removing Dog barking on audio?

F

firehawk

Veteran
My friend asked me to try to fix this last video recording they have of his grandpa who is now in hospice, dying. He is giving a prayer and an annoying dog is barking during it.
Any suggestions? I have Audition CS6 and Sound Forge Pro 11. Issue I'm having is the parts where the dog is barking on top of his voice as noise reduction adversely affects him too.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ywkjf0nufkm45ag/dog.wav?dl=0
It was recorded with a phone so his voice is not very strong in comparison with the other noises
 
I remember Soundbooth CS3 having a "Spectral Frequency Display" and an option to essentially rotoscope out unwanted frequencies, but a dog bark would probably overlap vocal frequencies, so you can probably remove some of the dog bark, but not all of it, which will result in weird sounding audio artifacts.
 
Agreed not much you can do without negativity effecting his voice. These audio tools work best removing things that are higher or lower frequency than a voice like electronic hums, air conditioning, wind rumble or any narrow frequency noise that doesn’t overlap the voice. For future recordings move the phone closer to the source or get phone lav mic
 
Wow! That's a shocking audio file. It also sounds like someone has already had a go at it as it is full of artifacts. Normally I wouldn't even attempt to clean up a file like this because as Peter C. says as it has all manner of extraneous noises peppered through it. BUT! Seeing that all of us in Sydney are absolutely under the hardest lockdown and curfew we have ever seen, totally confined to home. Only allowed out for food shopping, medical visits and one hour a day of exercise. Prisoners in our homes. A $5000 fine awaits you if you are caught outside without a permit or mask if it's not for one of the listed reasons. So boredom got to me and I thought "What the heck!", give myself a challenge. De-bark this clip. Very mixed end result but most of the bark has gone but there is so much other junk in the sound stream it's a little hard to recover much. But hey! It killed about an hour of lockdown. :)

Chris Young

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If you have the original file I'll see if Spectral Layers can spilt it out - not tried it on this but it is a superb application and is far more than filters and crude chopping - but it needs a decent raw file.
 
Peter C. said:
Nice job Chris
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:) Not really Pete. It was just the challenge needed to keep the grey matter turning over. What with this lock down and all the kit cleaned and stowed I am slowly developing cabin fever. And have only just come out of 14 days of Covid quarantine.

Chris Young
 
paulears said:
If you have the original file I'll see if Spectral Layers can spilt it out - not tried it on this but it is a superb application and is far more than filters and crude chopping - but it needs a decent raw file.
Click to expand...

If Firehawk does have the original file it would be interesting to see what Spectral Layers could do with it. I am aware of SL but have never used it although a lot of it's tools look similar to Izotope's RX Production Suites. As you say a 'cu't above basic chopping and filters. More like painting / roto work.

Chris Young
 
https://www.eastanglianradio.com/easy-lounge jazz version.mp3

This is a good example of how well Spectral Layers can work. Lots of people want karaoke style tracks, but I figured what I'd try was to 'remove' Lionel Richie's voice from one of his recordings then re-record the thing as a lounge jazz track. Purely an experiment, just to see how well it would work - but his voice is remarkably clean. I tried it on Elton John and George Michael and a few others and it works pretty well. I'd like to try to see if it can remove noises that are in the same spectral ball park - the others can chop out noises, but they fail when two occupy the same spectral space in frequency terms.
 
paulears said:
I'll have a go! Shame there isn't a mumble filter too! Dogs and aircon I assume?
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Right. They did everything wrong. Phone is off to the side, dark barking, AC noises(?) it's a horrible recording but he's a friend so told him I'd try but I couldn't fix it. You guys are much better
 
I've spent an hour with spectral layers. The snag is the aircon - removing that works great, but then the dog ruins intelligability of the speaker and theres not enough info to split them. Plan B was to split them into layers - it came up with voice noise and transients, and while I could lower the levekl of the barks, some was still evident in the voice channel. So I am disspointed and hoped for better.https://www.eastanglianradio.com/dog.mp3

Sorry I couldn't do better
 
firehawk said:
Here is the original file from the phone
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Yes I got that. Sad the recording is so scrambled. Had another go at it with a slightly different approach. I think it's the best I can do with the tools I have. If you want the file with the original video married to it just let me know. Check below:

Chris Young

 
You guys have graciously done great. I'm going to sync and it it my friend.
Yes too bad the recording is horrible. I suppose everything that could be done wrong was except maybe there could have been a raging waterfall and wind storm also, and maybe dropping bombs and a racetrack also happening LOL. The grandpa is a real nice fellow but certainly mumbles the words together
 
firehawk said:
You guys have graciously done great. I'm going to sync and it it my friend.
Yes too bad the recording is horrible. I suppose everything that could be done wrong was except maybe there could have been a raging waterfall and wind storm also, and maybe dropping bombs and a racetrack also happening LOL. The grandpa is a real nice fellow but certainly mumbles the words together
Click to expand...

PM'd you a download link Firehawk.

Chris Young
 
My friend is extrememly happy about this. He said it's awesome.
Thank you Chris I got the PM and responded

Doggone great job! :)
 
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