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Protools - Easy Solve


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Video editor looking to do a passable cleanup on an audio track only for the purpose of handing in a rough.  They gave me horrible audio, with noise and the mic was probably laying on the ground in a corner, def not where it was supposed to be.

 

Here's what you're apparently not getting:

 

Above is what you said about the audio.  You didn't offer any details about what was actually contained on the audio track besides noise and bad audio.  An "audio track" can contain many different things including music, sound effects, foley, a mix of several dialog tracks, etc.  You didn't bother to say if this was a mixed track or a raw dialog track. 

 

You also included no information about the type, or complexity, of "noise" or the character of the room acoustics, etc., in other words, the specific details that would allow someone to actually be of help.

 

It was the audio equivalent of asking, "My picture looks bad, what tool will fix it?"

 

And you expect a chorus of helpful responses that will solve your problem? 

 

Our studio has a lot of Pro Tools plugins that can address a variety of sonic issues, but I'm not going to go through a complete run-down of plugins, and offer a tutorial on how each can be deployed effectively, in the hope that my time spent might help someone who is too lazy, or unconcerned, to even be bothered to offer cogent details.

 

Really.  What did you expect?!

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Blankenship, you're obviously a seasoned professional.  I admitted I was out of my realm and came here for recommendations on a plug-in or two.  Some people provided recommendations.  I tried what Vin and Jesse suggested, and found a solution.  Then I posted that I found a solution.  That's pretty much the end of it, right?  I could have communicated more clearly what the issue was, but unfortunately I didn't.  Good news is, the problem is resolved so now you get a chance to cool down and maybe find a way help or ignore the next person who comes here looking for assistance, instead of attacking the new guy.  Take it easy on us, please.

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...

I could have communicated more clearly what the issue was, but unfortunately I didn't. Good news is, the problem is resolved so now you get a chance to cool down and maybe find a way help or ignore the next person who comes here looking for assistance, instead of attacking the new guy. Take it easy on us, please.

Typically, newcomers with well defined questions are received in quite a friendly manner here. Those who don't bother to expend the effort to do their research and clearly define their issues -- not so much.

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I'm willing to go into PT and figure it out and I know I'll have to spend a lot of time working with these tools to find what sounds right for this project (for a rough delivery as I mentioned).  All I asked for was a plug-in or two that could point me in the right direction.  No magic fix.  

 

There is no one plug-in that will fix a problem like this. This works out to more technique than software per se. It takes a lifetime to learn them; I have a pretty clear understanding of the nature of picture editing and sound editing, and I'd say each is very challenging and requires a lot of skill and experience. You can do the basics in a couple of days, but it's an uphill climb. None are easy solutions.

 

John Purcell's very detailed book Dialogue Editing for Motion Pictures: A Guide to the Invisible Art runs down a variety of techniques and ideas that will help you. My experience is that if the sound is as you describe, the best you can hope for is maybe a 10-20% improvement, which may not be enough to salvage it. ADR will solve the problem but may not be practical with your time or budget. If it's a reality show/documentary situation, sub-titling may be the fastest, most direct solution.

 

There are lots of discussions about dialogue clean-up over on the Gearslutz Forum's post section. Level riding, heavy EQ, careful compression, noise reduction... all these things can help, but none can turn a can of beans into a steak dinner. You might get an acceptable beans dinner if you can live with that.

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One or two plugins won't do it.

I use a notch filter, eq, compander, cedar noise reduction, more notch filters another eq, de-Esser and compressor in my dialog signal chain.

And the settings are automated very often from clip to clip.

And 20 years experience.

There is no quick easy fix.

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As so many have said before:

 

Definitely the notch EQ will help you out.  If you can hum the unwanted pitch you hear, you can usually notch it out without too much trouble.  That said, if the frequency(s) intersect(s) with the spoken tonal elements of the dialog, you will be altering the sound of the voice somewhat.  

