Fixing Terrible Audio

[dust'n the callipygous]

My recorder shut off sometime during a shoot. The second half of my audio is straight from the camera. It happens at 1:45 in the video. I can probably figure out how to cut some of the room tone out of that terrible audio, but I don't know the first thing about making that dialog sound fuller. Anybody know of a way to make it halfway decent? I cut this in FCP, but I also have CS5.

 

[Alex H.]

This calls for the re-shoot filter. There's no other way.

The larger question is: how on earth did the recorder stop in the middle of an interview, and no one noticed?!

My recorder shut off sometime during a shoot.]

Some time during the shoot? Do you know why it stopped?

It never ceases to amaze me that people will leave their audio recording to chance by not monitoring as it records, even though they'd never dream of shooting without watching the LCD or viewfinder. This is why Rule #1 of audio is: get good headphones, and use them. How often is that repeated around here?

I'm not trying to be a butt here. I'm just being honest. Brutally honest, perhaps, but honest nonetheless. If you aren't listening, you aren't recording. Period. Chalk it up to lesson learned... and re-shoot that interview if you can.

And here's the checklist for something like this, going into an interview:

1) Fresh batteries... though, for a locked-down, interior interview there is absolutely no reason you cannot use wall power.
2) Clean card (SD/CF), because you don't want the recorder to quit due to a full card.
3) Plug the headphones in, and monitor as you record. Use your ears first, and visual checks of meters, etc., second.

 

[Noiz2]

I'll coment because I've done a lot of cleanup on things like this.
First choice reshoot.
That's probably the second choice also.

After that you need to hire somebody who has the tools to maybe help. You will need some very good noise reduction work and probably some spectral repair. With a LOT of work it might get to be not too embarrassing but it's not going to match the better section.

Your not going to do it with anything in FCP or probably CS5. Your going to need tools like Rx from iZotope. But what you also need is experience with this kind of salvage job. Which is why you need to hire someone.

The cost effective choice is to reshoot, at least rerecord the audio and cut so you don't need sync.


I used to have a little sign up in my studio that said "If your not rolling it doesn't count", just a little reminder to make sure that red light is on.

Alex, it's possible he was monitoring. If your monitoring input (and aren't we all) or the mixer your not going to hear that your not recording. If I wre going to give him the benifit of the doubt I would say he was monitoring and at some point the recorder either stopped (for some reason) or there was a pause and nobody noticed that the recorder wasn't rolling when they started again. So my take is more about the need for a sound person who does nothing but make sure your getting decent sound than the possibility that nobody was monitoring.

Of course we have heard way too many of the "nobody was listening and...", so you may be right.

 

[dust'n the callipygous]

Yeah it was a cheap job in another state, so no reshoots. The client was satisfied, but I just wanted to try and clean it up for myself.

As to how something like that could happen, chalk it up to an inexperienced operator. My audio guy must have cut during a small break in the interview when we had a camera error, and forgot to hit record again. It didnt power down. I guess I phrased that wrong. As for headphones, I was wearing them as well, and they certainly don't give any indication that the actual recorder is going.

There is a very good audio post house here in town, but it's not in the budget. I know I won't be able to get good audio out of this with my current software and abilities, but surely I can make it marginally better than it is now. I really know nothing when it comes to audio post-production. I'll play around and see what I can do

 

[8string]

just as a passing thought, I get the mics feeding through my mixpre, output the tape out to a zoom, and then feed the clean input into the camera's xlrs. this means I have two feeds going clean into various devices, allowing possible clean up from multiple devices. Might not have saved your bacon, would have given you some more options, and might have caught the outage or at least got something better on the camera. Believe me, we all live and learn.

 

[Noiz2]

Kind of what I thought. It happens. If your any good it doesn't happen twice. There is really no way to tell this has happened except by looking at the recorder. A classic with the old HHB DAT was getting out od sync, as it were, in FX recording. Your pausing and un-pausing a lot and it's in a bag so it's not super visible. Some where along the line you didn't pause (or un-pause) and now your recording between takes and pausing during takes. This would be pretty hard to do in production work but probably every FX recordist who used that machine did it once. And I am talking about professionals, getting paid on full budget features. But the pressure is a bit different with FX and you can usually do it again and your usually doing lots and lots of short takes. AS we used to say one reason to hire professionals is because they have made the mistakes so you don't have to. Everyone screws up at some point. What separates the people you want to work with from the ones you don't is that the good ones admit it and work at fixing the problem and the bad ones spend the same time trying to blame somebody/thing else.

The only monitoring that would have alerted you, by ear, is if you were in a confidence mode, where what you are hearing s literally being played back of the recording medium. The problem with that is that the sound is delayed, and in many file based recorders the delay is a long one. There is a mode that can help in some recorders where you don't get any monitoring unless your in record or record ready. It doesn't help with the pause mistake but it probably would have helped in your case.

I always recommend 8Strings setup where the sound person is feeding both the camera and a separate recorder. It gives you one layer of CYA.

You might try just using some EQ to focus more on his vocal range. So like a high cut and a low cut till your getting more of him than the rest. The BIG problem is you don't really have a constant noise to get rid of, but an evolving changing one. You might be able to focus a noise reduction plugin at the general BG roar and it might be constant enough to be able to target, maybe. In general with this kind of thing you want to do a lot of small things not try to do it all in one pass. And always keep the original handy so you can AB them. Remember the golden rule of clean up "Is it better, or just different?".

 

[TheDingo]

It happens at 1:45 in the video. I can probably figure out how to cut some of the room tone out of that terrible audio, but I don't know the first thing about making that dialog sound fuller. Anybody know of a way to make it halfway decent?

I've shot and edited medical / university lectures in sometimes horrible audio environments...

1- Both your "good" and "bad" audio have a low rumble that almost sounds like faint "highway" noise. You might want to try a 80 Hz roll-off filter to get rid of some of this.

2- Use parametric equalization to boost frequencies at 150 Hz, 300 Hz, 450 Hz. It won't be much, probably around 3 - 4.5 dB, and you will have to play with it with a good pair of monitors to see how much boost you need to add. Done properly this can add quite a bit of life back in to what was originally a very "tinny" sounding recording.

3- Use a small amount of noise reduction ( always do this in multiple passes, never in one big lump ) to try and reduce some of the background noise, and always do this after you've completed the previous 2 steps.

...If you can send me a link to a piece of the original audio, I will send you a link to my processed version. ( just so you can get an idea of what is possible )