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Having trouble removing red noise in closeups


rb1138

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Technically it's not that hard... maybe some Peltier devices in the camera head, but the processing could easily be moved someplace else with a big heatsink and a small, quiet fan.

Operationally? Are you kidding? It takes them long enough to set up a conventional digital camera now. Imagine if there were two boxes with a heavy cable... and the DP would have to turn around to adjust the controls...

And cost, for what would never get the market penetration of all-in-one cameras?

Well, why would the cable have to be heavy?

And all controls could still be on the camera, don't you think?

I mean, look at the power an i7 quadcore macmini vs an original 486 DX-2 66mhz computer .

Or the size of cellphones today vs 20 years ago.

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The pickup chip itself -- located right behind the lens -- is where most of the heat comes from. That part of the camera cannot be moved, and since it's right in back of the lens, there's no way to move the fan. The Arri Alexa M was created especially for 3D purposes where camera bodies have to be placed very close together in order to minimize the interocular distance for the 3D rig, but it doesn't make a lot of difference in terms of fan noise.

More in this discussion:

Note that Red is aware of the fan noise issues and has already come out with one hardware update about 8 months ago. I will again advise Sawrab to check the Gearslutz Forum's Post section and also the Digidesign User Conference for more in-depth post discussion on solutions for camera noise.

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While we're complaining about camera noise - I was recording a dialogue scene in a sttionary car the other day and could hear the auto-stabi on a 5d mkIII whirring away. This particular shooter likes a real 'handheld' type thing, no mount or cage, so the results may be interesting once it was turned off. It was also a proble the next dy shooting in a quiet apartment.

I really shouldn't post without my glasses

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You know what I don't understand about today's cameras.

Why don't they have all the electronics in a separate box, that is attached to the lense via an umbilical.

This way they can have the fans whirring a way in a separate location.

Outside of Marc's observation regarding the actual source of the trouble the fans are trying to mitigate, small camera heads with an umbilical are a monumental PITA. I did a ton of commercial work a looong time ago with the Panavised CEI cameras Panavision had out in the 1980's (? on the exact years). Difficult for any shot with a moving camera and lots of pointless cable rerouting, fidgeting around and powering the cameras off and back on when the cable needed to be reseated. It was the shortest road to having jobs almost completely under the control of a video engineer instead of the creative folks. And every piece of cable was always just too short or way the eff too long.

Best regards,

Jim

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While we're complaining about camera noise - I was recording a dialogue scene in a sttionary car the other day and could hear the auto-stabi on a 5d mkIII whirring away.

There's also a high-frequency whine with the 7D that I can hear if the mic is in a certain position and the room is especially quiet. To tell you the truth, I'm not 100% sure it's the camera or the attached viewfinder -- could be both!

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My new favorite plugin for minimizing even broadband noises is McDSP's ML4000. The multi-band compander is fabulous for this sort of thing. Granted, I'm only cleaning up my own recorded SFX most of the time, but the ability to attenuate a frequency range by 10-18dB below a certain threshold is great for making ugly BGs dissapear between spoken words or intended SFX. It can take some tweaking, but it's worked miracles these past few days.

The other morning I recorded some crows going bat-sh*t crazy in my Los Angeles neighborhood, and was then disappointed by the amount of traffic wash that was spoiling the recording. But between some high-pass filtering, some strategic EQ and some ML4000 magic, I ended up with a doggone clean version of crows with nary a sound of traffic anywhere. Add a little McDSP Analog Channel mojo to phatten it all up, and I have a SFX that I'm proud to file in my growing library.

Chris

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Henchman laying down the challenge for himself - I do a fair bit of Dx clean up myself, and often find myself impressed at what some mixers can do, esp' with a Cedar. It seems everytime the edit goes up on a stage at film volume I get a sharp reminder to underdo the noise reduction and concentrate on smooth transitions and good fill. So much bg noise can be disguised/masked once the music/fx etc go in but for me the phasey artifacts/space monkeys or even just too much NR suck the life and soul out of dialog.

I find nowadays, and it may just be the fairly good quality of the system I have the TV hooked up to, but so much Television content has low quality audio, pulsing backgrounds with the dialog, ie no/or not well matched fill, wires running so hot they're constantly distorting, some programmes are near unlistenable, things like the news.

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I find nowadays, and it may just be the fairly good quality of the system I have the TV hooked up to, but so much Television content has low quality audio, pulsing backgrounds with the dialog, ie no/or not well matched fill, wires running so hot they're constantly distorting, some programmes are near unlistenable, things like the news.

I agree.

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I find nowadays, and it may just be the fairly good quality of the system I have the TV hooked up to, but so much Television content has low quality audio, pulsing backgrounds with the dialog, ie no/or not well matched fill, wires running so hot they're constantly distorting, some programmes are near unlistenable, things like the news.

In some ways, "Mediocre" has become the new "Good"!

