Amplifying volume track on .avi's + .mp4's

I know cross-posting is uncool, but I posted this in the iPod forum yesterday with no answer, and it's time-sensitive. Sorry.

I'm prepping my iPod for a long flight (18hrs round-trip). Last time I flew, a bunch of my dialogue-heavy videos were too hard to hear over the white noise of the airplane, to my frustration.

So I want to amplify the volume on a bunch of videos, some in avi format, others already compressed mp4's.

I tried changing the volume using QT Pro and re-saving, and running them through Handbrake with the DRC cranked. Neither worked.

This isn't brain surgery, but it's beyond my powers of the google.

Any help would be appreciated. Bonus points if it can be automated & queued, as I have about 5 TV seasons I'd like to do.

72 hours till liftoff.

jackerin said:

When you say you changed the volume and re-saved, did you raise the volume in the movie properties and just do a save in Quicktime?

What I would try if I were you is to adjust the volume (if the +6dB increase you can get in QT is enough) and then do an export to a new file. For the files that are already MP4 you should be able to select passthrough for the video, thereby decreasing the encoding time.

Edit: nevermind, tried it myself and it didn't seem to work.

Click to expand...

Yeah, that's exactly what I did, and as you see, it doesn't work one bit.

The closest thing I can think to do is strip out the audio tracks and run them through Audacity, but a) hello, time-intensive! and b) I don't want to start messing with things that could affect the a/v syncing.

Any other ideas out there?