Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Log in
  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

URGENT: Need help fixing poor audio

Jaime Vallés

Jaime Vallés

Well-known member
Joined
Dec 28, 2006
Messages
1,795
Reaction score
0
Points
36
Location
New York City
Website
www.casicasi.com
Fair warning: Plea for help / sob story / cautionary tale below. :willy_nilly:

I'm in need of your assistance, RED Users. The SD card that had the good, clean audio of an interview I shot has been lost somehow (don't ask... I'm furious) and I only have the scratch audio from my camera's built-in microphone available.

Here is a 20-second sample of the audio I now have no choice but to use:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/qgst2s7mpu31ap7/Bad audio test file.wav?dl=0

I've tried messing with the audio filters in Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe Audition, but it somehow sounds worse than the original when I try to fix it (like the person is underwater). I'm not a sound engineer, and my usual sound guy is unavailable to help me this weekend, and this edit is due on Monday. If you have any idea how to make this sound passable (way too much air conditioning noise / echo in the room) please let me know how I can do it.

I know it will never sound as good as the Sennheiser MKH50 boom mic that was 12 inches above the interviewee, but anything that can help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!
 
The actual SD card is lost. I think it got left behind where we were shooting, and it wasn't there when we got back to check. Stupid mistake.
 
That one worked. I'll run it through some processing and see what I can do.
 
https://we.tl/ideQBRWu83

Full disclosure: I'm not an audio engineer, just a passionate hobbyist.

Rough attempt while taking a break from editing. All the bottom end in her voice drops out when tackling the room, so it's a trade off (audio experts may disagree).

Mono version is just one of the audio channels.
 
Thank you all for the suggestions and efforts. I'm happy to report that there's hope!

I tried iZotope RX and it's truly incredible. I couldn't believe my ears. Of course, it's still not as good as the original boom audio, but it's now something I can definitely work with. The A/C background noise is completely gone, and the voice still sounds natural and clear. The difference after using RX is astonishing. This is software that should be in every editor's computer. It truly is saving my bacon right now.

Thanks again, everyone!
 
iZotope RX can be a miracle-worker, but it's not as good as just putting the microphone where it needs to be. Sometimes, I've found a wireless mic on the interview subject tends to drop the rest of the room out more accurately than a boom -- but the boom mic will sound more natural. It's a question of which is preferable. Because of situations like these, this is why I think you're better off having a separate sound guy recording on a dedicated sound recorder capturing to two cards (or drives) simultaneously. All the sound people I know routinely save each day's work for at least a week or two before wiping the drive, just in the event the production company loses the material.

https://www.izotope.com/

Note that iZotope is a dozen different processes, so it's not just one thing: there's a lot of stuff you can do in a specific order to salvage a disaster.
 
Jaime Vallés said:
Thank you all for the suggestions and efforts. I'm happy to report that there's hope!

I tried iZotope RX and it's truly incredible. I couldn't believe my ears. Of course, it's still not as good as the original boom audio, but it's now something I can definitely work with. The A/C background noise is completely gone, and the voice still sounds natural and clear. The difference after using RX is astonishing. This is software that should be in every editor's computer. It truly is saving my bacon right now.

Thanks again, everyone!
Click to expand...

Can you post your result? I used RX and while it got rid of the noise, I could never get it to sound very good. Obviously the distance of mic placement playing a major role.
 
Marc Wielage said:
iZotope RX can be a miracle-worker, but it's not as good as just putting the microphone where it needs to be. Sometimes, I've found a wireless mic on the interview subject tends to drop the rest of the room out more accurately than a boom -- but the boom mic will sound more natural. It's a question of which is preferable. Because of situations like these, this is why I think you're better off having a separate sound guy recording on a dedicated sound recorder capturing to two cards (or drives) simultaneously. All the sound people I know routinely save each day's work for at least a week or two before wiping the drive, just in the event the production company loses the material.
Click to expand...


Agreed, having a recorder with dual cards is a very handy feature. And because audio files are so much smaller than say what the camera department has to deal with (although on a recent feature film, I did 400 gigabytes of just the sound files!!), it is usually no problem to keep around the files for an extra few weeks! "Just in case".
 
David Peterson said:
Agreed, having a recorder with dual cards is a very handy feature. And because audio files are so much smaller than say what the camera department has to deal with (although on a recent feature film, I did 400 gigabytes of just the sound files!!), it is usually no problem to keep around the files for an extra few weeks! "Just in case".
Click to expand...
Some years ago, I got a call six months after a job asking if I could locate a specific non-circled audio take. They had had a drive crash and lost some (but not all) of their files. By a miracle, I happened to have a backup and was able to send them the missing file. It doesn't happen often, but it's nice when you can be the hero and save the day for a client.
 
Not as much as movie files but dont underestimate audio files, especialley complete songs or scores!
 
Jaime Vallés said:
Thank you all for the suggestions and efforts. I'm happy to report that there's hope!

I tried iZotope RX and it's truly incredible. I couldn't believe my ears. Of course, it's still not as good as the original boom audio, but it's now something I can definitely work with. The A/C background noise is completely gone, and the voice still sounds natural and clear. The difference after using RX is astonishing. This is software that should be in every editor's computer. It truly is saving my bacon right now.

Thanks again, everyone!
Click to expand...

iZotope RX is truly amazing and I agree that everyone should have it.
/Andreas
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top