The last time I asked this I didn't get any practical answers, but that was a year ago, so I might as well ask again:

Dear Lazyweb,

How do I normalize the audio volume of a bunch of MOV and MP4 files?

The "Sound Check" option in iTunes works passably well for MP3 files, but doesn't do anything for videos. This makes it annoying to use a playlist full of music videos as a source of ambient entertainment, since the volume fluctuates wildly.

I think that a solution involving manually pulling the audio out of the movie files, normalizing it as a WAV, and re-inserting it into the movie is probably doomed to synchronization errors. So let's not.

I have tried using the "Get Info / Options / Volume Adjustment" slider manually on a few videos, but that is far too manual and annoying to do for all of them. Perhaps an approach would be to compute the volume boost desired of each movie, then set whatever ID3 tag corresponds to that slider? Or failing that, do it with Applescript?

Update: I kinda got something working with Applescript here. It fails if any video requires a volume increase of more than 100% (~6dB), but I only have a few videos of which that is true.

Fri, Sep 25:	Mortified
Sat, Sep 26:	Mortified
Tue, Sep 29:	Sian Alice Group @ Hemlock
Wed, Sep 30:	Ladyhawke @ Fillmore
Thu, Oct 01:	Say Hi To Your Mom @ Independent
Sun, Oct 04:	New Model Army @ DNA Lounge
Mon, Oct 05:	Fever Ray @ Regency
Fri, Oct 09:	The Raincoats / Section 25 / Gang of 4 DJ set @ Mezzanine
Fri, Oct 09:	The Lucky Road @ DNA Lounge
Fri, Oct 16:	The Phenomenauts @ DNA Lounge
Sat, Oct 17:	A Place to Bury Strangers @ Independent
Sun, Oct 18:	La Roux @ GAMH
Thu, Oct 22:	Dragonette @ 330 Ritch
Sat, Oct 24:	The Sounds @ Warfield
Fri, Oct 30:	All Hallow's Eve @ DNA Lounge
Wed, Nov 04:	Puscifer @ Fox Theater
Fri, Nov 06:	Devo perform "Are We Not Men?" @ Regency
Sat, Nov 07:	Devo perform "Freedom of Choice" @ Regency
Sun, Nov 08:	Pixies perform "Doolittle" @ Fox Theater
Mon, Nov 09:	Pixies perform "Doolittle" @ Fox Theater
Thu, Nov 19:	Royksopp @ Regency
Tue, Nov 24:	GWAR @ Regency
Fri, Nov 27:	Simian Mobile Disco @ Mezzanine

By the way, does anyone understand what has changed recently with Youtube's embeddable playlists, and how to make them work again? The embeds I made for mixtape 064b and mixtape 047 no longer work. They always say "An error occurred, please try again later." I spent quite a while poking at it, but I can't figure out any way to get an embedded playlist to work. You can play them on the site here and here (modulo all the videos that have suffered takedowns since I posted them, sigh) but there no longer seems to be any way to embed more than a single video at once.

I am unreasonably excited that I finally have a real DVD copy of URGH! A Music War! It's a good transfer, much better than the copy I recorded from the Sundance channel years ago.

Monkey Goggles

Three times during this process women stopped him and described a sexual experience they had had that somehow connected to his music. I imagined that this must be his life -- middle-aged women describing sex to him as he went about his daily business. To him, it must be like the sun shining or gravity, an unavoidable part of the landscape. I wondered if he even heard them anymore or if it was just a staticy buzz that surrounded him like the low hum of a swarm of mosquitoes.

Previously.