Denoiser or don't bother

egproductions

egproductions

Veteran
So I have a video that was shot with an mkh60 but the levels didn't seem right. After production we realized that the -10db switch was left on by accident. Now I have a dilema. Is it better to use a denoiser filter (whether in premiere pro or a separate sound editor) or is it better to just have the noise. Denoisers always sound hollow to me and creates some strange audio artificats. The Premiere pro denoiser specifically is pretty bad as it goes in and out randomly for some reason even in the exported video. You can play it back one time and have it work through a clip and play it back a second time and it doesn't work for the first half (I've been reading to create a submix for the track)

Even if I can get it working properly, I'm not sure what is more noticable to people and what is more pleasant sounding to the average person.

On another topic there was also a couple of shots where the shaking of the boom pole created a bit of a low frequency thump. What type of filter would you recommend to try eliminating this? I haven't had much success with a general EQ.
 
Depends on how bad the noise is, and what your personal level of tolerance is for the project. I'm of the opinion that every project I create should have the same level of standards in production, but that's my personal view. If you feel that there's wiggle room, ask yourself these questions:

Where's the project intended for distribution? How discerning do you believe your audience will be? How important is this to you, or to your reel?

As for noise reduction, filters like SoundSoap can help immensely. I'm not familiar with what Premiere Pro offers for noise reduction, but the best way to reduce noise is to keep the threshold set pretty high and do several passes. If you try to remove all the noise in one pass, you'll end up losing a whole lot more than just the noise. But if you do several passes, removing just a little of the noise each time, you can make it work remarkably well.
 
I would also recommend iZotope RX 2 as the best current denoiser (besides super expensive solutions). It has smoothing function which in most cases eliminates or greatly reduces those artifacts which you mention. It also has many other useful functions, and I'm sure there's a demo so try it to see if it works for you.

For your thump issue, RX shows the spectrum of your audio and actually allows you to see where your unwanted sounds are, so you can select the specific area and pretty much remove the offending sounds with the accuracy of a scalpel.
 
If you can, get a good dialogue editor do a good editing pass, and then these issues are usually resolved in the dialogue pre-dub (pre-mix). If you can't do that, and you are doing everything yourself, then I think the suggestion of iZotope RX is a good one. I've used SoundSoap with mixed results, but at the time, I kinda knew what I was doing, so I bet if I were to use it now I might get better results.

The main thing is, cut the dialogue, and worry about the clean up once you have the dialogue properly edited. Once you get to that stage, you'll know if your dialogue is salvageable or not.
 
Light passes is the key. But depending on the noise VS dialog it may not be very effective. RX is very good, SoundSoap works OK when it works but you have so little control that it sort of works or not. I have three or four NR apps/ plugins and I used to give SS a shot first because it was so quick. Since I got RX I really haven't used SS.

Your problem is two fold though. The first is low levels and the second is noise. The problem is that the dialog and the noise are going to be close to each other so you may not be able to do much NR before you start getting artifacts.
 
egproductions said:
On another topic there was also a couple of shots where the shaking of the boom pole created a bit of a low frequency thump. What type of filter would you recommend to try eliminating this? I haven't had much success with a general EQ.
Click to expand...

A low cut (High Pass) in the 80 to 180 Hz range should help a lot.
 
wbrock001 said:
I would also recommend iZotope RX 2 as the best current denoiser (besides super expensive solutions). It has smoothing function which in most cases eliminates or greatly reduces those artifacts which you mention. It also has many other useful functions, and I'm sure there's a demo so try it to see if it works for you.

For your thump issue, RX shows the spectrum of your audio and actually allows you to see where your unwanted sounds are, so you can select the specific area and pretty much remove the offending sounds with the accuracy of a scalpel.
Click to expand...

+1 on that. Bit of a learning curve to do it correctly however. There are features in the program that can reduce or eliminate the "hollow" sound or and odd noises imparted by the algorithm.

I had a guide somewhere that lists the steps one should take when "cleaning" dialogue. It's best to do certain things before others. I'll try and find it.

Regardless, my experience with audio is to be subtle. When it sounds good, back it off a bit, then listen again. Our ears have a tendency to go with the over done audio tweaks at first.

I'm pretty good at audio, but by the time I am ready for dialogue clean up in post I'm about ready (sick of it) to hand it over to a qualified, dedicated audio engineer. (Note: Not all engineers seem to understand movie dialogue, so just cause someone is great at recording/mixing music, it does not make them automatically qualified for movie dialogue!)

Hope that makes sense. I was talking in bad Eastern European type English for a shoot all day yesterday and I think it's stuck with me. lol
 
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