Removing coughs, flubs, etc. from one track in multitrack without getting out of sync

[HuckFinn89]

I am still not grasping fully in a step by step process how to remove parts of one conversation like coughs, repeats, etc. without getting out of sync. I have read the forum question by NYCat and answered by ryclark about the ripple effect and watched the tutorials by Jason Levine on editing in his Audio 101 series and Dusty Porter's How to work with Multitrack Sessions in Adobe Audition. These have all been helpful in beginning my understanding but they are not detailed enough for me to have success in practice. Are there other tutorials and or fuller explanations of the process?

[SuiteSpot]

From what you are saying I'm assuming that you have several tracks (or at least more than one track) in a multitrack session and you need to remove certain unwanted sounds from one of the tracks while still maintaining the position of the sounds/speech etc relevant to the rest of the tracks.

What needs to be done really depends on the the material and without hearing it my response will be in general terms.

First thing I would do is select all and lock all clips in time - that way there can be no issue of movement

Unwanted coughs, words, etc can be removed by splitting the clip and dragging back the edge of the clip - yes that will leave a gap but you can 'fill' that gap with another section of ambient/background noise from elsewhere if necessary

You can also 'fill' the gap by stretching the speech a little on either side of the gap - do this carefully so it doesn't sound unnatural - I usually split the clips a little on each side of the gap and make them both unique

You can also split and fade in/out unwanted words sections

You can also 'paint out' the unwanted noise in spectral view

There are a heap of ways to achieve this but again this is all hard to explain without hearing the actual media

[HuckFinn89]

Thanks SuiteSpot. I'll give these options a try.

[ryclark]

Another option instead of splitting the clips is to use the on Waveform Volume envelope to mute the unwanted audio. However you may still need to find some blank studio atmos to paste over the gap to make it sound more natural.

All of the above suggestions presume that you have other things happening on the other tracks at the same time as the coughs, flubs. If the other tracks are also not required during the unwanted sounds then you can just cut out the same time selection across all your tracks thus keeping them synchronised.

[HuckFinn89]

Thanks ryclark! I'll try that.