How do you remove unwanted sound in your dialogue on audacity?

H

HeyAndy

Active member
A few months ago I recorded an interview. At certain points of the dialogue I could hear a couple of sounds in the background: paper crackling, cars passing by, dog barking. I used a rode videomic pro.

My question is how can I remove, extract or separate unwanted sounds from my dialogue on audacity in order to get clean audio?
 
I don't have too much experience with Audacity, but I don't think this is possible within the program. The best thing you can probably do is to open the wav files in iZotope RX2 and remove them manually. I've had great success cleaning those particular things up with iZotope.
 
HeyAndy said:
A few months ago I recorded an interview. At certain points of the dialogue I could hear a couple of sounds in the background: paper crackling, cars passing by, dog barking. I used a rode videomic pro.

My question is how can I remove, extract or separate dialog unwanted sounds from my dialogue on audacity in order to get clean audio?
Click to expand...

If the unwanted sounds are mixed in with the actual utterances, that's problematic, and would requires some sort of 'expensive' solution. (Since Audacity is 'free'... anything is more expensive that has a price tag...).

If it is that while the speaker pauses, there are 'noises' then judicious cutting away of the pauses, and replacement with 'clean' room tone would be the way to do it 'cheaply', albeit more personally time consuming.
 
+1 J1clark..
There's no magic one-click cheap and easy solution.. and sometimes, no solution at all.. except ADR or re-shoot.
If an audio clip was posted, we could better evaluate the issue.
 
HeyAndy said:
A few months ago I recorded an interview. At certain points of the dialogue I could hear a couple of sounds in the background: paper crackling, cars passing by, dog barking. I used a rode videomic pro.

My question is how can I remove, extract or separate unwanted sounds from my dialogue on audacity in order to get clean audio?
Click to expand...
If the sounds are in between words you xan use careful editing in a zoomed i-in timeline to edit them out and lay in room tone to fill the blanks. If the sounds are underneath the words, there's only a limited amount you can do. A constant drone involving a limited number of frequencies like a fan can be reduced with noise removal software like Izotope Rx; variable sounds like dog barks and traffic noises you're going to be pretty much stuck with. A lesson for next time - pick a quieter location, most of the time you CAN'T "fix it in post."
 
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iZotope is the company, the application/ plugin Ryan was talking about is Rx from iZotope.

As others said you can remove and patch roomtone in IF the sound happens when people are not talking.

Removing things that are on top of the dialog is tricky. You need a tool like SPECTRAL REPAIR which is part of Rx. Not too pricey as far as professional audio goes but the cheap version is $350. With it you may be able to remove things over dialog. Or more accurately you can remove some things, so if what you want to remove is identifiable it can be removed. I have had great results on sharp and clearly defined sounds, and no luck with some varying and hard to define sounds.
 
Some of those should be removable, the others should be able to be minimized.

If you do a little post work you can probably mostly make them disappear.

First I would go and see about using Rx. The advanced version (a lot more $) can track changing sounds, so that would, in theory, help with the car bys. But you should be able to use the lasso to grab the car by IF you can see it in the spectrogram.

There also seems to be a good "silence" bit and I would take a noise print of that and do a bit of broadband noise reduction.

I would then EQ the track, it's very thin and crunchy. Roll off some of the top and probably the bottom, that will also help with some of the cars, and maybe boost a bit in the low mid? maybe.

You have used touches of other shots sync sound, that is good but I would probably layer something on top to make them cut through a bit more.

And I would add some ambience/ background to the shots. So it sounds different in the restaurant than in the apartment. I realize it's probably an apartment over the restaurant so it won't be really different but it should be a bit different. You might make the apartment a bit warmer sounding so the restaurant sound more "desolate".

I know those are broad and not very "sound" terms but for instance you could have a touch of an interior hose with radiator ambience in the apartment, and maybe some car bys in the restaurant? I know, you are trying to get rid of the car by's but a car by where it helps is not a bad thing, it sort of says down on the street. Maybe not but I would still make the different spaces "feel" different. It will make it sound smoother and you will be manipulating the audience to "feel" more how the subject "feels".
 
I should mention...

