@johnebaker

Hi John.

I know about that section of the mixer, it was the showing of the additional features in his image I was referring to.

https://s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/live.magix.info/140/229/0DDAE4B08DDA49FDA3BBBC5E4EC08E7D.jpg

Ray.

@CubeAce

Hi Ray,

John EB's tutorial shows how to get the 2 FX strips in the Mixer. Instead of leaving the sends as John shows, they can be put back to 0 and the FX strips stay open. Of course, other tracks can use the same FX strips.

Then select the object to which you want to apply FX that will be in the FX strips, and adjust the AUX1 and 2 sends as I show in the image. If the sends are off for the track that the object is on, then only the object(s) that has AUX1 or 2 on will use the FX strip plugin effects. This is just a trick to apply plugins to an object itself

Re YouLean, you really should try it, especially in MEP. Put it on the Master FX strip and play back to see what your final mix, done in MEP or not, will be. That way you will know what MEP will do to the final product.

John CB

@browj2

Hi John.

Can I ask what you use it for John? Specifically. Because I feel at this point we have two very different ways at looking at things.

Ray.

@CubeAce

Hi Ray,

I covered YouLean thoroughly in this thread.

To summarize, YouLean is a meter, not a tool; it does nothing but measure loudness, dynamic range, peaks and makes a graph showing the loudness over time, with indicators whenever the loudness exceeds a certain value, usually -1.0 dB. With the correct time setting, scrolling across the graph will give you the time where a peak occurred so that you can locate the peak in MEP and adjust the loudness - I use the object volume curve to just reduce the volume where I have plosives like this.

If you have done all of your mixing in another program like Cubase, you can use it in that as well to balance loudness from one song to the next, with and without narration, video sound, etc. Then in MEP, once you have imported your final mastered mix, apply the meter in the mixer to the master track and play back your entire video. You will get a LUFS value, the graph and any values that exceed your target max. peak. You can also see quickly on the graph if you have 2 songs and one is louder than the other - it shows on the graph.

If your overall value is louder than -13 LUFS and you want to post to YT, YT will lower the volume. YT and other online streaming sites do not like peaks over -1.0 dB. Using the meter is the only way in MEP that you can tell.

If your overall value is softer than -13 LUFS, YT will not raise the volume.

I try to target about -15 LUFS. The only way to know is to use the YouLean Meter or another similar meter like Melda MLoudnessAnalyzer.

John CB

Hi John.

I thought this was your thought process and it is diametrically opposed to my own.

First, I'm not concerned about various levels within a music mix. It should be an expression not a mathematical exercise. If I have chosen to make one part louder than another or to change levels then it is part of the piece as I want to present it. Dynamic range is a part of the toolbox and not to be afraid of.

The LUFS figure on sites like YouTube is mainly meaningless and all sites have their own slight variations.

For YouTube. Anything over their average prescribed limit is turned down. So any positive figure you see in their 'Figures for nerds' regarding volume has been adjusted down in volume by the amount shown. Any volume reading as a minus figure is left alone and not adjusted up in volume. Normal practice within YouTube for those bothered about such things is to keep close to -3dB or over, but under 0dB. Broadcasters who keep their settings the same as they would for TV normally upload around -11dB. + or - 3dB.

The problem with not trusting your ears if you have reasonable hearing is as you claim. Constancy between your own videos. Again, if you are bothered. If you play someone's entire video content through boredom or interest it is helpful to have each around the same level to avoid constant adjustment of reaching for the volume control for the user. On that I would agree. But that would include any introductory music to be the same volume as well as any dialogue.  This is where relying on the output of any meter like your YouLearn Meter can throw you out.

Try somewhere like here instead after trusting your ears.

I uploaded my track you found too loud earlier.

If you prefer not to use a website that doesn't actually upload the file you can buy the plugin here.

https://www.meterplugs.com/loudness-penalty

I find that tool much more useful.

Ray.

@CubeAce

Hi Ray,

Please see this example that I showed.

As John EB and I mentioned, we are deaf in one ear. Some of us use headphones. I cannot train my ear to tell me what the perceived loudness is.

It is not a question of taste, whereby one may want the volume of one thing to be higher or lower than another, it is a question of having a tool within MEP/V¨PX that helps show what the loudness is and where problems may occur. How you handle them is up to you.

