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JayNewWeb
Inspiring
February 6, 2021
Question

Noise reduction after editing video

  • February 6, 2021
  • 4 replies
  • 2757 views

Sometimes after I've done some editing work in Premiere Pro I discover that an original video capture had some buzzing like an air conditioner in the background through part or all of the clip. To avoid having to start my editing from scratch after running Noise Reduction in Audition, I've developed the following procedure.

 

NOTES

  • This covers all Sequences in the Project at once.
  • This literally replaces the original MTS file with the repaired MP4, both in the assets list and in the timeline(s).

 

PROCEDURE

 

1. In Audition:

  • open the original capture video (and save it as a new file)
  • do the noise reduction (and save the file)

 

2. In Premiere Pro:

  • create a Sequence that’s 1080p (the size of the original videos I've been recording/capturing)
  • place the original video recording/capture into it
  • place the corrected audio track into it, and be sure the wave forms are lined up exactly
  • Mute the audio track of the original video
  • export that sequence to a new MP4 file (H.264 - Match source, High Bitrate)
  • Note: do not import that new MP4 file into the project first; it will handle that for you
  • Note: it doesn’t matter what sequence you have as the active timeline tab
  • in the list of assets at the left: right-click on the original video capture file
  • click "Replace footage”
  • browse to and select the new MP4 file you just exported
  • save the Project

 

Is that the best way to proceed, or is there an easier, more direct way that I'm overlooking?

 

Thanks!

 

This topic has been closed for replies.

4 replies

R Neil Haugen
R Neil Haugen
Legend
February 16, 2021

You can go to the menu system, it's a little bit different between Macs and PCs. On the PC, it's in the Edit menu. "Edit in Adobe Audition".

 

That has two options, send clip or send entire sequence. whichever you choose, it opens Auditiion with that file or sequence loaded. You work in Audition, then save and depending on the way you do it, you get either a new audio track in Premiere or you get a replaced audio track in Premiere.

 

And unfortunately, there's too many possible choices to handle in a forum post. You really would need to go to the help about using Audition, and also I'd suggest asking questions about the forth & back Premiere/Audition/Premiere process.

 

These are both complex apps.

 

Neil

Everyone's mileage always varies ...
R Neil Haugen
R Neil Haugen
Legend
February 8, 2021

Agreed with the other Neil ... on everything.

 

My workflow on this would be to do all the editing in Premiere, then once done, send the audio to Audition for the cleanup. Which hath the far better toolkit for such things.

 

Then just send the stems back from Audition ... or occasionally, I've just exported a new file, dropped that back in Premiere as replacement audio on the sequence.

 

Neil

Everyone's mileage always varies ...
J
JayNewWebAuthor
Inspiring
February 8, 2021

Thanks so much, guys, but can you pleeeeez give me specifics here.

 

I'm starting with a 1080p MTS video file recorded on my Canon camera. I place it into a Premiere Pro project and into a 720p sequence (so I can sporadically zoom in on myself), and then editing -- and (carelessly) later notice buzzing or humming from a fridge or what have you.

 

What I've then been doing is open the original MTS in Audition, do the NR, and save the audio. (I never paid attention to how I save it, other than that is' in "WAV" format.)

 

Then, create a 1080p sequence in Premiere Pro, place the original MTS video in it, and import the new audio and place that under it in the sequence. Mute the audio line of the original MTS, and Export the sequence so I have a new 1080p video with corrected audio to work with.

 

Then I do Replace Footage on the original video in the assets list to replace it with that new video.

 

Obviously, I need to tighten that up somewhat.

 

It seems I may need to know details for doing Save As in Audition of the audio after NR, I need to know details for exporting the new 1080p sequence in Premiere Pro once I added the corrected audio track, and I may need to know if there's a more efficient workflow than doing what I'm doing by replacing the whole original video clip.

 

Thank you so much!

 

neil wilkes
neil wilkes
Legend
February 9, 2021

Hiya Jay.

 

Can I first please ask why you are creating a 1080 sequence when your source footage is 720p? All you are doing is padding with Zeroes here, and in all honesty you are not helping the footage here at all - it's a straight uprez and the Adobe stuff is frankly not very good at doing this unless you know exactly what you are doing - and why. But back to the noise issue first I think.

When you use a DAW (I am not on the current version of Audition, as I am not able to install it using Windows 7, but that is a whole different rant for another thread) all you need to do is import the audio from it - you do not need to touch the video at all, and it is probably best not to even try. 

When I go to AA2018, I can import the MP4 easily enough even though all I am interested in is the Audio - at this point the video file is irrelevant & can - and should - be ignored as all we are interested in here is the Audio.

Once the video file is imported, you can right-click it in the media browser & extract the audio to a new file, then you can safely remove the original MP4 from the project altogether which will leave you with just the audio to work on, saving a ton of memory resources as shown below:

Now you are ready to clean up the audio. Don't use any presets, as these will not do things how they should be, but instead you will need to find the noise issues where they are present, and remove them manually. Personally, I use iZotope RX7 Advanced for this and not audition, but that is just me - although the Sonnox tools are also very, very good for dialogue cleanup as they have modules specifically for this. The AA tools did in the past used to be very good but in all honesty I will need to go take a look at what is on offer in AA2018, which may well not be the same as you have so not too sure what more I can offer here other than to say that YouTube Tutorials are (or will soon be) your new bestie.

If you get stuck with specifics, please post back & we will try to help.

 

Rendering out the cleaned up audio should be in PCM at 24-bit 48kHz resolution (if you are capturing at 44.1kHz then please change this - all audio for video should be at 48k, and never ever at 44.1 (despite what YouTube will allow) and you need fixed point and not floating point. You can get away with 16-bit but why do this, given that 24-bit is far superior as even if this pads with zeroes on import, the processing will still be carried out in AA internally at 32-bit floating point (set your prefs in AA to use 24-bit fixed with an 8-bit floating, not 16-bit with 16-bit floating)  so rendering at 24-bit will give you much better results.

Then import this into Premiere on a stereo track, with your sequence using a stereo master. Align with the original (should be perfect from the get go), right-click the video track & unlink the audio in the original & simply remove it from the project altogether. Now save the Premiere project with a new name, thus leaving your original assets alone at this point onwards.

neil wilkes
neil wilkes
Legend
February 8, 2021

The main thing I would do is to avoid this process altogether in Premiere and use a proper Audio workstation instead, such as Audition (or whatever you use). These generally have far better tools and the NR tools in Audition are far superior to those in premiere.

Secondly, why oh why are you continually degrading the audio by outputting as AAC-LC in your MP4 files please? Every time you process a lossy audio codec and render to another version of the same lossy data reduction algorith, you remove a lot of the good work done by using the lossy codec again. This adds noise onto noise onto Codec Fluff and really should be avoided at all costs - always, always fix & mix audio to lossless PCM - never use AAC, LC or otherwise.

Audio is 50% of the production - not an afterthought - and should be treated as such too

    A
    Andy 1968
    Inspiring
    February 7, 2021

    I take it you don't like Premiere Pro's noise reduction.

    J
    JayNewWebAuthor
    Inspiring
    February 7, 2021

    Uh... Premiere Pro's noise reduction?

     

    Didn't know there was such a thing. Sorry to have to confess that.

     

    Can you please point me to how to do this in Premiere Pro directly, with a clip that's already been edited? Or I can look.

     

    A
    Andy 1968
    Inspiring
    February 8, 2021

    You can add noise reduction to the clip or the entire track. On the menu bar go to Windows and select show track mixer. At the very top left of the track mixer you will see a little arrow like object. Select it and you should have the option to add effect to the different tracks.

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