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Ezad
Ezad
Inspiring
June 2, 2020
Question

Back Ground Noise - the Exception

  • June 2, 2020
  • 1 reply
  • 558 views

Hello
I uploaded a video to YouTube. I then received a couple comments that I needed to remove the background noise. The situation was that I did work on the audio in Audition – and judiciously applied noise reduction. I then received another comment on the background noise. I then played the video from the YouTube source to gather exactly what was the nature of the complaint. Behold – the background noise is the shifting of chairs, the chatter of those in attendance and other people noises.
That is, my assumption, the complaint – the public arena where the film was recorded – and its plethora of noise.
I have a sample of the ‘background noise’. Folks have the opinion that this noise can be removed? Is that possible? This video was recorded with a camera using the build-in microphone.

 

I feel the YouTube audience needs to know what can be done, what cannot be done.

Let me know you thoughts.  
Thanks for your attentions.

 

https://youtu.be/6KQA1WMx0Qo

This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

SteveG_AudioMasters_
Community Expert
SteveG_AudioMasters_Community Expert
Community Expert
June 2, 2020

That's your problem really - it was recorded with the camera mic. I wish they wouldn't fit the damn things! Anything between the camera and the subject comes out louder than the audio you want - including the camera operator, quite often. In this case you can't even gate the noise out - it's louder than the speech. But hey, you knew that...

 

The best you can do is to explain to these people - who clearly have an understanding of what you can do to audio based on the totally unrealistic scenarios they saw on CSI - that it is what it is, because it was recorded with an on-camera mic; and that it's only continuous noise that can be treated, and not furniture removals. If they claim that they can fix it, give them a sample and see what they come up with... and be prepared to be completely underwhelmed.

Ezad
EzadAuthor
Inspiring
June 3, 2020

Thank you for this comment. 

I needed to collect accurate and useful information to share with the YouTube audience the reality the condition of the background environmental noises. There is this unreasonable expectation that with the use of audio editing tools (Audition) that difficult audio can be greatly improved upon. 

 

 

SteveG_AudioMasters_
Community Expert
SteveG_AudioMasters_Community Expert
Community Expert
June 3, 2020

Okay, here is some information:

 

Rule 1 of audio: You cannot improve on the original recording. That's what it is. The best you can hope for is to make it less worse, and that's all that any clear-up software will do. Some things will never get fixed, like distortion. The reason for that is simple - there's no reference to what should have been there, therefore no basis for any fix. And while software can do a lot, it doesn't have human ears - so it has no means of identifying what you want out of a signal. The closest you can get to being able to do this is with the Sound Removal tool - only there's no way it's going to work on what you recorded, because it only looks for the specific pattern you've entered - so nothing random. There's an auto-correlation technique that can sometimes help a little with isolating speech - but this is a forensic technique and you couldn't broadcast the results.

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