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I haven't heard the audio the OP is talking about, but if the dialog clear on top of the bg noise, I often find it just as effective to mask the noise with designed backgrounds instead of reducing it away. Or use some minor reduction on the offensive shots, and smooth / cover the changes with additional background noises.

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Henchman laying down the challenge for himself - I do a fair bit of Dx clean up myself, and often find myself impressed at what some mixers can do, esp' with a Cedar. It seems everytime the edit goes up on a stage at film volume I get a sharp reminder to underdo the noise reduction and concentrate on smooth transitions and good fill. So much bg noise can be disguised/masked once the music/fx etc go in but for me the phasey artifacts/space monkeys or even just too much NR suck the life and soul out of dialog.

I find nowadays, and it may just be the fairly good quality of the system I have the TV hooked up to, but so much Television content has low quality audio, pulsing backgrounds with the dialog, ie no/or not well matched fill, wires running so hot they're constantly distorting, some programmes are near unlistenable, things like the news.

I think I know what you mean. Marc replied to something I said in another thread, but I may have forgotten to follow up. There's a lot of pulsing background in TV which doesn't make sense to me. The sound suddenly pulses down to the words and the ambient noise is suddenly gone (is this the wireless?). Then the sound pulses back up to all these birds chirping and stuff like that (but there's also air, which sounds like traffic, suggesting it may be true ambient noise). These tracks are added aren't they? That's what's happening? Or are they just selectively using noise reduction on just the words? Not sure what's happening.

Conlee, that also,works with waves C4.

BTW to the OP, maybe you could post a clip.

I would like to hear how bad the noise is.

I will try to do this. We're on a holiday break right now, I suppose, but I may have the raw files. How do you separate the Sound Devices poly wav files without Pro Tools?

Sawrab

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Srab,

Actually the tool I mentioned will cause EXACTLY the problem you're mentioning if not used carefully. Basically what I've been doing is using ML4000 to drop the backgrounds by a predetermined amount when the overall sound falls below a certain threshold. That can definitely cause backgrounds to "pulse" under the dialog. Using a multiband expander helps somewhat because you can choose to a degree what sounds you want to attenuate and by how much. But this should also be used with careful high/low pass filtering, etc., to minimize the kinds of ugliness you're describing. Also pay careful attention to the attack and release of your expander settings. Depending on the qualities of the sounds you're capturing (dialog vs sharp foley, for example) these settings will make a huge difference in how effective the technique is. There's definitely no one-size-fits-all setting.

Chris

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Naaaa, I hear this all the time on certain major American network TV shows, just somebody struggling to minimize high levels of ambient noise in the background. The noise rushes back in when the dialogue starts, then goes away when the dialogue stops. It's not overwhelmingly awful, and I can see where producers would make the creative choice that this was preferable to either 1) ADR or 2) letting the noise go.

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Naaaa, I hear this all the time on certain major American network TV shows, just somebody struggling to minimize high levels of ambient noise in the background. The noise rushes back in when the dialogue starts, then goes away when the dialogue stops. It's not overwhelmingly awful, and I can see where producers would make the creative choice that this was preferable to either 1) ADR or 2) letting the noise go.

He's describing it as the other way round, though. No noise on the dialogue, and BG that comes up after the dialogue ends. Thaf to me screams broadcast compression. Unless I'm understanding wrong...

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You're both right --- whatever processes they have decided to use for suppression of background noises results in a noticeable (at least to us) changes in the way dialog sounds. I have heard both things happen --- what Marc says, when someone is speaking you hear their words AND the offending background noise, then when they stop speaking the background is suppressed (gated) so it sounds as if there is little background. When you hear it the other way around, on the voice there is little background, then when there is no voice the background pumps up in the spaces. Both are a function of process on the track, process which is often over-used or improperly applied, or just a choice in an effort to improve the soundtrack.

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I had forgotten that a lot of modern televisions have some form of auto gain, which will ride the quiet sections and make 'em sound REALLY funky, as some others have mentioned above. I learned this lesson a couple years ago after doing a small video project for an indie producer and then he called saying my "mix" sounded like crap. Eventually, I ended up driving to his house and I figured it out. Now I tell every client to make sure than damn setting is turned off, because if you have any dynamics at all in your mix, that setting will screw with it big time.

I assume on commercially produced DVDs and broadcasts folks just aren't aware of it, because they're not personally attached to or familiar with the source material. Either that or what they're typically watching has been so compressed that it doesn't trip the triggers anyway.

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When I am mixing a show, on my first pass, focusing on cleaning the dialog, I will do as much noise reduction as possible.

When I link up with my FX guy fr the 2nd pass, if the BGs aren't able to add further smoothing to a really noisy scene, I will usually backoff on nearly all of the processing. As it becomes more of a distraction hearing the pumping, than the noise from the location.

Then it's up to the producers on playback to decide if they would prefer the ADR, which is always the last option.

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