How to fix inconsistent audio levels

Question

I've got video footage from a presentation and everytime the speaker turns his head to look at a screen, the audio level drops significantly because the mic was placed on the wrong side.  I have clips where half the audio is fine, but half is significantly lower.  I have a full timeline of clips like this, and want to know what the quickest way to bring the low volume up without raising the parts with high volume.  I do not want to have to go in and manually adjust the audio for just the lower volumes within a clip.  I thought normalizing all peaks would do this, but it also raises the high volume along with the low volume parts.  I just want to raise any peaks that are below, say, -4 db up to -4 db without increasing the pieces that are already at or above -4db.

Answer 1

There are several ways to adjust Volume, or Gain, in Audio in PrPro. This ARTICLE goes into a little detail on using each.
Personally, I like Richard's suggested method, but one must remember that the Audio Mixer adds Track Keyframes for the automation. If one were to later edit the Clips on that Audio Track, those Track Keyframes remain, where they were, and do NOT follow Clips. Still, as I do the final Volume adjustments AFTER my editing, having Track Keyframes is not an issue.
Good luck,
Hunt