I and other users are making videos that have more that one song from various sources, audio from video, possibly some narration, and maybe some sound effects. I have no idea what the perceived level is when I listen to something and most people cannot. See my example. There is no way that I or you could tell what the LUFS was for each of the 2 songs from Magix. You might come close, I won't and most other people won't. I can tell that one sounds louder than the other. If I want the perceived level to be the same or close to the same, I cannot do this easily by hearing. But I can do it easily by using the meter. I do not know whether I should adjust the quieter song upwards, or the louder song downwards, or one up and the other down, and by how much. Once I have that, if I want one louder than the other, then no problem - but I have to at least get close.

About the Loudness Penalty tool, you say, "I find that tool much more useful." How can you say that when you haven't even tried the YouLean Meter?

I found the Loudness Penalty thing before I found YouLean and MLoudnessAnalyzer (I already had the latter, just didn't know what it did) and I had used it. With the free version, you have to export the video or audio and then pass it through the tool to find out what the penalty is. With the paid version, you can do this by playing back within the program. It gives the penalty for the various sites. That is all! It does not tell me where I may have problem, does not give me the LUFS of various parts of my project, does not show where I may exceed a preset limit, like -1 dB, does not have a graph, and it does not tell me if my video is going to be too quiet or loud when played back on my TV or computer - meaning louder or quieter than my other videos. It does not show or tell me that me that one part is too soft and another is too loud and I'll be reaching for the volume control. For YT, it does not tell me that my video should be louder, only that there is not penalty, thus, useless.

It is fine for a one song export, useless for a video with audio as I mentioned.

Please, humour me. This thread was about getting VST3's into MEP/VPX. You could not even get one VST into MEP. Please load the YouLean Meter, link to the VST2 version, and show us that you can actually have VST's loaded in MEP. Try it out to see what I am talking about.

John CB

@browj2

Hi John.

Like I said, we seem to be at odds with our views over mastering and I do remember and appreciate you and John's hearing problems. If you find the YouLean Meter useful then why would I argue with that? It's your personal preference and I respect your requirements. Just, please try respect mine which at this time is about keeping my registry as clean as possible until I can get to clone my C: drive.

I have therefore humour your request with a plugin that was somewhat smaller in file size and I may at some point use so I don't feel the need to delete it straight after, although I never understood why you thought a 64 bit vst would not load into my copy of MEP.

Ray.

@CubeAce

Hi Ray,

Scroll back up through this thread to where you tried in vain to get VST plugins to show up in MEP. You succeeded with ME3 but not MEP and the conclusion was that you only have 32 bit VST's and MEP requires 64 bit VST's - it has no bridge. However, you still did not succeed in showing that you could actually load a VST into MEP.

As far as I know, most VST plugins do not use the registry. They are simply .dll's that you put in an appropriate folder and set the scan path to that folder. For YouLean, you only need the dll.

I woke up this morning with this thought. The Penalty Analyzer is like the judges at an ice dancing competition - by then, it's too late to change your program; YouLean and MLoudnessAnalyzer are like the coach helping you with your program and then giving you a very good idea as to what the judges will say.

If all you are doing is creating a one or two song video with no other audio, then using and external audio editor or DAW is fine.

I cannot see much benefit in mixing and mastering multiple audio sources for a video in an external program. I tried with Samplitude. MEP and VPX contain the tools to do this probably just as well. I will export my video and import it into a DAW if I want to create my own songs or score the video with my playing or using loops. The result is sent back to the video editor. More often than not, I will then have to make adjustments to the video and its audio after scoring, and I can only do this in the video editor.

I can send audio from the video clips and narration, either mixed down or individually to an external editor for improvement when necessary, but I have found that this is rarely required; I can do this in VPX. Spectral cleaning is about the only thing that cannot be done in MEP/VPX.

At the end, no matter what you do with the audio or how you get there, the final audio result will come from MEP.

John CB

Hi John.

Once we had established my vsts were 32 bit and MEP only used 64bit vsts then I thought the matter was resolved as others clearly had other third party vsts available in their mixer.

The rest is just about preferential differences between the way we both work.

Ray.

I've got the full version of Movie Edit Pro Plus, under Help it says the version No. is 19.0.2.58, so in theory I should be able to make my third party VSTs work? It seems it will recognise VST2 plugins, but not VST3. In my home recording DAWs (Cakewalk and Studio One) I only install VST3 dlls. I'll do a reinstall of an EQ plugin and opt for VST2 to be installed and see if MEPP recognises it then.

EDIT: Yes, that must be it. I just downloaded a free EQ plugin called TDR Nova from here:

https://thehomerecordings.com/best-free-eq-plugins/

and installed the VST2 and VST3 64 bit versions and MEPP recognised the VST2 version ok. Get with it MEPP, VST3's been around a while now! 😉

Good to know it, so i will install alson VST2 and VST3 as well