This is a documentary, kind of (I'm assuming). And there are two schools in that arena. The first is very ENG/ journalism and thinks that you should only have what you recorded at the time so it's all "authentic". In that case you really shouldn't be removing any sounds either. The second school is basically that you make the best most engaging film you can and removing adding sounds is fine AS LONG as you are not lying or misleading the audience. Putting appropriate backgrounds and sweetening sounds that were there but just not recorded well is fine. Putting a battle scene in the background and implying he is someplace completely different is not.

There is also what I think of as a not legitimate school of thought that you job is basically propaganda and anything goes as long as the audience is sold on what you are trying to sell. That is basically propaganda posing as documentary in my book. I've done a lot of advertising and they are doing the same thing but they don't pretend it's journalism.

I'm a big believer in the second camp, understand the first camp but think their argument is flawed (they are there filming so it's not "real" anyway). and kind of despise the third camp.
 
I think the background noises are acceptable in the context of the style of the piece.

What is strange though is the quality of the voice recording with the Rode videomic.

It sounds like the mic is a long way away and for framing that tight you should have been able to get the mic within one foot of the subject, it also has a strange tonal quality and I would be more worried about that than the noises in the background.

It sounds like the mic is just mounted on the camera and that should not be how you record an interview such as this, the mic should be on a boom or stand above the subjects head and to the front pointing down to his mouth and chest cavity.

As it is I would make the dialogue mono and use EQ and filtering to get rid of some of the noise and to make the voice sound fuller, I am not keen on the rode videomic and at best it should be used for getting basic sound effects like any other camera mic is designed to do, a proper mono boom or lav mic should be used for interviews, personally I use AT 675R's but a basic cardioid mic closer to the subject would give a far superior sound.

Have a listen to this scene shot with one AT875R mic on a boom: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DH8mVouKkhg

or this using a cabled lav mics: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6T4GyIXYbno
 
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GaryNattrass said:
I think the background noises are acceptable in the context of the style of the piece.

What is strange though is the quality of the voice recording with the Rode videomic.

It sounds like the mic is a long way away and for framing that tight you should have been able to get the mic within one foot of the subject, it also has a strange tonal quality and I would be more worried about that than the noises in the background.

It sounds like the mic is just mounted on the camera and that should not be how you record an interview such as this, the mic should be on a boom or stand above the subjects head and to the front pointing down to his mouth and chest cavity.

As it is I would make the dialogue mono and use EQ and filtering to get rid of some of the noise and to make the voice sound fuller, I am not keen on the rode videomic and at best it should be used for getting basic sound effects like any other camera mic is designed to do, a proper mono boom or lav mic should be used for interviews, personally I use AT 675R's but a basic cardioid mic closer to the subject would give a far superior sound.

Have a listen to this scene shot with one AT875R mic on a boom: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DH8mVouKkhg

or this using a cabled lav mics: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6T4GyIXYbno
Click to expand...

Thanks.

And yes the dialogue was recorded while the microphone was on top of the camera. I did not have an extension so I couldn't really bring the microphone any closer.
 
Well that explains why it sounds bad and why you have problems, sadly you can not change the law of physics so putting a mic on top of the camera will make it sound like it is on top of the camera if the camera is a distance away.

A lot of technique regarding good sound is to make the perspective of the sound match the visuals so in this case your camera is zoomed in on the persons face but the sound is recorded at distance where the camera is placed so to me it sticks out like a sore thumb and certainly more of a problem than a few off camera sounds in the background.

As also said the rode videomic is not designed to record voices and is more a general purpose stereo effects mic so it is always worth knowing your kit's limitations before you start shooting, a simple extension cable would have helped but also all dialogue and interviews should be recorded in mono as you can always add stereo ambience or a wild track in post to mask edits and make the background more consistent.

All that said though I have done interviews on my domestic camera the canon HF11 and have used a $50 mic to do them the sony ECM-MS 907 but I made sure it was close to the subject, yes the sony is a stereo mic but it is an M/S capsule design so it is easy to make it mono and at least the mono capsule is always pointing forward and if you place it close to the subject.
 
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It's better to let a child touch something hot, then telling it "watch out, it's hot"....

I think the OP learned a lesson here.... take care of the sound too.

I'm sure for the following projects he will think about it :-p
 
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