Quote Does anyone have knowledge of this, tips, anything? It's incredibly discouraging. Huge 2 hour project I guaranteed devliery on early this coming week ---

I haven't encountered anything like that, but a quick test would be to produce your entire project as audio only and listen to how the clip sounds. Use this setting:



If PD gives you what you're expecting, disable ALL audio tracks and place that clip on its own (enabled) track, then produce the entire project as usual.

Let us know if this works.

YouTube/optodata

DS365 | Win11 Pro | Ryzen 9 3950X | RTX 4070 Ti | 32GB RAM | 10TB SSDs | 5K+4K HDR monitors

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rbowser, you might check if your pref > Audio channels matches your source content. For instance, if set to 5.1 and you have stereo source will cause a softening of timeline playback, compounded by your voiceover and FX sound formats, stereo, mono...

Jeff

Thanks much for the replies, Optodata and JL_JL. This problem turns out to be a different one than what I reported. This is now SEMI-SOLVED, sorta, at least IDENTIFIED:

After producing the video in question I first tested it on my tablet. The sound imbalance I described was very pronounced - weak voice, loud music and FX. Now I've streamed it to my TV for testing - same problem.

But doesn't that sound familiar? Google gives you lots of results on the topic of people struggling with weak voice/loud music and FX when playing movies on their TVs. They hold their remote, constantly turning volume up and down. Well, that's mostly a problem with 5.1 surround soundtracks being played on stereo systems. Various "solutions" are posted, including throwing sound to one side so it plays back in mono. If people have a full home theatre set up, they can change the balance so the middle speaker with dialogue is louder.

This can also be an issue even when 5.1 isn't involved. There are various "enhancers" which do aural tricks to boost the width of stereo and/or tweak the EQ in various ways. So another piece of advice I found online was to turn all those things off so you have a better chance of hearing the soundtrack as it was originally produced.

I've noticed before that my PD produced videos will sound wrong played on a TV, but it's more pronounced in this particular project. My soundtracks are almost always complex, lots of layers - AND, Optodata, it's rare for me to use the raw sound on a video clip. I do all my sound production in other sound programs and then import the tracks. The relative balance between the tracks is then done in PD. This project has a produced vocal track, separate sound clips of my original music, separate FX tracks etc.

Also, JL_JL, thanks for the tip. I checked, and I do have Stereo selected in my Preferences.

This project, as usual, sounds fine on the computer. It's exactly as I want - not only with the project playing in PD, but the produced file also sounds exactly the same in Windows Media Player, VLC, any player. It's all good. It's only on TVs and devices where there can be a problem.

If you guys aren't hearing a sound imbalance when you play produced projects on a TV or tablet - I don't have any idea why my results are different.

I'll just tell people the recommended way to watch this is on a computer - and if they watch on TV, which of course would be preferred, I'll ask them to try tweaking their sound settings.

One more note - This issue is still frustrating. If I lowered the sound while editing to levels that work on TV, it could probably be 6 DBs lower - way too low on the computer - and how would I accurately know how low is low enough without numerous, tedious rendering tests?

Thanks again. I may try tweaking a few places in this project where the imbalance is most pronounced, but I can't re-do the whole thing. Not sure what I'll try on my next long project. --

Quote My soundtracks are almost always complex, lots of layers - AND, Optodata, it's rare for me to use the raw sound on a video clip. I do all my sound production in other sound programs and then import the tracks. The relative balance between the tracks is then done in PD. This project has a produced vocal track, separate sound clips of my original music, separate FX tracks etc.

I'm afraid you misunderstood my suggestion. I didn't say anything about using the raw clip audio, I said to produce your entire project to an audio (only) clip. All the imported tracks and mixes that you've done inside PD would be in there, and it would eliminate the possibility that the audio is affected by any of the edits you've made to the visual content.

That would also help you determine if the audio-only version plays as differently on different devices as your full video does.

YouTube/optodata

DS365 | Win11 Pro | Ryzen 9 3950X | RTX 4070 Ti | 32GB RAM | 10TB SSDs | 5K+4K HDR monitors

Canon Vixia GX10 (4K 60p) | HF G30 (HD 60p) | Yi Action+ 4K | 360Fly 4K 360°

SOLVED!

Optodata, you're right, my reply to your suggestion wasn't very responsive. I understood you, but meant to be indicating that since my produced video sounded fine in every media player on a computer, but not on my tablet or TV, the problem was mysterious and had to be lurking somewhere I hadn't thought of. I've been producing videos like this for years, with imported, complex audio tracks which I mix together in PD, and it's always worked. I've also done a lot of producing of audio from PD as you were talking about, and working with that exported audio in other programs with more sound mixing capabilities.

In any case - When I posted earlier about 5.1 surround versus Stereo - got me to thinking. Video sounds fine on my computer - but to stream the video to my tablet and TV, I used Plex. The weak link must be there in Plex somewhere. Sure enough - after Googling and reading Plex user forum posts - I discovered that a recent update had screwed some things up and a lot of people were having my exact same problem. I updated Plex today, and now the problem is totally gone.

Users were complaining of not being able to hear dialogue as if all the back speakers of a surround system were the only sources playing. When surround is played on a stereo system, audio has to be juggled, and for a while, it wasn't working correctly in Plex. Now they've fixed it. I definitely have my audio source set to Stereo in Plex's preferences, and now my project sounds exactly the same on my tablet and TV as it does on my computer.

SO -- this had Nothing to do with PD. That's a relief isn't it? Thanks for the help - Talking it out with you guys helped me think more and figure it out.

RB