Does anyone know how to automatically find the peaked audio portions of the timeline without scrubbing or watching the whole thing? I usually use the "normalize" feature but it only adjust to the loudest point which is usually way louder than the rest of my audio. So, I have been adjusting the good audio to the right db and having to watch the whole thing again to keyframe the few loud parts that come up. Is there an effect/third party that can find these for me automatically?

Sony Soundforge will find peaks for you.

any way of doing this within Premiere itself?

im curious as well it would save me alot of time

Either a limiter, or a compressor with a fairly high ratio and high threshold, will pull down the highest peaks while leaving the rest of the track untouched.

'Dynamics' in CS3 should work, otherwise there are plenty of freeware VST plugins on the web.

I've heard CS4 will have the find audio peaks feature. As of now - limiter on master track is the best protection.