the best way to reduce noise?

[etrust]

Hi,

im using rode ntg-2 mic. I can hear a lot of noise. How is the best way to reduce this?

Please give me some tips.

Thank you!

[Alex H.]

A few more details will help.

To what device is your mic connected? Are you connected to your camera, and if so what camera?

Where/how are you listening when you hear the noise? Is it in the headphones from your camera/recorder, or is it when you play footage back while you edit?

[Rippie]

don't even know if you're referring to microphone noise
or ambient noise.

More details needed.

[etrust]

Hi,

ok here some details:

Cam: HDR-XR500

Im refering to microphone noise

Tha Rode mic is connected on my cam (mini jack)


I can hear the noise in After Effects or Vegas or on recording the footage on the headphone :=(

The Rode Mic NTG-2 seems to be good and a lot of people told me to buy it, but there is to much noise :=(

What im doing wrong? On my cam i have only the possibility to choose 5.1 or stereo mode and that's it.

please help me to get a decent result with this mic.

thank you

[Alex H.]

Cam: HDR-XR500

Im refering to microphone noise

Tha Rode mic is connected on my cam (mini jack)

And there's your problem. You are connected to a consumer camcorder with 1/8" in. So you're dealing with the camera's less-than-adequate pre-amps.

At this point, the best way to improve your results would be to invest in an XLR converter box with phantom power... look at JuicedLink or Beachtek. This will allow you to take an XLR connection in, and will adapt it down to the 1/8" in for your camera. It doesn't completely bypass the camera's pre-amps, but it sends a strong enough signal that they don't work as hard and introduce less noise.

Even a converter without phantom, using the NTG-2 with a battery, will give a significant improvement.

[Chamber005]

Hi,

ok here some details:

Cam: HDR-XR500

Im refering to microphone noise

Tha Rode mic is connected on my cam (mini jack)


I can hear the noise in After Effects or Vegas or on recording the footage on the headphone :=(

The Rode Mic NTG-2 seems to be good and a lot of people told me to buy it, but there is to much noise :=(

What im doing wrong? On my cam i have only the possibility to choose 5.1 or stereo mode and that's it.

please help me to get a decent result with this mic.

thank you

I just finished using wired countrman B3s, XLRs inputs and a solid preamp for a shoot and I have noise in the raw sound file. You need to run your sound through a clean up program. I'm using Adobe Soundbooth in conjunction with Premiere Pro CS4 and everything is coming along pretty good.

I think to get great sound within the actual original recording you need to be using high end equipment (which neither myself nor you really have). The best thing we can do is just sweep the dust under the rug and hope for the best.

But no one nowhere can fix the audio if your redline your decibles, but I don't think that's your problem.

Just remember that you need to do everything to sound that you would do to your image (e.g. color balancing, correction, even potentially some framing). The sound needs just as much care and attention (sometimes even more). Most clean up programs will allow you to choose the sound you DON'T want. So, usually, you can just select the "noise" when no one is speaking or moving (one of those times you recorded the ambient sound, which hopefully you did), and then you can just tell the program to find that noise and get rid of it across the board.

Soundbooth has a pretty sweet generic clean-up, though.

Good luck!! This is my first real go at sound on my webseries after getting lots of help from the guys here, so we'll see what the final product is like once I'm done editing the 3rd ep, but so far the above advice is working for me.

[Noiz2]

As Chamber005 said you have limits. Ine thing that will help is to get some sort of adapter. If indeed the mini is a mic in then it is probably providing power that you don't want. Also it will be expecting the TRS to be stereo not the different legs of a balanced mic. The other problem you probably have is you probably can't turn off the Auto Gain Control. Recording sound with the AGC on is like shooting with auto focus on, you get some very distracting moves that you have no control over. There are boxes out there that can help with all of that but if your serious about stepping up the sound then you probably need to either up the camera or go dual system. A small recorder than has XLR ins will cost a lot less than a new camera so...

Assuming no $ to throw at the problem. Turn off AGC if it's possible to do so. Get an adapter that can block the camera power (probably any "box" that goes from XLR to mini will do that, a straight cable with matching connectors will not).

Noise reduction in post is tricky. There are a lot of tools some very affordable some very good a few that are pretty good and affordable. Even the cheapest if used VERY carefully can help a lot with hiss. The catch is you need to use them with a good playback system that is calibrated (for just cleanup you "might" be able to use headphones, maybe. Using cheap speakers will mask the problems that NR will add to your sound so, as I said, it's tricky. The less you need to use (NR) the better the more affordable tools will work. There is a reason that the top NR box goes for around $30K and people are willing to pay that.
If you can't turn off the AGC then you will probably need to cut out all the "dead air" you can from your tracks and replace it with some room tone, because the AGC will pump up the noise every time it gets quiet.

[Richard Crowley]

And there's your problem. You are connected to a consumer camcorder with 1/8" in. So you're dealing with the camera's less-than-adequate pre-amps.

Whoa, hold on there. We don't have a fraction of the evidence necessary to come to that sort of conclusion. Plugging a mic like that into that kind of camera has a very good potential of making quite nice audio recordings.

I would NOT consider the "camera's less-than-adequate pre-amps" to be even in the top three potential suspects in this mystery. We have NO IDEA of what "etrust" even means by "noise". Since he/she apparently doesn't have enough experience to adequately describe the "noise", I suggest that posting a sample online somewhere where we can hear it would be extraordinarily helpful.

Also absolutely required is a far more detailed description of how the equipment is being used. In particular, how loud is the source, what is the ambient noise like, how far away is the microphone, etc. etc. It seems far more likely that we are expecting the microphone to work magic to pull pristine sound out of a low-level source in a noisy environment from too far away. Until we can eliminate ALL of those potential problems, the camcorder mic preamps aren't even implicated yet.

Note further that trying to reduce noise after the fact (in post-production editing) is FAR more difficult, expensive and time-consuming than recording the sound properly at the beginning.

This is NOT the kind of question that can be properly responded to with almost NO information. Anyone who tries to analyze this problem with the evidence so far is just shooting in the dark.

[Ted Spencer]

^ agreed

[Alex H.]

Whoa, hold on there...

This is NOT the kind of question that can be properly responded to with almost NO information. Anyone who tries to analyze this problem with the evidence so far is just shooting in the dark.

Okay, disagree with me. But why does it seem so difficult for some folks on these forums to offer a differing opinion without belittling some one else?