We Measured 177 Real Short Videos. Most Are Too Quiet to Compete.

What we found

Across 177 short form uploads, the median integrated loudness was minus 20.7 LUFS, and 116 of the 177 came in below minus 16. Short form platforms deliver audio at around minus 14 LUFS.

So the typical video creators bring us is several decibels quieter than everything around it in a feed. Nobody watching thinks the audio is quiet. They think the video is worse.

Why it is invisible to the person who made it

You edit with your hand on the volume knob and headphones on. Your viewer is in a feed where every professionally handled video has been leveled to the same target, and yours arrives underneath it. It is the same instinct that makes a dim photo feel lower quality than a bright one, and it fires before anyone forms an opinion about your content.

The fix is one step, and it is not the volume slider

Dragging volume up raises your noise floor with it and risks clipping your loudest moments. Loudness normalization is the right tool: it measures the whole video and levels it to a target, leaving the dynamics intact. Every serious editor has it, usually called loudness normalization, and you set the target to minus 14 LUFS.

It is also the single most reliable improvement we make to a video, precisely because it is not a judgement call.

The rest of the audio checklist

• •Record in the quietest room you have. Phones amplify background hum more than you notice at the time.
• •Get the microphone close. Distance is the main reason a voice recording needs rescuing later.
• •Keep music well under the voice. Viewers forgive missing music and never forgive a buried voice.
• •Listen back once on phone speakers, because that is where most of your audience is.

Keep reading

• 123 of 177 Videos We Measured Open on a Frozen Frame
• We Scored 1,655 Videos to See If Packaging Predicts Views. It Does Not.