Compress a video's audio dynamics
Make quiet and loud passages sit closer together with ffmpeg's dynamic-range compressor. Choose light, medium, or heavy levelling; the video track is copied unchanged.
About this tool
Video Audio Dynamics Compressor evens out a video's soundtrack so quiet and loud passages sit closer together. It uses ffmpeg's acompressor audio filter, copies the video stream unchanged, and re-encodes only the audio track.
Use it when a screen recording, lecture, interview, or phone clip jumps between hard-to-hear speech and loud bursts. Pick a preset:
- Light keeps most of the original dynamics and gently tames peaks.
- Medium is the default, a balanced broadcast-style levelling pass.
- Heavy is more aggressive and pulls quiet/loud passages much closer together.
Apply make-up gain is on by default. It restores some loudness after compression; turn it off when you only want to reduce peaks without lifting the whole track.
Limits and edge cases
- Dynamic-range compression is different from file-size compression. To make a file smaller, use a video or audio compression tool instead.
- The video track is copied (
-c:v copy), so pixels, resolution, frame rate, and visual quality are not changed. - The audio track is re-encoded because the compressor rewrites samples.
- WebM outputs use Opus audio; MP4/MOV/M4V/MKV outputs use AAC.
- Very noisy clips may still need noise reduction before compression.
Worked example
For a lecture where the speaker turns away from the microphone, choose Medium levelling with make-up gain on. The generated ffmpeg plan applies:
-af acompressor=threshold=-24dB:ratio=4:attack=10:release=200:makeup=4
The resulting video keeps the original picture while the audio is easier to listen to.
FAQ
Is this the same as making the video file smaller?
No. This compresses the dynamic range of the audio — the gap between quiet and loud moments. It is about listenability, not file size. For smaller files, use a video compression tool.
Will it change the picture quality?
No. The video stream is copied, so the image is not re-encoded. Only the audio stream is processed and re-encoded.
Which preset should I choose?
Start with Medium. Use Light when you want a natural result, and Heavy when speech levels vary a lot or the clip needs aggressive levelling.
What does make-up gain do?
Compression reduces peaks and can make the track feel quieter. Make-up gain raises the processed audio back up. Turn it off when you only want peak control without increasing the overall level.
Developer & Automation Access
Run it from the terminal
Same engine as this page, headless — via the gizza CLI:
gizza tool video-audio-compress-dynamics 'url=https://example.com/input' 'preset=medium' 'makeup=true'New to the CLI? Get gizza →
Open it by URL
Pre-fill and auto-run this tool with query parameters — the names match the API/CLI:
https://gizza.ai/tools/video-audio-compress-dynamics/?url=https://example.com/input&preset=medium&makeup=trueMachine-readable descriptor: tool.json — title + parameters JSON Schema for agents.