Hardcore popping and hum « Videomaker Community Forums

goatchaps
Member

I filmed a wedding and used an external audio recording device. I attached this device directly to my laptop and I'm left with a lot of popping and humming throughout the whole file.

It's a long story how this all came about.

I have a powerbook g4 and final cut studio 2. I also have a pc and sony vegas. I've been trying to reduce the popping in soundtrack pro 2, which came with fcs 2. I haven't been able to reduce the popping by much. I've tried the auto pooping fix in soundtrack pro and it didn't really help.

Is there any way to reduce this noise? If I have to buy another program I will. I really need to clean this audio up.

Here is a small 10 second or so sample of what I'm talking about: http://www.getmefamous.com/b00116.wav

You will be able to hear a piano playing in the background, but there is a rediculous amount of noise.

Please help.

Thanks

Posted 4 years ago #
cwillsher
Member

That's some rescue job you need there. :'(

We might need the long story. Do you know what the noise is? Can you not simply dub some similar music instead to recreate the original ambience? Is this the only source you have for the audio?

I think there's a noise removal tool in Soundtrack Pro now, whereby it can 'learn' the noise that you want removed. I haven't tried it myself, have you? You may need to use several passes which focus on different elements of the noise signal.

But in short, this sounds like a bit of a nightmare which requires an alternatve, 'creative' soluition.

I must tell you, on one of my earliest wedding shoots, I was filming the bride's entrance down a grand staircase but had left the camera recording from the previous shot. Therefore, everytime I thought I was recording a new clip or perspective, I was actually pausing the camera. When I came to edit and saw the footage I nearly died but I noticed that mostly I had just 5 or 6 frames on each shot where I had set the camera ready to 'record' before I paused it again. So I slowed everything right down, mixed in some effects and created the most beautiful sequence I have ever made or ever bothered to do since - they loved it.

Sometimes you just have to work around the problem and think outside the box! :)

Good luck!

Colin

Posted 4 years ago #
goatchaps
Member

Well what happened was that I had brought two lav mics and they were working perfectly during the rehearsals. The plan was to hook the receiver for the lav mics directly to my laptop and record the sound that way. But then the band came. The band wasn't at the rehearsal, they just came in the morning the day of the wedding. Well as it turns out, the band's gear interfered with my gear. That left me very little time to figure out an alternative. I had just purchased the lav mics about two days prior to the wedding. I hadn't had a chance to learn how to change frequencies yet.

So the quick decision was made to use a wireless mic that the band had brought, which was hooked to their pa system. The band's pa system did not have an extra output for the mic. So we plugged a cable directly from the headphone monitor output to my laptop. This is where the popping and hum came from. At this point I only had about 5 minutes before the wedding started. I recorded sound for a minute to test it and I noticed the hum. I figured that there was probably a way to fix it in post.

Well here I am.

The good news is that I still have the sound from my camera's mic. With the audio comming out from the band's pa system, it does sound okay. The only thing that is really annoying is that the photogropher was standing right next to where I was filming.....and her camera was really loud. I guess maybe I would have more luck getting rid of the photogropher's camera noises. But I still would like to know how to clean up this kind of noise.

I did try soundtrack pro's little autocorrect popping utility and it did not help much. I wish I could just grab the peak of the pop and lower it that way....wouldn't that make life easier? Maybe one day it will be that easy.

Please let me know if there is any way to do this. I want to learn....and I still would like that audio.

Oh and that music was just the start of the wedding. I have the whole wedding recorded with this noise.

Posted 4 years ago #
cwillsher
Member

goatchaps Wrote:
Oh and that music was just the start of the wedding. I have the whole wedding recorded with this noise.

Ouch!

There is a great plugin for ProTools for noise removal but I doubt you have access to such a system and in reality I can't think of a low-end solution to this, as the noise covers such a wide frequency range - removing the noise will remove a great deal of the original sound with it.

It may depend how loud the band were, as to whether you can mask it better when they are playing but I fancy you'll will have to end up using the audio from the camera. Try and avoid any nasty noises from the photographer if you can but at the end of the day, that was real sound that happened on the day and couldn't be avoided - a bit like babies crying during the speeches, what can you do?

Another thing that could help in part and another technique I used when faced with a really loud band in a small room, where I couldn't even turn the mic gain down low enough to record without horrible distortion. After the event I contacted the band and managed to acquire a live recording of one of their performances. I only used one track in the end and had to mess around a great deal in making it look like they were playing at the same tempo etc. but again it got me out of trouble that time - you learn and move on.

You might also think about compiling a number of music sequences where you can. Obviously, you can't do that throughout the ceremony or speeches but things like the reception and evening celebrations you don't necessarily have to use any ambient sound at all, just condense the highlights into a pop video-type thing.

Good luck!

Colin

Posted 4 years ago #
tonsofpcs
Member

You've got a few problems there. The most obvious is the AC line noise. I'm going to play with this a bit to see what I can pull out with standard filters, but it could be helpful if you provided a clip that was supposed to be dead silence and was just noise.

Posted 4 years ago #