removing audio echo

[John Pale]

You probably need to reshoot.
Echo really isn’t very fixable in any program. You can mess with the EQ’s to try to minimize it, but it will never sound right.

[Bruce Coxon]

Open the audio in Soundtrack Pro. Apply effect Dynamics>Enveloper and try the Roomkiller preset. You can then adjust the release time and it’s negative gain to taste. If this doesn’t do it for you apply another iteration of the same effect.

[David Bogie]

[Bruce Coxon] “Open the audio in Soundtrack Pro. Apply effect Dynamics>Enveloper and try the Roomkiller preset. You can then adjust the release time and it’s negative gain to taste. If this doesn’t do it for you apply another iteration of the same effect”

Cool, thanks for the contribution, Bruce. This topic has come up often on FCP forums, I don’t recall this particular suggestion ever being offered.

Lisa, please let us know if this worked for you. It will make a significant addition to the base of searchable solutions to difficult problems.

bogiesan

[Greg Ball]

What kind of Microphone did you use? Did you use headphones? Although you may be able to help your audio somewhat, you really need to understand the basics of recording good audio when you shoot for future projects.

[David Bogie]

Lisa: > looks amazing but sounds like we shot in a cave. Any way to dial this out in FC Pro, or must I re-shoot with lav mics? < Yar, we assumed she used the on-camera mic. Knowing how to record audio is a high level skill that is not part of the currently popular "I got a HD camera, I got FCP, now I'm a filmmaker!" production model. Audio recording is one of those things newbies either are taught or they learn really quickly on their own. bogiesan

[Lisa Udelson]

You assume a lot, Mr. Bogiesan. I’m an award winning filmmaker collaborating with a very accomplished photographer. We did not use the on camera mic, but simply shot in a questionable space with a boom. I may make mistakes, and surely there’s always room to learn, but we are both professionals, and your comments aren’t particularly helpful, only insulting and patronizing. In the future, I’d stick with the “if you don’t have anything helpful to say, don’t say anything” rule.

[Michael Gissing]

I assume you are going to audio post, so be very careful about changing sound files with applications like STP. If you do want to do that then please leave the original file on another track with the volume pulled down so your sound post people can get back to the original file.

If they have access to a CEDAR DNS1000, you may be able to reduce some of the ambience. CEDAR is basically a denoiser but can dry reverb to a limited extent in combination with good EQ.

In my experience, editing rooms rarely have good speaker monitoring and the noisy computers are often in the same space so it is a less than ideal environment to monitor something as delicate as this sort of processing. If you have headphones, then that would help solve that issue, but please leave the original in the timeline.

[John Pale]

[Bruce Coxon] “Open the audio in Soundtrack Pro. Apply effect Dynamics>Enveloper and try the Roomkiller preset. You can then adjust the release time and it’s negative gain to taste. If this doesn’t do it for you apply another iteration of the same effect.”

Great tip. I am saving this one. Didn’t work well on a “severe” test clip, but on a moderately echoey test clip it helped a lot.

[Lisa Udelson]

My FCPro gives me an error message when I try to load clips into Soundtrack Pro – can’t get them to load in. Any thoughts?

[Curious Turtle]

I do quite a bit of shooting in a photo studio, so I know your problems.

As said below you could use an effect in STP to help reduce it (a careful noise gate is sometimes useful for smaller echoes, but I think I’ll try the other one next time).

What we have to do is fill the space with stuff to absorb the sound as much as possible. Even regular thick fabric helps. Thick carpet on the floor helps reduce sound reflections there too. Might not be possible if you need to see feet though :o)

A shotgun mic on a boom works better for us than lapel mics, and looks nicer too but YMMV.

All the best,
Ben

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