Monday, October 31, 2011

Simple Range Compressor

I made brief mention in the previous post about a little Windows tool that I wrote.  It's called Simple Range Compressor.  You can download it from here.  There's a good reason that the word 'simple' is in the title:


The purpose of this program is to perform dynamic range compression.  What this means is that it will attempt to make all sound play at the same volume.  In terms of PseudoTV, it will try to make each show / movie play at the same volume.  It will also keep those shows / movies playing at that volume no matter what is happening on screen.  Going from dialog to explosions shouldn't make any difference.

First the why
There are two main reasons to use this.  First is equalizing volume across shows.  If you play back a few shows in a row then you know that they aren't the same volume.  If you then switch to a movie, those are generally much different.  I hate messing with the volume control all of the time...this prevents that need.

The second reason is for those that don't want to wake their roommate / wife / baby.  You can watch a movie and not have to worry that it will suddenly get extremely load, or that you turn it down and can no longer hear the dialog.  They are the same volume.

Now for the how
Windows Vista and Windows 7 changed how they did audio quite a bit from previous versions.  They allow easy access to many things that used to be driver-dependent.  Simple Range Compressor is a very small program.  I took the easy, but effective, way out.  When the program starts, it notes the volume level that you have set.  It will then try to have all sounds play at that level.  It does this by actually adjusting the volume position itself.  If you click on the volume control you can see that it will slide up and down on its own.  This is also why you don't want the volume to be set to the maximum when using this: there is no room for changing the volume of the sound...explosions are already at that maximum, and it can't increase the volume in order for you to hear dialog.

Why is it simple
There are a few things that all dynamic range compression algorithms have to deal with...threshold, attack time,  and release time.  This program deals with those concepts as well.  Thing is, I just don't think that anyone cares.  If I set a threshold to -75db, does someone really care enough to change that to -70?  If I have an attack time of 20ms, will it make a big difference if it's 15ms instead?  I've set these things to what sounds best on my videos.  Since, after finding the values that I liked, I have no desire to change them anymore, I decided that I just wouldn't make them options at all.  Start the program, minimize it to put it in the system tray, and forget about it.


I hope people find some value in this.  I've been searching for a while for something to do this sort of thing, and I think this is a good solution.  I'm asking that if you try it and like it, please donate $1.00.  Not a lot, but I'm considering it an 'app' and that seems like a reasonable price.


Jason

4 comments:

  1. Since this is real-time, can you run this on a 10.1 live set-up?

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  2. There are 2 ways to interpret your question, so I'll answer both.

    1. It's Windows only, so it won't work on XBMC Live system.

    2. There should be no problem starting the program even if XBMC (any version) is currently running.

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  3. Jason, great idea.

    Takes keen observation to pick up on the need for a program like this.

    Most people would just deal with constantly jabbing at the remote control volume every time an explosion happens.

    Kudos for picking up on the problem and then coming up with a novel way to deal with it.

    Any plans to integrate this into Pseudo?

    Mario

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  4. I can't integrate this into PTV, unfortunately. It uses Windows APIs, so it needs to be contained to Windows only. When Frodo is released, I believe this functionality will be built-in, though.

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