Removing background noise

[Ty Ford]

Hello Melanie,

My best advice is to run away very quickly and hope they don’t notice your’e gone until you’re out of sight.

They chose who and how to record poorly and are expecting you to be their savior. There is no “high-quality” to be had in a situation like this.

You are up against the Laws of Physics.

There are several other noise reduction softwares out there, but they all work similarly. If you bought iZotope’s RX3 and spent some time learning how to use it, you’d probably improve the situation, but I suspect you’d fall quite a bit short of “High Quality.”

They may find it acceptable. At the end of your pursuit you’ll know a lot more about noise reduction and you may find that useful.

Regards,

Ty Ford
Cow Audio Forum Leader

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[Bruce Watson]

[Melanie Easton] “…recorded while a big party/event was happening in the background. Unfortunately, whoever recorded this did so on a camcorder with no external mic or sound recorder and the interviews are almost inaudible over the loud background party noise.”

Trying to fix this is like trying to take the salt out of a cake that just came out of the oven. Just sayin’.

The problem is that the sound you want to get rid of uses the same range of frequencies as the sound you want to keep. You can’t delete one without deleting the other. If you work at it for quite a while with a software package like Izotope RX (which is an expensive piece of software on its own) you can perhaps make the sound somewhat better. But I suspect not much better. And even when you’re done, it’s still going to sound like it was recorded with the mic (way) out of position, because… it was.

For better or worse, they made amateur mistakes. There’s really nothing you or anyone else can do to make a pro level result from it.

My suggestion? Subtitles.

[Melanie Easton]

Thanks Ty and Bruce. That’s kind of what I suspected the answer would be, but wanted to make sure it wasn’t just my general inexperience with sound editing that was making this so difficult.

I’ve told them to lower their expectations and have offered to shoot the footage for them next time around. Hopefully they will take me up on that.

Also – subtitles are a great idea. Probably the only way to salvage it in this case. Thank you!

[Ty Ford]

Bruce,

Subtitles are a GREAT idea!

Thanks,

Ty Ford
Cow Audio Forum Leader

Want better production audio?: Ty Ford’s Audio Bootcamp Field Guide
Ty Ford Blog: Ty Ford’s Blog

[Craig Alan]

If you can, use the footage they gave you as visuals and record the interviews with the subjects using a quiet environment and good mike placement. Include a little of the party sound on another track. Ask the client what their message is and emphasize that aspect. Along with subtitled scenes from party you’ve got your doc getting potentially close to high quality, whatever that means. You could also interview your clients as adults working with these kids.

Another approach is a VO track telling us what so and so said with the best little voice clips that you can at least hear the words that confirms what the narrative is telling us.

Fix it in PRE is your best option.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Melanie Easton]

Thanks Craig! Unfortunately re-recording the interviews isn’t an option in this case, and if I were going to do that, I’d most certainly re-do the visuals as well because they’re not great either. Subtitles are probably the best way to go in this case. But thanks for the great ideas – will come in handy if the charity takes me up on my offer to do the shooting myself next time around. 🙂

[Don Baarns]

I’m late to this party, but just for future reference:

In lots of cases you can use RX4 or 5 to remove an amazing amount of background noise. In most cases it won’t be production quality when you start with very low quality audio, but if you know what you’re doing you can make huge progress.

The Audacity noise reduction is not very effective, but RX is in a different league.

How long is the audio? Can you post a sample? (I’m new to this forum, I don’t know if that’s allowed.)

Or I can set up a Google drive share and I’ll give it a few minutes with RX. It really depends on the exact nature of the background, but the Dialog Denoiser is pretty slick.

[Harlan Rumjahn]

I second the opinions of the above kind experts of the Creative Cow Audio Forum.

I’m sorry you were given such a hopeless assignment. I wouldn’t even try to improve the audio in the footage they gave you. Even the expensive and well-regarded iZotope Rx 4 Advanced won’t help. Believe me, I’ve experimented with audio not even half as bad as what you describe, and iZotope Rx barely made a difference. In altering the noise, it also alters the main sound/dialogue. In my experience, programs like iZotope are for subtle changes that need to be made in audio that was already captured pretty well.

Hand the footage back to them and tell them sorry but you can’t help. If you try to help, chances are they’ll get your work back and think you suck when, in fact, it is they who suck for giving you such garbage to work with 😉

Good luck!

[Melanie Easton]

Haha – thank you for the sympathy. It is comforting to know that the assignment was impossible and it’s not just my total incompetency with sound editing that’s the problem here. 🙂

I am going the subtitle route for now because I do really want to help these guys out, but will emphasize to them that the only way to get the quality they want is to record it properly in the first place. Hopefully they will understand that. This certainly won’t be going in my showreel, at any rate.

[Melanie Easton]

Hey Don! Thanks for the offer! The clips aren’t long – maybe 30 seconds to a minute or so at most each. I will try to upload a sample for you in a few hours time (when I get home from work this afternoon) and let you have a go of it. I wouldn’t waste much time on it though – pretty sure it’s unsalvageable. But I’m curious to see what RX can do compared to the limited reduction I got in Audacity.