Yes, you can normalize more than one clip at a time in fact, you can normalize as many clips as you have selected in your sequence. With that as background, Gordon Inglis asks if he can apply normalization to more than one clip in the Timeline at once. In contrast, dragging the red rubber bands in the Timeline only allows us to raise the gain of a clip by up to 12 dB which is often not enough. One of the benefits of the Gain filter is that, unlike all other Final Cut controls, the Gain filter can raise, or lower, the level of a clip 96 dB.
Rather, it is applying a Gain filter to each clip which raises it’s level such that the loudest portion of the clip does not exceed the level you specify.
However, this is not actually changing the audio itself. With the release of Final Cut Pro 6, audio normalization is now a menu choice: Modify > Audio > Apply Normalization Gain. I tend to normalize audio between -4.5 and -6 dB. As a note, I never normalize to 0 dB - it’s too loud. Normalization means to raise the audio gain of an enitre clip such that the loudest portion of the clip does not exceed a level which you specify. I’ve been a fan of normalizing audio for a long time, especially when the audio is really, really too soft.
[ This article was first published in the December, 2007, issue of
