyframe area as usual. Etc.
Object curves move and stay with the object if it is moved, unlike track curves.
Here is an image with track curves and object volume curve turned on.
I suggest that both of you watch my two tutorials on Everything Audio.
The white line is the overall volume adjustment of the file as presented to the volume slider in the mixer.
The green line is the position of the volume slider. They work in conjunction with each other. If you were to cut the clip into several parts you could adjust the white line on each to be different but that may not sound coherent in a mix and not advised. Whereas placing two different clips next to each other may need one clip to be lowered or increased to match the overall level of the surrounding clips on the same track or the volume slider may not have enough travel to compensate.
The green volume "curve" allows you to change the volume at specific parts of a clip/object. You can lower the volume of a portion of an object and then take it back up after that portion.
The white volume level line is, as Ray says, the overall audio level for the object. If the white line is dragged higher, the whole object is louder, with the lower bits (green line edits I mention above, for example) not as loud as the other bits. If it is dragged lower, the whole object audio level goes down, but the green line edits are maintained.
Make an edit to the green volume curve, then turn it off and adjust the white bar/object audio level. You will hear that the whole object is adjusted but the dips and boost you applied with the volume curve are respected.
Former user
wrote on 9/21/2021, 4:42 AM
Basically they compliment each other.... Your volume will only ever be a maximum of the one that is the lowest.
IE, you first set the over all volume for the entire track - that is the maximum your volume can ever be. The you can use the volume curve to adjust the volume between zero and that overall volume (and automate if necessary).
So the white line becomes the "ceiling" right? Green lines going above that line will not have any impact?
The 'ceiling' is when you run out of bit bits in the bit depth selection of the audio recording which is always represented as 0db on the Master channels mixer meters. It has no bearing on the position of either of the lines. Anything passing the 0dB line of the master output volume slider will become audio distortion as the amplitude curve is flattened.
The amount of bits or 'steps' from faintest sound to loudest sound is set by the circuitry of the digital amps and their upper voltage level of the power supplied representing the loudest part of the volume curve and how much electrical interference there is present where there is no voltage representing the lowest volume level. The latter becoming the noise floor of the signal when passed on to the power amplifier.
Less bits means the quietest parts of an audio recording may be missed and not recorded and effectively become the recordings dynamic range. Or if the quality of physical components is not sufficient, then distortion can occur at the loudest parts due to lack of sufficient rapid and extended movement of say a microphone diaphragm or a DAC not capable of converting the signal to a large enough dynamic range. A 16 bit recording, if the parts used to record are of sufficient quality throughout should give a dynamic range of approximately 96dBm. A 24 bit recording has a theoretical dynamic range of 144dBm. A 32-bit (floating point) file has a 1528 dB dynamic range which is well beyond what can be reproduced on the earth which would be a sound pressure difference on Earth of about 210 dB. The human hearing threshold of pain is 114dBm.
Why such a 32 bit dynamic range exists purely in the mathematical realm and not in the real world is to do with the accuracy of the audio waveform reproduction at the final mix-down stage.
I am not sure MEP uses a 32bit algorithm or not for that process but in any event the individual channel volume sliders can be adjusted beyond the 0dBm level as this is internal to the program. In general though it makes mixing more difficult if you can't ascertain the peaks of an individual sound source by taking the volume higher than the meter can display.
While setting levels allows the mathematical model represented by the mixer volume levels to exceed the 0dBm level you have to remember that the 0dBm line represents of the master output sliders is the highest point in the volume curve your digital amp can deliver. Going beyond that point will end up in 'clipping' of the audio signal and be heard as hard distortion.
The default white line on an audio clip, allows you to raise or lower the volume of the entire clip from its original volume. If the passage is quiet, you can raise the volume. The 0 that you see is not the limit, it is just a knob like a volume control, and raising it does not necessarily cause clipping. The db's are relative to the volume of the imported clip. If you normalize a clip, you will see this line go up if the imported clip if it is somewhat quiet and was not normalized itself. That means that it raises the volume of the clip to the level where the loudest sound is at true 0db; any higher and it distorts. Click on the handle and you'll see 0 - this is not true 0db. Normalize, and you will probably see something else that is higher.
The green line allows you to adjust the volume along the clip. The scale has nothing to do with the overall (white) line - it is maximum at the top and off at the bottom. If the overall volume is too low, you raise the overall volume using the white line handle. If a passage or a word is too loud, use the green curve to reduce the volume of the word. Note that the green line is near the top and won't go any higher. You are working from here downwards. I do this with my narration to reduce the level of plosives and certain words that I have a tendency to say much louder than the rest. The upper limit is the overall volume (white line), that is all. The points on the green line are relative to each other.
Here are a couple of examples of adjustments that I did to the narration of the first Everything Audio tutorial.
I have several adjustments to audio clips as sometimes I spoke softer than other times, sometimes I was closer to or further away from the mic than the average. So the second last clip was my normal voice, the last clip I spoke slightly louder so I reduced the handle (white line) by -2.3 db.
The song at the end was made purposely softer so that I would not have to reduce the volume by very much to be able to hear the narration. That is why the reduction to the initial level is only -3.1.
Below shows points where I spoke a word or a few words too loudly and had to reduce the volume by using points on the green line.
Next is the track volume in the Mixer. It allows you to adjust the overall volume of the track - everything on the track. So, if you have loud music on a track and you want it lower because it doesn't fit well with the audio of another track, you lower the slider. Again, this is relative. If the audio of everything on the track is too low, you can raise the volume. Going above 0 does not necessarily clip. You have to watch the meters.
The last volume is the Master strip of the Mixer. Here, everything has been mixed. If the overall volume is too high, you can lower it - everything has been mixed and this sound is lowered. You will possibly have adjusted everything to be normalized - thus the loudest noise is 0db. You should then lower the Master volume by about 3 db before exporting.
If you look at my thread about the YouLean Loudness meter, it gives you points where there is clipping and tells you by how much. For clipping, you can use the green curve on an object to reduce the volume at that location until it doesn't clip at the level that has been set. The meter also gives you an overall perceived loudness measurement so that you can make adjustments for passages that are too loud, and passages that are too soft, or to get the overall loudness factor in LUFS to know if you should lower the Master volume before export, or if you can raise it (watch for clipping).
For example, I imported 3 songs from Magix. The perceived volume of each was quite different. One was very loud, one less loud, and the third a little less loud. All three were too high for any narration - a song plays loudly, ends, narration is softer than the music, so the listener has to turn up the volume. Oops, the next song plays and it's even louder - the listener has to turn down the volume, etc. Using the meter, I could see the LUFS for each song and thus was able to lower the volume of the each song using the audio - white line - middle handle. If the song plays at -7 LUFS and I want -14, then I'll reduce the volume by 7 db as a first step. The idea is to get everything in balance so that the listener does not have to get adjusting the volume. The final judge is your ears.
As I pointed out previously, there is also a track volume curve through the Mixer (automation) that can be applied on top of everything that is on the track. So, you can raise or lower the volume along the track, which, of course, affects any settings to objects. Damping or Ducking is an example of using a track volume curve.
YouTube, for example, has a ceiling of -14LUFS, as far as I know. If the audio part of the video exceeds this or if there is any clipping, YT will lower the volume of your video, which may not be what you want. If the perceived loudness is below -14LUFS, YT does not raise the volume.
There is actually a lot more, including using equalizers, compressors and limiters. The whole thing is a delicate balancing act.