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robertm74440000
robertm74440000
Participant
February 7, 2017
Answered

Audio editing without a microphone

  • February 7, 2017
  • 1 reply
  • 270 views

Hello, I am helping my friend edit a film he made about a year ago and things have been going great for the most part but I realized that when he shot the film originally he didn't use any microphone other than the camera.  I use audition and I know certain elements of audio editing, but currently running into problems such as background noise hiss, dialogue sounds quiet and a few other problems.  I removed the the background hiss but now it sounds echoey and not real.  So long story short does anyone have any advice to try and get normal sound given the circumstances?

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer Bob Howes

    Well, I can help a bit on the noise reduction.  If you can go back to the original files, instead of using the default settings, do the noise reduction in 3 or 4 "light" passes rather than one big one.  Set the NR slider between 15 and 20% and the amount of reduction to about 15dB.  Between each pass, raise the FFT sample rate to the next higher level (control under the the advanced menu).  You'll have to grab a new noise sample each time.

    Beyond that though, there's not a lot you can do to fix distant, on camera mics.  Some playing with EQ (cutting frequencies outside the vocal range) can sometimes help.  If you have any "definite" sounds like a passing siren, you can draw around things like this in Spectral Frequency view and delete them--but your sound still sounds distant.

    I know your second post said you can't do voice overs but the one real way to fix this would be to get your performers back and do  lot of ADR (Automatic Dialogue Replacement).  Audition's Speech Alignment tool makes this quite easy.  (And just FYI, most feature films do as much as 80% of their dialogue with ADR--and that with teams of professional sound operators with shotguns, fish poles and radio mics!

    1 reply

    robertm74440000
    robertm74440000Author
    Participant
    February 7, 2017

    I can't do any voice overs for this project.

    Bob Howes
    Bob HowesCorrect answer
    Inspiring
    February 8, 2017

    Well, I can help a bit on the noise reduction.  If you can go back to the original files, instead of using the default settings, do the noise reduction in 3 or 4 "light" passes rather than one big one.  Set the NR slider between 15 and 20% and the amount of reduction to about 15dB.  Between each pass, raise the FFT sample rate to the next higher level (control under the the advanced menu).  You'll have to grab a new noise sample each time.

    Beyond that though, there's not a lot you can do to fix distant, on camera mics.  Some playing with EQ (cutting frequencies outside the vocal range) can sometimes help.  If you have any "definite" sounds like a passing siren, you can draw around things like this in Spectral Frequency view and delete them--but your sound still sounds distant.

    I know your second post said you can't do voice overs but the one real way to fix this would be to get your performers back and do  lot of ADR (Automatic Dialogue Replacement).  Audition's Speech Alignment tool makes this quite easy.  (And just FYI, most feature films do as much as 80% of their dialogue with ADR--and that with teams of professional sound operators with shotguns, fish poles and radio mics!

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