I want my voice over in how-to video’s to be louder. The voice over is recorded on separate audio track but normalizing it doesn’t make it loud enough in my opinion. What might be the best way to do this?
Effect > Normalize and Effect > Amplify are cousin tools. All they do is turn the volume up and down, but they use different assumptions to do it. They all run out of poop (technical term) when the blue waves start to get too tall and overload. No tools in this family can exceed that.
Scene shifts to Effect > Compressor and Effect > Limiter. These tools intentionally introduce gentle distortion to make your voice appear louder.
Effect > Normalize to -1dB > OK
Effect > Compressor to default values > OK.
Effect > Normalize to -1dB > OK
That should boost your voice. If it’s not enough, UNDO and re-apply Compressor with the Ratio setting boosted to 2.5 or 3. You should get a volume bump each time you do that.
If you start messing with volumes too much, you may find the background noises in your studio get worse. If you’re not recording in a quiet room, you may want to be.
Koz