Fixing crackly sound in FCP

[samuelreich]

So...

I did a shoot with two Senheisser lav systems, and was surprised to discover that, although I was listening through the headphones and it sounded fine, one of my two channels has some intense crackling in it.

Can I do anything about this? Someone recommended Soundsoap, but that's not compatable with my new Mac. Any specific filters or plugins I should try?

Thanks!

 

[bbalser]

SoundTrack Pro does what SoundSoap does, and actually a tad better. Very easy to do to get rid of abient noise. Cilping due to recording sound at too high of a level, well, you'll never get rid of it, but you can make it more bareable.

But first, a tip. When recording your sound, you have to watch the sound level meters. The level can clip too high, and it will still sound fine over the headphones. The headphones are not playing what's on the tape, but what's coming through the sound circutry, so you won't "hear" the cliping on your headphones.

Ok, so, fixing your sound. Right click your clip in the Browser (before you drop it into a Sequence, or in the Sequence if you've already dropped it in) and chose Send To, then SoundTrack Pro Audio File (not a multitrack project). It'll ask for a name for the new "sent" file, as this is a non-distructive process. It won't effect your original, but work on a copy. Once done, this copy will automatically be imorted into your FCP project. If you click on a clip in the Timeline window, once done, the new audio file will have already replaced the clip in the Timeline.

So, once in STP, you want to run a full analysis on everything except Silence. You'll have to look at the interface to understand what I'm saying. And I'm skiming a lot due to lack of space here. Tell STP to fix everything in the anaysis.

Then you highlight in the waveform edit window a small section of the file that is nothing but background noise. Then Process > Set Noise Print. Then deselect your section and go to Process > Reduce Noise, then play around with the settings until you get it as good as you can.

That's about it in a nutshell. Again, cliping due to your levels being set too high, which again, can only be detected by watching the audio level meters, will never go away, but you can make them sound a tad better.