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Trying to lower background noise in an interview – but background noise is just as loud as interview. Assist?!
I’m trying to drop background noise in interview, but the interviewer/interviewee are talking so low (bad mic settings) and the background so loud that the interview voices blend into the background, with the interview decibal levels mostly at the same level as the background, or even lower, sometimes the interview not audible at all. The interview is rarely louder than the background noise, at best.
I haven’t edited sound levels before, but I think right now that there isn’t much that can be done to salvage this. I think it’s pretty much screwed, but before I start fiddling about with FCP and STP I just want to run it past you guys to see what you advise.
If you want, I can send you the audio files if any of you guys want to help me. Any response would be much appreciated my friends 🙂
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5 Replies
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If the background noise is picked up on the mics, there is not much you can do. You may be able to find the frequency of the background noise and lower using EQ.
Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Vice President
Chicago Creative Pro Users Group -
Did the talent have their own mics? Did you also have a microphone on your camera that is picking up the background noise? If so, do you have this track(s) turned off on your timeline?
E=MC2+/-2db
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Your only hope is that a noise reduction plugin or app can lower the noise enough that you can hear the interview above the noise. Eliminating it doesn’t sound possible from your description. STP has a reasonable noise reduction capability, but your best bet would be iZotope RX3 which isn’t a part of STP.
John
MacPro 8-core 2.8GHz, 16 GB RAM, OS 10.8.4, QT10.1, Kona 3, Dual Cinema 23, ATI Radeon HD 5870, 24″ TV-Logic Monitor, ATTO ExpressSAS R380 RAID Adapter, PDE enclosure with 8-drive 6TB RAID 5
FCS 3 (FCP 7.0.3, Motion 4.0.3, Comp 3.5.3, DVDSP 4.2.2, Color 1.5.3)
FCP-X 10.0.9, Motion 5.0.7, Compressor 4.0.7Pro Tools HD 10 w SYNC IO & 192 Digital I/O, Yamaha DM1000, Millennia Media HV-3C, Neumann U87, Schoeps Mk41 mics, Genelec DSP Monitors, Prima CDQ120 ISDN
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If you’re unable to re-shoot the interview, and you aren’t happy with results of trying to make it right in whatever audio application you have at your disposal, perhaps you could put in subtitles.
HTH
Gary
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Have you tried using phase cancellation to reduce the noise?
If I had this problem, and had money, I would try IZOTOPE or the new audio spectrum software from Sony on it.
Without having money to trow at the problem, I would try a combination of sampling only the noise and using an anti-noise phase filter on it, separating the non-speech parts out using multiband EQ, and finishing with downward expansion, maybe.
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