Audio waveforms being cut above certain level

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KarolCeresna

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Audio waveforms being cut above certain level

PostSat May 29, 2021 7:22 am

Hi, recently I finally upgraded to DR17.2 after using DR16, everything has been going smooth so far except one thing - when I put quiet audio clips into the timeline and want to raise volume for that specific clip (either using inspector and volume slider or by making keyframe with alt+click and draging up) the waveform is being limited to certain height. Everything above certain level looks like clipped when in reality it isn´t.

What I´ve tried:
Playing arround with timeline / audio view options on the left - no matter what setting I use or what track height do I specify, It is always limited to a certain height, beyond which it doesn´t extend.
Fairlight page shows the same result.
I also tried different clips, different timelines, different projects (empty ones) and also different computer (both Mac and Windows).

As you can see in the attachment, my old projects from DR16 are shown as "clipped" as well but the keyframes are preserved, so is the volume and nothing is audibly clipping. When the waveform is this low I cannot make precise local adjustments of volume which is really frustrating. Please tell me that this is a trivial problem and I´m doing something wrong.

Specs:
Davinci Resolve 17.2 (studio)
Ryzen 5 3600 6c/12t
32GB 3200MHz RAM
RTX 2070 8GB
Multiple SSDs
Attachments
screenshot3 fairlight.png
Problem shown in the fairlight page
screenshot3 fairlight.png (36.36 KiB) Viewed 1469 times
screenshot2 older project.png
Same problem affecting older project
screenshot2 older project.png (7.13 KiB) Viewed 1469 times
screenshot1.png
Problem
screenshot1.png (4.15 KiB) Viewed 1469 times
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KarolCeresna

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Re: Audio waveforms being cut above certain level

PostSat May 29, 2021 7:57 am

Here is the video example of what it does:

It just jumps down when I first move the volume and then I´m not able to revert it back unless I reimport the media.
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Charles Bennett

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Re: Audio waveforms being cut above certain level

PostSat May 29, 2021 8:37 am

This is a problem that has been reported by others. It only seems to affect the waveforms of embedded audio. The actual audio is not affected only its waveform display.
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KarolCeresna

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Re: Audio waveforms being cut above certain level

PostSat May 29, 2021 12:51 pm

Thank you for your response. I was able to extract audio track (using audacity) and after importing to resolve and syncing it with the video track, it works now as expected. This does not however solve the issue and it is a huge problem for the type of footage I´m dealing with - footage with really inconsistent audio levels. Hope this gets resolved soon, otherwise I will have to revert to DR16.
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Videoneth

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Re: Audio waveforms being cut above certain level

PostSat May 29, 2021 5:13 pm

Is this the same thing as what I get here?
I was ready to make a new thread about that.
I just bumped the volume very high to show the difference between the clips.

The one on the left is AAC LC (see screenshot)
Attachments
aac.jpg
aac.jpg (35.87 KiB) Viewed 1155 times
waveform.jpg
waveform.jpg (25.27 KiB) Viewed 1158 times
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Mike Wallis

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Re: Audio waveforms being cut above certain level

PostMon May 31, 2021 6:35 am

I've noticed the same issue in the display of audio waveforms.

I use them extensively to visually pick out areas that need attention when mixing a project. The visual clipping is very annoying.

Screen Shot 2021-05-31 at 4.25.25 pm.png
Screen Shot 2021-05-31 at 4.25.25 pm.png (15.92 KiB) Viewed 1120 times
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Peter Cave

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Re: Audio waveforms being cut above certain level

PostMon May 31, 2021 11:01 am

I can't replicate the issue on my Mac. This looks like some kind of odd display bug.
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Mike Wallis

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Re: Audio waveforms being cut above certain level

PostMon May 31, 2021 12:10 pm

I've narrowed the problem down I think :)

It appears to only effect MP4 clips imported that contain AAC encoded audio. If the clip contains PCM audio it displays fine.

I recorded the same shot on my Canon XF400 and changed the MP4 audio codec between the two formats and the problem vanished for the PCM audio. I don't know if this effects any other formats though.
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Jim Simon

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Re: Audio waveforms being cut above certain level

PostMon May 31, 2021 6:31 pm

I don't have this problem at all, including MP4 clips with AAC audio.

Not sure that's the key.
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Uli Plank

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Re: Audio waveforms being cut above certain level

PostTue Jun 01, 2021 3:58 am

Neither can I reproduce that here, but I'd suggest to stick to uncompressed audio.
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KarolCeresna

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Re: Audio waveforms being cut above certain level

PostWed Jun 02, 2021 9:21 am

Thankfully this issue seems to be fixed in 17.2.1 update.
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Mike Wallis

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Re: Audio waveforms being cut above certain level

PostThu Jun 03, 2021 1:20 am

I can concur with that.

All my projects that exhibited this issue now display waveforms correctly.

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