Learn how to set your target loudness and monitor your loudness using the meter in DaVinci Fairlight.
Streaming video platforms have certain audio requirements. YouTube’s preference is for your audio to be no louder than -14 LUFS, and they will normalize the audio, which can lead to undesired wonkiness. In this tutorial, we will go over how to set your target loudness, monitor your loudness using the meter in Fairlight, and use the automation tool to get further insights into the loudness of your video.
Let’s get some technical language out of the way. What on earth is LUFS, and how is it different from dB? LUFS stands for Loudness Unit Full Scale and, practically speaking, LUFS and dB are the same thing as they describe the same phenomenon of measuring loudness, but LUFS is a newer standard that provides more accuracy. It’s a pretty interesting topic, and there are tons of great articles discussing all the fun technical details and differences between them. For us, however, we’re just going to go the practical route.
Setting Your Target Loudness
The first thing you’ll want to do is to set your Target Loudness. Head over to your Project Settings and go to the Fairlight menu. Under Target Loudness Level, you’ll set it to -14 LUFS since we are creating a project for YouTube. From here, you’ll want to go ahead and edit your project (video and audio), and you don’t need to worry about loudness until later. Just make sure you’re happy with the mix between the dialogue, sound effects, and music.
Hint: With the newest DVR version, there’s an AI audio assistant that can help you improve the DaVinci Resolve audio editing mix on each of your audio tracks.
Managing Your Loudness
You’ve done your edit and have a great balance between your audio. You’re now ready to tweak the loudness levels to get them just right for YouTube. Right next to your preview window in the top right of the Fairlight page, you’ll see a meter with the heading Loudness (if you don’t see this, simply click on the Meters tab on the top).
Note: The Loudness meter measures LUFS, not dB.
Reading the Meter
As you play your clip, you’ll see a bunch of numbers changing just to the right of the loudness meter. Let’s get familiar with what these mean.
- Short: This number measures how far you are above or below the target loudness level at a given time. This is a constantly changing number.
- Short Max: This will tell you how far you are above or below the target loudness level.
- Range: This measures the level between your quietest peak and your loudest peak.
- Integrated: This is the overall loudness of your audio. This is in relation to your target loudness level.
Use Integrated as your reference to measure your signal.
Since you’ve already mixed your audio, you can simply adjust your Main/Bus channel to manage the overall volume of your project until you hit your target loudness. A good thing to know is that 0 represents the target loudness level that we set at the beginning, which is -14 in this instance. Our goal is to make sure the loudness gets as close to zero as possible, without going over (this will result in clipping). YouTube suggests around -3 LUFS, so it’s safe to say that’s a good number to aim for.
Automation
If you’re having trouble getting your levels just right, try using the automation tool to help you monitor your levels. This is how to do it:
- Click the Automation icon.
- Click Index from the top panel.
- Select Tracks as your view.
- Make sure visibility for Bus is On.
- Go to your timeline, and you will see Bus is now visible. Drag Bus down to expose the options.
- Turn Loudness on.
- Set to Integrated.
Under the loudness meter, you will see Start and Reset buttons. Select Start, and you’ll be able to monitor your loudness. Make any adjustments needed, and you are ready to upload your video to YouTube!
That’s It!
Thanks for following this tutorial. Make sure to check out more top-notch tutorials and video templates for DaVinci Resolve. Here are a few suggestions to get you going!
