the best way to reduce noise?
- Thread starter etrust
- Start date
A few more details will help.
To what device is your mic connected? Are you connected to your camera, and if so what camera?
Where/how are you listening when you hear the noise? Is it in the headphones from your camera/recorder, or is it when you play footage back while you edit?
To what device is your mic connected? Are you connected to your camera, and if so what camera?
Where/how are you listening when you hear the noise? Is it in the headphones from your camera/recorder, or is it when you play footage back while you edit?
Hi,
ok here some details:
Cam: HDR-XR500
Im refering to microphone noise
Tha Rode mic is connected on my cam (mini jack)
I can hear the noise in After Effects or Vegas or on recording the footage on the headphone :=(
The Rode Mic NTG-2 seems to be good and a lot of people told me to buy it, but there is to much noise :=(
What im doing wrong? On my cam i have only the possibility to choose 5.1 or stereo mode and that's it.
please help me to get a decent result with this mic.
thank you
ok here some details:
Cam: HDR-XR500
Im refering to microphone noise
Tha Rode mic is connected on my cam (mini jack)
I can hear the noise in After Effects or Vegas or on recording the footage on the headphone :=(
The Rode Mic NTG-2 seems to be good and a lot of people told me to buy it, but there is to much noise :=(
What im doing wrong? On my cam i have only the possibility to choose 5.1 or stereo mode and that's it.
please help me to get a decent result with this mic.
thank you
And there's your problem. You are connected to a consumer camcorder with 1/8" in. So you're dealing with the camera's less-than-adequate pre-amps.
At this point, the best way to improve your results would be to invest in an XLR converter box with phantom power... look at JuicedLink or Beachtek. This will allow you to take an XLR connection in, and will adapt it down to the 1/8" in for your camera. It doesn't completely bypass the camera's pre-amps, but it sends a strong enough signal that they don't work as hard and introduce less noise.
Even a converter without phantom, using the NTG-2 with a battery, will give a significant improvement.
Chamber005
Carbonite Member
I just finished using wired countrman B3s, XLRs inputs and a solid preamp for a shoot and I have noise in the raw sound file. You need to run your sound through a clean up program. I'm using Adobe Soundbooth in conjunction with Premiere Pro CS4 and everything is coming along pretty good.
I think to get great sound within the actual original recording you need to be using high end equipment (which neither myself nor you really have). The best thing we can do is just sweep the dust under the rug and hope for the best.
But no one nowhere can fix the audio if your redline your decibles, but I don't think that's your problem.
Just remember that you need to do everything to sound that you would do to your image (e.g. color balancing, correction, even potentially some framing). The sound needs just as much care and attention (sometimes even more). Most clean up programs will allow you to choose the sound you DON'T want. So, usually, you can just select the "noise" when no one is speaking or moving (one of those times you recorded the ambient sound, which hopefully you did), and then you can just tell the program to find that noise and get rid of it across the board.
Soundbooth has a pretty sweet generic clean-up, though.
Good luck!! This is my first real go at sound on my webseries after getting lots of help from the guys here, so we'll see what the final product is like once I'm done editing the 3rd ep, but so far the above advice is working for me.
Noiz2
Sound Ninja
As Chamber005 said you have limits. Ine thing that will help is to get some sort of adapter. If indeed the mini is a mic in then it is probably providing power that you don't want. Also it will be expecting the TRS to be stereo not the different legs of a balanced mic. The other problem you probably have is you probably can't turn off the Auto Gain Control. Recording sound with the AGC on is like shooting with auto focus on, you get some very distracting moves that you have no control over. There are boxes out there that can help with all of that but if your serious about stepping up the sound then you probably need to either up the camera or go dual system. A small recorder than has XLR ins will cost a lot less than a new camera so...
Assuming no $ to throw at the problem. Turn off AGC if it's possible to do so. Get an adapter that can block the camera power (probably any "box" that goes from XLR to mini will do that, a straight cable with matching connectors will not).
Noise reduction in post is tricky. There are a lot of tools some very affordable some very good a few that are pretty good and affordable. Even the cheapest if used VERY carefully can help a lot with hiss. The catch is you need to use them with a good playback system that is calibrated (for just cleanup you "might" be able to use headphones, maybe. Using cheap speakers will mask the problems that NR will add to your sound so, as I said, it's tricky. The less you need to use (NR) the better the more affordable tools will work. There is a reason that the top NR box goes for around $30K and people are willing to pay that.
If you can't turn off the AGC then you will probably need to cut out all the "dead air" you can from your tracks and replace it with some room tone, because the AGC will pump up the noise every time it gets quiet.
Assuming no $ to throw at the problem. Turn off AGC if it's possible to do so. Get an adapter that can block the camera power (probably any "box" that goes from XLR to mini will do that, a straight cable with matching connectors will not).