 

RX2 advanced is an amazing tool, and can help immensely, but if you don't know how to handle the application, you can ruin your sound pretty quickly via overcooking.

 

Compression helps even out the dialog so it's easier to understand (makes the quiet parts louder, the louder parts quieter), but this too, if used to excess, can create a flat "wall of sound" which is not natural sounding.

 

Personally I'd find someone with some experience in processing badly recorded audio, and see how far they can take it.  Then decide from there how to proceed.  Their results will most certainly be better than your attempts.  

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I'm curious as to why you're taking it upon yourself to try to fix these problems yourself, especially if you know it's going to go to audio post anyways. Surely, if the recorded sound was to the point where the producers cannot "focus on the story and lock picture" it's all but unusable. But if a first time user of tools like iRX, Cedar, etc can clean "it up relatively easily," then the problems couldn't have been as severe as you made them sound like. However many hours it took you to find a solution plus the amount of time you took to apply it, could most likely have been done quicker and better by your "pro audio guy." Wouldn't all that time and energy be better put towards tasks you're actually responsible for? Hell, all that you'll do will most likely be thrown out by audio post anyways; maybe even without hearing it for themselves.

 

Look, I don't think anyone here want's to discourage you from learning something new. I'm glad you want to expand your knowledge and learn how to solve a problem that comes across your desk often (follow the link Marc posted about Purcell's book). But should you be doing it at your employer's expense? I'm sure I'd catch hell if a producer hired me to do audio and found out I was messing around with color correction because I thought it would help them focus on finalizing my mix.

 

My advice to you is to leave the audio as is so that the audio guy mentioned can work on it and you can focus on what you were hired to do. Then, if you're still interested in learning, you can take said video clips and practice on removing noise on your own time and at your own pace.

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" They gave me horrible audio, with noise and the mic was probably laying on the ground in a corner, def not where it was supposed to be. "

I'd be curious to hear some of this...

from this very sparse description, I'm envisioning a camera mic,  or possibly someone standing near camera golding a Zoom...

I also suspect that the main issue is signal (dialog) to noise (everything else, including ambiance and any reverb) ratio is pretty minimal;

 

" Good news is, the problem is resolved "

the bad news is that the movie-maker will figure that there was little, or even no problem, and continue trying to make their movies the same way...(which by inference means expecting the same results from their video editing...)

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From what I can tell, based on what the producer told me and what I can see in the picture and on the meters, this was recorded onto a $400 mic and sent into the XLR input on an XL2.  Shot in an extremely reflective log cabin environment with no on set mixing and a lot of clipping.

 

I tell them on a daily basis that our best bet is to let a pro audio guy do what they can with it and we'll address how to resolve it based on their report.  (Re-recording, etc.)

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" this was recorded onto a $400 mic and sent into the XLR input on an XL2. "

$400 mic, mounted on the camcorder?

no one listening to the headphone jack on the XL2 ?

no one even checking playback..?

no one booming? or inexperienced and uninterested, passive boom operator --not putting the mic out there..?

--and of course in a reverberant space, the further the mic is from where it needs to be, the worse the reverb seems, (signal to noise ratio) and with an interference tube (shotgun) type mic, it is even more worser (sic)

the mic inputs on those camcorders are pretty poor, and clip easily.

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From what I can tell, based on what the producer told me and what I can see in the picture and on the meters, this was recorded onto a $400 mic and sent into the XLR input on an XL2.  Shot in an extremely reflective log cabin environment with no on set mixing and a lot of clipping.

 

Doh, I didn't know about the clipping. That wasn't mentioned in the original message.

 

There are de-clip tools in iZotope RX2 and RX3, but neither are perfect. So much about getting good sound revolves around just getting the microphone in the right place at the right time. Without that, you're always going to be struggling to put bandaids on the track in post. 

 

Using sound blankets would have been one possibility to reduce reflections and reverb on set. Unfortunately, this is one of those things where they have to ask about it before the shoot, not afterwards.

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