Matching audio levels across multiple clips

Question

Let's say I have two video clips in Premiere Pro:

a) A clip with people talking - sound is recorded a bit low

b) A clip with people talking and a loud sound (eg. a gunshot) in the middle

How do I match the audio levels so that the people talk at the same volume in both clips?

"Normalize" doesn't work because the gunshot in the middle of (2) wrecks it.

It seems like a very basic requirement for video editing but I can't find a way to do it.

Doing it manually is very time consuming and error-prone (human ears aren't good at matching volume levels across hundreds of clips).

PS: I'm willing to use different software if needed. All I need is to string a bunch of clips together, match the audio across clips and export. Maybe overlay an image every now and again. That's it.

Answer 1

Export just the audio as WAV and use an app called Auphonic - it will level out, not just normalise, the audio. I use it often and it makes everything sound much nicer.

Answer 2

The answer is to use Cyberlink PowerDirector instead.

Much easier to use and you can achieve this with a couple of mouse clicks (right click on the audio and do "Normalize this audio track...")