How can I remove camera shutter noise from my audio clip?

[drferry]

I was shooting a very interesting video of tool use by Hyacinth Macaws in the Pantanal, Brazil (they use a piece of rough palm frond placed in their mandibles to get a better grip on hard palm seeds they are trying to crack).   I was shooting with my Nikon DSLR and a 600 mm lens, and there were other photographers there who were also shooting stills, so I have the sound of their shutters scattered throughout the video clips.  I was using the camera's built-in microphone, since I didn't know about this behavior before hand.  I know this is a multiple-frequency sound, but it is very short in duration when it occurs and the interval between the sounds is fixed.  Is there a way to eliminate this noise?  There is a lot of interesting background sound from other birds in the clip, otherwise, I could just turn off the audio.  There are probably a total of about 15 shutter clicks in the three minute file. 

It was recommended on the Premiere Forum that I come over and ask you experts.

Thanks!

[Bob Howes · Accepted solution]

The first thing i'd try is the "Spot Healing Brush Tool".  This is available only in Waveform tool with the Spectral Frequency display turned on (small box a bit to the right of the Multitrack selector or Shift+D as a short cut.

When you have the Spectral display turned on, you'll have access to some new tools on the tool bar.  The one with a picture of the bandaid part covering a dotted line circle is the on you want.

This will give you a little circular selector on the Spectral display.  Use it to draw over each camera noise--there a size control so you can select the most appropriate amount to cover the camera click but as little as possible of the surrounding noise.  As soon as you've finished drawing, Audition will delete the portion you drew over and replace it with some of the sound from either side.  I'd suspect that a loud camera shutter will be fairly easy to spot once you've played the sound watching for the noise.

A couple of suggestions....

First, experiment with various sizes of the draw tool.  Sometimes you can get a more natural sound by just reducing the objectionable noise and not completely eliminating it.

Second, most DSLR shutters are actually two noises...the mirror flipping up then flipping down again.  I've never played with it but it MIGHT be better to treat it as two separate processed.

[ryclark]

Sound Removal tool?

[drferry]

Thanks a ton, Bob!  That was amazing! It involved downloading Audition and figuring out how to load the file, change to the spectral view (thanks for the shortcut) and learn how to isolate the noise and use the Spot Healing Tool. That only took a couple of hours and a steep learning curve, but the noise is gone!

Of course, that means that none of my other files can get by without cleaning them up the same way.  Oh well....

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

Discovering this has one of two effects, generally...

It either makes you incredibly lazy about what you record, as you figure that you can fix virtually anything afterwards.

Or...

You end up like me, and get almost paranoid about not recording all that crap in the first place. Quite frankly, I don't know which is worse!

[Bob Howes]

Of course if you're lazy like me, you just shoot some cutaways of the photographers snapping way, use one or two of those, then people expect the shutter noise!

Seriously, the spot healing brush can be a very useful too (as can the automatic sound removal but it's always best to try an minimise problems during the shoot rather than "fix it in post".  Alas, gone are the days of dedicated sound recordists with a bag of shotguns, fish poles and radio mics at every shoot.

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

Bob Howes wrote:

Alas, gone are the days of dedicated sound recordists with a bag of shotguns, fish poles and radio mics at every shoot.

I've watched a BBC special correspondent news crew at work fairly recently. No, I'd better rephrase that... I've watched a BBC special correspondent talking to a single person with a camera and radio link. That was it. Nobody else at all. Wouldn't even have recognised that it was the Beeb had I not recognised the correspondent. Just about everything about this has been dumbed-down almost beyond belief. Next thing we know, they'll be treating reports by selfie as the norm...

[Bob Howes]

Don't forget the live 2-way interview later on that will be done via Skype....

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

I've seen plenty of those that should never have made it to air. Usually it's due to the complete lack of technical quality, but often as not, it's the contents as well...