I have Movie Maker to do simple video editing. I want to view the sound level on some video clips and modify the sound level on each to equalise the volume. Is there a simple free video editor to do this since Movie Maker has very limited cappability?
Last edited by Steve C; 20 Aug 2020 at 11:30.
I have used Audacity--the well known audio app---to manipulate the audio track of various video files.
There might be a simpler video-only app to do the same thing--never investigated that.
Yes, Movie Maker is limited. I used to use it a lot, but these days I use the open source command line utility FFmpeg for all my editing. I still rely on Movie Maker though, it is by far the most convenient way I know of to step through a video frame by frame and locate my edit points. These I use to create a batch file containing a set of FFmpeg commands.
From the command line you can copy the video unaltered while increasing the volume of the audio by 6dB with this command:
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -af volume=6dB -c:v copy output.mp4
Normalisation is also available: AudioVolume – FFmpeg
For more sophisticated audio manipulation I extract the audio track....
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 audio.mp3
...edit it in Audacity, then recombine it with the original video.
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -i editied_audio.mp3 -map 0:0 -map 1:0 -c:v copy output.mp4
Yeah, I've got that in Audacity to help me out.
I did use FFMPEG from the command line a few months back to mass-convert hundreds of mp3s to WAV so I could run them through a click removal program that won't accept mp3s.
Worked quite well, as clumsy as I can be at the command line.
I'm not sure what video file types Audacity will refuse to open, but it's worked for everything I've got so far.
Fond these. Tried BS FAG and it processed a video okay. The problem is that I don't have any videos with volume level issues to test.
Volume Normalizer Master 1.2.2 Free Download - VideoHelp
BS FAG 4.2 Free Download - VideoHelp
Also if you just want to play video:
One of the many settings available in PotPlayer.
A thread with some set up guidance here:
(Ignore Re-Clock as audio renderer though as mentioned in the thread)
A problem with "Open" menu context - affects one particular program
Thanks to all for your excellent advice above. I decided to use Audacity which I already have and installed the file ffmpeg-win-2.2.2.exe to enable it to read .mp4 files. I also grabbed a copy of ffmpeg to use the command line option in future. Audacity is quite useful for viewing the audio level and removing background noise. However, I hit a problem. Having modified the sound level in Audacity, there is no option to save the sound within the .mp4 file. How do I embed the modified sound track in the .mp4 file?
Attachment 293724
Last edited by Steve C; 21 Aug 2020 at 02:58.
You can swap out audio on a video file using avidemux. Despite the name, it also accepts mp4, mkv etc.
Avidemux - Main Page
make sure you set the output container you want eg mp4
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