How can you correct distorted sound?

[headbirdbrain]

I video taped my husband’s band with xlr input for the sound, which I had no control over the loudness. When I loaded the video onto disk, it was very distorted sounding from be recorded too loud. Is there any tricks out there I can use to repair the sound on the video? I’m using CS5 but also have Final Cut Pro.

Thanks in advance!

Carol

[EarlC]

Unlike the old analog days where there was “sometimes” SOME forgiveness if you slipped into the red zone, digital it pretty much totally non-forgiving. You crunch against the ceiling it clips and what wasn’t recorded, or what got distorted will pretty much always remain so. There ARE expensive “miracles” out there, but NOTHING is going to make that audio be what it could have, should have, or ought to have been. Sorry.

[Grinner Hester]

like my brother Earl saod, short answer… nope. Distortion recorded in is beutiful distotion after much treatment later. Bummer. The good news is you can have fun recording em again at the next gig. Just run your own udio instead of relying on the house dude who hates that you are there.

[birdcat]

Does your CS5 bundle have Audition in it? I have seen the later versions of it work miracles (OK,maybe not miracles but close).

[composite1]

Head,

Earl pretty much called it. In CS5 (Soundbooth) you can bring down some of the noise level and try to normalize the signal to a small degree. At best though, you can only ‘fix’ it enough from being god-awful to maybe just terrible. Audio workstation software like Soundforge (PC only) or Pro-Tools (PC-Mac) can help bring it down to just ‘bad’ with a lot of tweaking.

Ultimately, audio is far less forgiving than video. The old saying ‘crap in is crap out’ goes triple for audio. Next time either adjust your audio levels in camera (if it has the capability) by manually turning them down or using the auto level setting. Test it out prior so you don’t get any nasty surprises like this one.

Best thing is to have a small portable mixer to patch between the mainboard and whatever you’re recording to. At the minimum you’ll be able to turn down the input levels to something you can work with. I know it doesn’t help your current dilemma, but it will help out tons on the next go round.

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