VSE sound levels indicator
The VSE has a scopes for image adjustment and should have something to represent sound levels.In the VSE you can adjust vision levels against a waveform, vectorscope or histogram but setting audio levels is actually impossible. There should be a simple stereo meter with peak levels to show how loud the sound mix is becoming. many people are using the VSE to edit animations including the sound post. A simple mix still requires some indication as to relative volumes of different source sounds.Ideally you would need to see individual strip's levels during playback but Blender's VSE is track agnostic so you cannot delegate sound to a channel/track to monitor. However you can monitor master sound mix output. Blender should allow you to monitor the total sound level according to dBFS Here are some mockups:1. Using the current scopes preview window you could add a zoom-able meter. It should have features to set average value and peak hold (a marker that holds position based on amplitude of the signal) 
2. Making a "toolbar" in the VSE timeline you could have a scalable meter (scaling left and right is almost as important as simple zooming) which could be used in its own window. This may be better to watch when playing back in the timeline as you often want to see the waveform and the meter. 
3. As an overlay in the video preview window. In the same way that 'safe-areas' can be displayed, you could have a superimposed version of the meters so that you can see the vision while monitoring the audio. Drawback is that you cannot scale it easily as it could impact on image to much. 
13 Comments
I couldn't agree more (about adding a VU meter of some sort). I use the VSE daily: it has transplanted even Lightworks because of its speed, stability and portability. I actually use the timeline window as my stop-start control. Perhaps the VU-meters could be on their side on that same menu-bar (next to JogShuttle)? Or even in the VSE window, on the menubar (next to Input/PivotPoint)?
The problem with that can be the width of the bar (not the volume height), as to thin a bar can make it very hard to read, especially if you are trying to see stereo difference.
Any ideas about what these scopes look like or where they would be located in the interface? Would they be another view mode for the Preview type or do you think they'd be best in a side region?
In Adobe Premiere Pro CC, they look like this, which is similar to what I assume is being suggested:
i.imgur.com/MiFzUBy.png
I haven't done work in the VSE yet, but I'm a professional video content creator who uses Premiere Pro and After Effects at work. I would have a serious issue doing any work involving audio in the Blender if the VSE doesn't have some sort of audio monitoring like this.
I'm familiar with what scopes look like in the general sense. The bigger question is how they'll best fit into the Blender interface.
Personally, I'm of the opinion that Blender is the best open-source video editing program - mostly cos it's stable. And powerful. And handles pretty much any video format you through at it (apart from animated gifs...?)
I use it for all my video editing at the moment - mostly editing animation done in Blender, but also some live action.
Because of this, relatively small tweaks like audio-level indicators would be very valuable.
I would say either In the VSE side-panal (you know the bit with the + symbol on the right-hand side of the VSE panal) - it may work better for this location if it was rotated by 90 degrees, or to the left of the video preview, scaled to the hight of the video.
I strongly agree! Good open source non-linear video editors are very hard to find. Blender is the only one that I know of that allows editing of animation curves, which is huge. Also, until recently it was the only open source motion-masking (rotoscoping) tool that I knew of, and it's still the best for that IMO. I've tried to find better open source video editors, but I just keep coming back to Blender.
Something like this would be nice to have built into Blender's VSE: <a href=" voltage-control.com/Brig/Bl/Bl-AudMeter.png </a>
There only needs to be one meter (for overall levels). No need for one audio meter per audio clip, since levels per clip really fall into the realm of the audio recording unit and/or the audio editing app.
I did try the VSEQF addon, but it failed to enable on my install of Blender 3.64.
Has been added to this add-on: github.com/snuq/VSEQF
Definitely some cool stuff in there (most should really be part of Blender by default). However, I don't see any dB audio meter on that list of features for that addon.
github.com/snuq/VSEQF/commit/210bfbae5bdd3ced192d6c5438c9f3f107ae503a
I just tried VSEQF on Blender 3.6.5 and it worked. I see the meter there. It's a bit crude, but not bad. From what I can tell, it's showing the overall level -- which is good. I've yet to test it on stereo files.