Movies can have extremely low and extremely high volume levels in various scenes. If you try not to bother your family or neighbours, you are obliged to constantly increase and decrease the volume according to the loudness of a scene. Some media players like Winamp have special plugins that bring all volume levels near an average you can decide. I use the VLC player for videos because I find it convenient, yet a dynamic volume plugin seems not to be available for this player. There is not such an option in VLC itself. However, you can make a few very easy adjustments to achieve almost perfect dynamic volume and avoid extreme loudness.
Go to the Audio Preferences of VLC and 1) set the default volume to 200%, 2) set “replay gain mode” to None, 3) Check the “Volume normalizer” option, and 4) set the value at the right of Volume Normalizer to “0.50″.
This adjustment will work at least when you use Wave output. It will not make the soft sounds louder, it will only decrease automatically the volume when it becomes too high. This way you can have the master volume (of the amplifier or the PC) loud enough in order to hear normal dialogues, and when someone in the movie shouts, or there is gunshot, etc, sound volume will automatically decrease. You will enjoy the goods of an auto gain function, without losing completely the dynamics of a movie. If my configuration is not “exactly” what you need, just play with the Normalizer value, set it to 0.30, or to 0.80, etc., leaving the other adjustments as they are.
.