This page covers the Vol column and the measurement behind it. It is the reason a rundown built out of files from twenty different sources does not need somebody riding a fader all morning.
The column
Every media cue has a volume, 0–100 %, in the Vol column. Click and type, or set a whole selection at once.
100 % is the normal position. Below it you are turning something down; there is no boost above 100 %, and that is deliberate — see below.
The correction behind it
Material arrives too quiet or too loud. A phone recording, a clip from a video service, a professionally mastered file and an old mp3 can differ by twenty decibels for no reason anybody controls.
So the program measures every media file once and stores a correction in decibels. That correction is the base, and the Vol column works on top of it.
The practical result: 100 % means “normal” whatever file it is. Two clips from different worlds, both at 100 %, arrive at roughly the same loudness.
How the measurement works
- It measures RMS, not peak. Two files with the same peak can sound enormously different in loudness; the peak says almost nothing about how loud something seems.
- It decodes the actual audio, which takes time, so it happens on a background thread while you carry on working.
- It happens once per file, and the result is stored with the cue.
You never see the correction and there is nothing to set. The only sign of it is that the levels behave.
Why there is no boost above 100 %
Because the correction has already done that job. A file that needed lifting has been lifted; a fader that went to 150 % would be lifting an already-corrected signal, which is how clipping arrives.
If a cue is genuinely too quiet at 100 %, the file itself is the problem — and fixing it in the file is better than fixing it in every rundown that uses it.
Practical notes
Set volumes while building, not during the show. The measurement means you rarely have to, which is the point.
A music bed has its own volume, independent of the cues above it — see music beds. It carries the same automatic correction.
Speech under music is the one place where you still set levels by hand: put the bed at 25–40 % under a voice, and listen to it once rather than trusting a number.