Louder MP4s! LOUDER!

September 4, 2006 12:50 PM

How do I increase the volume of an MP4 file on OS X 10.4?

I have an MP4 that has incredibly low sound. I've tried playing with settings in Quicktime and iTunes, but I can't get it loud enough. What can I do?

posted by SansPoint to computers & internet (9 comments total)

I'm not on a Mac, and I'm not sure it'll work on MP4's, but MP3Gain might help.
posted by futility closet at 1:10 PM on September 4, 2006

In iTunes, does File > Get Info > Options > Volume Adjustment > +100% not help?
posted by thinman at 2:16 PM on September 4, 2006

You can go to File > Get Info, then adjust the individual volume under the Options tab of the dialog that appears. Unless that's the setting you tried already.
posted by evil holiday magic at 2:18 PM on September 4, 2006

Sonofa...
posted by evil holiday magic at 2:19 PM on September 4, 2006

thinman Yes and no. It does, but not nearly enough. Also, the setting doesn't work on my iPod.
posted by SansPoint at 3:31 PM on September 4, 2006

Do you have the song on CD? If so, you can increase the song's volume as thinman and evil holday magic describe, and then rip the song into mp4.
Other than that, anything you do will involve re-encoding the mp4 and you'll lost sound quality.
posted by eustacescrubb at 7:57 PM on September 4, 2006

Well, I can't re-rip it. It's not an audio file, either, it's a video, ripped from YouTube. The original has low sound too, but there has to be a way to boost it.
posted by SansPoint at 8:27 PM on September 4, 2006

In that case, quality isn't that much of a concern, I'm guessing. If you're on a Mac, import it into iMovie and boost the volume, then export as whatever file type you like.
posted by eustacescrubb at 5:11 AM on September 5, 2006

I second futility closet's suggestion... and I'm pretty sure there's a new version that works on mpeg-4 files. There's a Mac distribution called MacMP3Gain, and it contains a command-line utility inside called aacgain. Look for that, and normalize to around 96 dB or so.
posted by cebailey at 6:39 AM on September 5, 2006