Hello Guys. So i'm making a movie.

I make my own sounds, then some women in the internet are also helping me and send me their own sounds, then i also grab high quality audio clips from the web . 

What i end up with is sounds that have varying degrees of loudness and depth. 

Last time when i made a movie, the sound ended up horrible because at times it was too soft you couldn't hear it and you had to switch the volume up and suddenly the sound would get louder and OUCH i would have to cover my ears. 

This time i don't want to make that mistake. I do have Final Cut and also a program Called Soundtrack for Mac. I'm sure i could do sound editing at the end when all my movie is done, but anyone have experience? any tips?

Attached Link: Audacity Audio Editor

I know there are filters for various mp3 programs that do this (equalize the volume). I'm not sure how that applies when you are actually making something as opposed to listening ;o).

You might try Audacity? It's cross-platform.

Laurie

With some you can adjust the volume of each track seperately, so you put each clips sound in a different track , adjust them and as needed merge the tracks.  If your editor doesnt have enough tracks for that you can use a number of wave editors with the autolevel feature . You should still sdjust manually so your whispers and explosions are not the same levels .

Compression is the audio device that addresses this problem. It's often found in "pro-sumer" and above video editors in addition to amateur and professional audio studios worldwide.

Compression basically lowers the volume of loud signals which allows you to bring up the level of everything. Don't know if that makes sense but that's what it does. If your video editor has it, you can try it out. There are several articles on the web that will tell you how to use it, but tread carefully because getting it to function properly is not the most intuitive process.

One option would be to normalize your quieter audio (if your sound editor can do it), which effectively gives you the maximum volume for each piece without introducing distortion. That might give you a "quick and dirty" fix.

There's a program I've heard about, but never used, called MP3 Gain, which  has a batch processing option for equalizing the volume on separate sound files. It's intended for music, but I'd bet it works okay with audio, too.

 Well thanks for the tips. I'm a mac user. I have Garageband and also a program called SoundTrack.  and yeah, have multiple tracks, can add as many as need.

One of my voice actors is an 11 year old girl, she already did her voice recording in mp3 but it seemed like she was far from the mic. i'll have to fix it somehow. 

I'll use NORMALIZE as you said Captain jack

 "but it seemed like she was far from the mic. I'll have to fix that somehow"

If your software has parametric EQ, increase 5kHz 6-9dB. This is move the voice "to the front"

 Hey replicand, is this the same as parametric EQ??? It's called FAT EQ and then a bunch of parameters that you can change

this is a screen capture of Apple's SOUNDTRACK, which is what i'll use to edit sound after i finish my movie. 

 I guess it is.. nice: ) I've never used it but since i'm doing a big movie, i'll be finally able to use it

 This is the one I would use. I've highlighted Band 4. 0.74 circled in blue is  bandwidth control. For now set it t a larger number (which narrows the bandwidth) to find your "trouble" frequency. Increase the gain control (green) to...I'll say +9db so you can really hear it. Then sweep the frequency (red circle) between 4000 and 6000Hz.

When you find the frequency that makes the vocals standout, you will want to make it sound more natural.  Set your (blue circled) bandwidth towards a lower number (around 1-3) to affect a greater range of frequencies and set the (green circled) gain control to either +3 or +6 dB - which will double or quadruple that frequency's gain respectively. Your voice should now sound natural and be "up front" in the mix, and will increase intelligibility.

Bonus 1: set Band 1 to 60Hz, gain at -18db and select "highpass" icon in the upper-left most corner of the window to eliminate "rumble" frequencies caused by air conditioning, seismic activity and footsteps.

Bonus 2: set Band 2 to 150-250Hz, +3 or +6db for "vocal low end power and projection"

Bonus 3: set Band 5 to 7000Hz and carefully reduce to taste. This will reduce the siblants produced by breathy, overpowering  "S" type-sounds.

For a really thorough explanation of how all this works (from a production standpoint), Google "EQ by the octave".

Using compression in combination with EQing is how the pros produce pro sound, though this is a discipline within itself. I would choose this method rather than normalizing because - and this is REALLY important  so it deserves it's own post.....

Please forgive my crappy drawing, which my roommate is making fun of as I type this. Here's the problem with normalization: 

You can see that the overall waveform has relatively low amplitude - except that really huge, (time duration) short spike on the left. Since normalization uses that spike as the "standard" 0db volume level and since it's already maxed out, normalization will do nothing for you. What you need to do is lower the transient spike. How do you do that?

Compression. Actually since the time value (across the x-axis) is very small, you would use limiting instead, which is like compression on steroids. Once you bring down the two transients spikes on the far left and far right, you can bring up the total volume of the audio.

Soooooooo once your audio level is brought up, your noise floor will increase. So you will need a noise gate to eliminate the new, louder noise. Once you apply it, you will have Hollywood-quality sound.

 Thanks for the tips all!!!