- Let's take a look at advanced audio leveling
for a strong and consistent sound.
I'll be demonstrating with an audio only clip
but the steps I'm going to show
will work for any audio track
with or without an associated video track.
Okay, so the first thing I'm going to do
is disable the auto normalized loudness feature
right-click here in the canvas, choose Project Settings.
And I'm going to disable this and click Apply.
The reason I did that is that feature affects
the entire project.
And I don't want to be fighting with it
as I'm going to be making some specific audio adjustments.
Next, I'm going to pop open the audio effects tab here
and I'm going to drag and drop audio compression to my clip.
Audio compression is very similar
to the auto normalized feature,
but it provides more options and more control.
I'm going to show you some starting points as a guideline
but don't feel like you have to use these exact settings.
Feel free to use your ears and the way for 'em to dial
in the right sound for your project.
Okay, so I'm going to pop open the Properties Panel here
and in the audio compression effect from the dropdown
I'm going to choose Custom,
and this gives me access to all of these parameters.
Now the default setting for this is pretty heavy handed.
So I'm going to bring everything way down.
I've put my gain to zero, my threshold to zero
and I'm going to bring my ratio down to five.
I don't want to dive too much into compression
but just know that in Camtasia
five is a very moderate setting.
I don't want to squash the life out of my vocal track.
Okay, so now I'm going to bring down the threshold
and watch what happens to my peaks here as I do this.
I'm going to bring it down to about there.
It's a little too much.
About negative seven.
As I lower the threshold, my peaks are compressed
and I just want to compress the high points.
Now that my wave form is more level,
I can raise the overall volume of my clip.
So I'm going to go here to the gain
and I'm going to bring this up to about right there.
I want things loud and clear,
but I don't want to push it past the top of the track
or else the audio will begin to distort.
Okay, so let's compare that with the original.
I'm going to zoom out a bit here,
go to my media bin
and drag a new instance of this clip here
and compare it to this one.
My process track has been leveled out
and my overall volume is louder.
Now if I have other tracks to process,
I don't have to keep doing that.
What I can do is right-click this clip
that's been processed, choose Copy Effects,
and then select my other clip or even clips.
Right click and choose Paste Effects.
And I'll get those same settings applied
to that audio track.
Keep in mind, these settings will work great
for this clip and any other clips
I recorded with the same mic and settings.
But if I were to copy and paste this to a recording
of say my wife with a different mic set up,
different voice all that it may or may not work out.
So I recommend repeating this customization process
for any new speaker or any new miking situation.
If you're looking to take full control of your project
give the audio compression effect a try for maximum options.