Hello there-

I taped a wedding this weekend with a new camera (DVX100). When I recorded, I had my headphones on the whole time and the audio sounded perfect- as well as the levels showed up properly on the LCD.

However, when I imported the tape into FCP4, the audio is extremely low- I had to increase the decible level 12db to make it sound "soft" even. Three questions:

1. Can I re-import the tape with different settings to make the audio louder?
2. Is there a filter I can use to make the audio louder?
3. Why would this have happened when I can hear perfectly from the camera through my headphones?

Thanks!

PS- This may not be the correct forum so I will also add to the FCP forum....

>1. Can I re-import the tape with different settings to make the >audio louder?

The tape is already written. Any setting you use to import the tape at a high volume will be equivalent to the digital +12 dB gain you applied.

>2. Is there a filter I can use to make the audio louder?

You already found it. Although I haven't used FCP since working on it as a software engineer in 1999, try the Normalize function.
If that isn't enough, read the manual on the Compressor function.

>3. Why would this have happened when I can hear perfectly >from the camera through my headphones?

Probably because the headphone circuit has its own volume control. The audio level recording to tape is controlled by the input level settings. Volume perception via the headphones is
affected by the original sound, especially if your headphones offer little isolation from the direct sound.

Be careful when normalizing separate clips that are adjacent. If they normalize to different gains, the background noise will be different between the two clips, and when you play it back you'll hear the jump in levels, which can be disconcerting.

If you normalize, do it to the entire audio program (perhaps render just the finished audio track to a separate wav file, normalize/process and then reimport for your final renders).

After you normalize, you can use a compressor to bring the overall average level up even further while attenuating the peaks, to keep them from overloading.

You may want to apply noise reduction software to the audio before the compression stage.

Yeah, good tip. Also, Normalization isn't really all that useful because many video recordings have at least one overload or pop from equipment connection. So, if there are a handful of signal peaks, the normalization function will have a negligible effect. A compressor looks at local signal averages . Since it will also try to amplify noise, use a Noise Gate in series before the compressor.