Fixing Audio Recorded from a DSLR Camera

[sarar66272626]

How, if there is a way, can I fix an echo-y room audio recording?! I recorded video off of a DSLR camera and the audio was recorded separately, but I have somehow lost the audio so I am trying to salvage the video recordings by using the audio recorded from the back of the camera. Is there ANY WAY to fix this?! Thank you!

[R Neil Haugen]

There's some things that you can do in the Essential Sound Panel or with some of the Audio effects, but if you've got a real problem child here, I'd recommend going over to the Audition forum. You can edit PrPro audio directly in Audition, and it's of course got a LOT more tools for the job ...

But really, the Audition forum is where the audio masters hang ... Steve G, some of the others over there are very knowledgeable on this sort of thing.

Neil

Community: Audition CS5.5, CS6 & CC | Adobe Community

[sarar66272626]

Thank you!

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

We might know a thing or two, but unfortunately one of those things is that it's pretty much impossible to fix camera audio recorded at a distance, with unremoveable room tone...

[R Neil Haugen]

Very true. However, when most of "us" here say that, well ... we're not necessarily the real experts, ya see?

So sending folks over to you-all to get Truth is a lot easier. Besides, some times what's needed isn't getting to 'broadcast quality' ... but just getting sort of understandable. And to get the max of what can be had takes far more real experience in sound than most on this forum have.

Neil

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

I'm stuck on a tablet in the middle of nowhere for a couple of days with a slightly dodgy internet connection, but it's working a bit better this evening, so perhaps I can explain a bit more...

One of the absolute truths about audio is that unlike what you can achieve with pictures sometimes, audio recordings cannot ever be made 'better' than the originals. Once you end up with room tone in your original, it will have distorted it, and since there is no 'undistortion' information, that simply can't be undone. Unfortunately there are programmes like CSI on the box that mislead people into thinking that everything can be fixed, but that's simply not the case, and their magic 'refocussing' is total fakery, as is their seeming ability to pull conversations out of copious amounts of noise.

Has to be said that anybody who manages to produce an undistortion plugin that works will be laughing him or herself all the way to the bank. We are not holding our collective breaths...

As far as the OP's situation is concerned - if a reshoot isn't possible then ADR (which Audition can.help to retime) may well be your best bet here. You'd be amazed how well this can work,  with a bit of care.

[R Neil Haugen]

As someone who's been in stills professionally for 40 years now ... when all of 5 years ago, I started into video shooting/post, I got a big lesson right off the bat: without a good idea of what your audio is going to be, and how you're going about capturing it CLEAN ... don't bother to get the camera out of the car.

I prefer to avoid ​those​ kind of lessons ...

So ... in general, paying if anything MORE attention to sound is required to get video worth watching. And planning it out is a must.

That said ... there are times that someone with your skills, and Bob & some of the others over in Audition, can help make something ... less ... irritating, at the least. It won't ever be pristine, but ... when the need is dire, less irritating may be a salvation of sorts.

And always ... a learning experience. As in ... ok, so you're not good at sound, who you taking with on your next job to GET good sound? Most of the time, I have to work solo. Pure economics. But I can easily  take care of good camera/lighting setup myself. Adding sound ... is enough to be worth a second person. Or ... plan to double the setup time on-set ​at the least​ from what it takes for camera/lighting setup & check.

Neil

[codeblue0076]

Hello,

There is a company called Audionamix that creates many products for fixing bad audio. I will recommend checking out a product called Instant Dialogue Cleaner which is a plug-in that should work with Adobe Audition. It basically uses an algorithm to preserve speech as much as possible and can save some poor recordings. You can check out their stuff on their website or watch the Instant Dialogue Cleaner Demo video.

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

Original answer stands - you can't use a NR program (and not a particularly good one at that - iZotope's RX will do a better job) to get rid of a room response, which is what the OP was asking about. This is not about cleaning noise away from dialog - which Audition's Adaptive NR will do just as well - but something that is essentially un-fixable in any sort of usable way.

[John Blackfire Films Ltd · Accepted solution]

There is deverberate from Acon Digital https://acondigital.com/products/deverberate/ which is really impressive for removing reverb from the track, but it's still a rescue, not a fix.

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

John_Sac9  wrote

There is deverberate from Acon Digital https://acondigital.com/products/deverberate/ which is really impressive for removing reverb from the track, but it's still a rescue, not a fix.

I'm afraid that I find their claims to be rather exaggerated. Especially this one:

"The Early Reflections Filter uses sophisticated statistical methods to estimate the so called impulse response of the early reflections. The impulse response is then utilized to calculate an inverse filter that cancels out the effect of the early reflections."

The whole point of an impulse response is that it's an accurate representation of a room's characteristics, and all rooms have a unique impulse response, dependent entirely on the relative positions of the source and receiver. You simply cannot create a 'statistical' version of one and expect to have even a shred of accuracy about it! There are lies, damned lies, and then statistics...

[John Blackfire Films Ltd]

Well, like I said, it's a rescue, not a fix. But in real world application, if you have some speech with too much reverb it's an effective tool for restoring it to a more usable level. It may be a bit smoke and mirrors but clients don't give a crap about scientific accuracy, they just want results, and this tool can provide results.