Suggestion on Rifftrax sound levels

[Yalloglanchie]

I've re-authored DVDs using all of the Rifftrax so far, and the one thing I'd really like to see is more attention paid to the sound levels by the Rifftrax crew.  I realize it would be more work for their sound engineer, but the result would be really excellent sound quality on the finished product. 

Most movies are made with really loud sound effects, and really soft dialog portions.  That's mostly okay, although it can be a little annoying if you're watching on a small, one-speaker TV or you like having the volume down low enough that the explosion sound effects don't wake all the neighbors. You can at least turn the TV up when the dialog is quiet, and then turn it back down when there are loud explosions in the movie.  Also, most sound systems have the ability to compress or expand the movie's dynamic range on-the-fly (some DVD players call this the "night" mode).

The problem comes in when you have a constant-volume Rifftrax to add to the sound mix when re-authoring a DVD.  You either have (1) Rifftrax sound that is too quiet to hear during the loud-sound-effect portions of the movie, or (2) Rifftrax sound that is booming over the dialog portions of the movie.  And no amount of turning up or down the volume can fix the mis-match in sound levels.  I know there's a GoldWave plug-in (for use when re-authoring DVDs) that will suppress the movie sound when the Rifftrax comments come in, but that messes with the movie sound level, which is a weird effect -- this was never done on any of the MST3K sound tracks.

So what I'm saying is that it would be really nice if the Rifftrax volume fluctuated up or down to match the movie's sound level at that moment.

[Rude]

...

Unfortunately i don't believe Rifftrax main concern is for people who reauthor their own DVDs. In fact, people who do reauthor their Rifftrax in order to create their own DVDs are probably in the minority...

Anyway, i suggest you try the Goldwave Voice Over plug-in that's been suggested in the Technical Support forum. It's great for automatically adjusting the levels in the types of situations that you seem worried about... And it's always worked out just great for me personally!

Good Luck.
-Rude

[SaucyRossy]

Personally my grief over the 'sound levels' is a generic thing. They need to get some better mic's for the guy's to use. It really becomes apparent that there voices aren't as clear as they should be imo when I listen to a rifftrax on my surround sound system.

[gammer]

Yes, when it comes to re-authoring "all bets are off".
RiffTrax are intended to be replayed in its original mp3 format through an iPod or MP3 player.

So, unless RiffTrax changes its opinions, re-authoring is not officially supported by RiffTrax.
In fact I think its quite nice of them to allow us to post our re-authoring methods on their Tech Support section, considering the Tech Support section is to support users who are having other non-reauthoring issues.

I am a big advocate of the GoldWave Voice Over plugin. I have used it on most of my re-authors and I can tell you that its 'the cats ass' for those movies that have low talking audio and loud sound affects volume.

Check out this thread if you get a chance:
http://www.rifftrax.com/smf/index.php?topic=583.0