Noise reduction in post is tricky. There are a lot of tools some very affordable some very good a few that are pretty good and affordable. Even the cheapest if used VERY carefully can help a lot with hiss. The catch is you need to use them with a good playback system that is calibrated (for just cleanup you "might" be able to use headphones, maybe. Using cheap speakers will mask the problems that NR will add to your sound so, as I said, it's tricky. The less you need to use (NR) the better the more affordable tools will work. There is a reason that the top NR box goes for around $30K and people are willing to pay that.
If you can't turn off the AGC then you will probably need to cut out all the "dead air" you can from your tracks and replace it with some room tone, because the AGC will pump up the noise every time it gets quiet.
Richard Crowley
Veteran
Better details, or we're just guessing.
Better details, or we're just guessing.
Whoa, hold on there. We don't have a fraction of the evidence necessary to come to that sort of conclusion. Plugging a mic like that into that kind of camera has a very good potential of making quite nice audio recordings.
I would NOT consider the "camera's less-than-adequate pre-amps" to be even in the top three potential suspects in this mystery. We have NO IDEA of what "etrust" even means by "noise". Since he/she apparently doesn't have enough experience to adequately describe the "noise", I suggest that posting a sample online somewhere where we can hear it would be extraordinarily helpful.
Also absolutely required is a far more detailed description of how the equipment is being used. In particular, how loud is the source, what is the ambient noise like, how far away is the microphone, etc. etc. It seems far more likely that we are expecting the microphone to work magic to pull pristine sound out of a low-level source in a noisy environment from too far away. Until we can eliminate ALL of those potential problems, the camcorder mic preamps aren't even implicated yet.
Note further that trying to reduce noise after the fact (in post-production editing) is FAR more difficult, expensive and time-consuming than recording the sound properly at the beginning.
This is NOT the kind of question that can be properly responded to with almost NO information. Anyone who tries to analyze this problem with the evidence so far is just shooting in the dark.
Better details, or we're just guessing.
Whoa, hold on there. We don't have a fraction of the evidence necessary to come to that sort of conclusion. Plugging a mic like that into that kind of camera has a very good potential of making quite nice audio recordings.
I would NOT consider the "camera's less-than-adequate pre-amps" to be even in the top three potential suspects in this mystery. We have NO IDEA of what "etrust" even means by "noise". Since he/she apparently doesn't have enough experience to adequately describe the "noise", I suggest that posting a sample online somewhere where we can hear it would be extraordinarily helpful.
Also absolutely required is a far more detailed description of how the equipment is being used. In particular, how loud is the source, what is the ambient noise like, how far away is the microphone, etc. etc. It seems far more likely that we are expecting the microphone to work magic to pull pristine sound out of a low-level source in a noisy environment from too far away. Until we can eliminate ALL of those potential problems, the camcorder mic preamps aren't even implicated yet.
Note further that trying to reduce noise after the fact (in post-production editing) is FAR more difficult, expensive and time-consuming than recording the sound properly at the beginning.
This is NOT the kind of question that can be properly responded to with almost NO information. Anyone who tries to analyze this problem with the evidence so far is just shooting in the dark.
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Ted Spencer
Veteran
^ agreed
Okay, disagree with me. But why does it seem so difficult for some folks on these forums to offer a differing opinion without belittling some one else?
Chamber005
Carbonite Member
I think noise is only going to mean one thing, honestly. There's something there that he doesn't want. It's either popping, scratching or hiss. Whatever it is, it's obviously ambient. And he's already shot what he was going to shoot (as at this stage he's trying to remove the "noise").
I'm unclear why you're saying reducing hiss in post is that big of a challenge, though. I'm doing it for the first time now and it's pretty simple IMO. Any decent audio program is going to have a generic noise removal generator that will work pretty well. If he needs to get more specific he can attack the wave file directly and remove anything unwanted.
unclebob6958
Well-known member
Keep in mind, Mr. Crowley, that you are a relative newb here despite your credentials. We get the same questions over and over again so the stock answers apply 95% of the time. Give it a few months and you will find yourself doing the same as you catch on to the pattern. The HDR-XR500 is a consumer product with an 1/8" mini-pin external audio input connector. 999 times out of 1,000 it's going to be the noise problem.
Richard Crowley
Veteran
Yes, I may be a newbie here, but I've probably got most of you beat with participation in other forums, particularly Usenet newsgroups, audio, video, cine, and electronics. Yes, I have also seen this question dozens/scores of times before. And very frequently we fly into some pet cause/solution without really knowing exactly what all the presenting symptoms are. Poor medicine however you slice it.
I probably have also been doing audio (long before getting into video) at least as long as anybody here. Since the early 1960s. But I came here first to learn things from the rest of you, and secondarily, to offer whatever helpful response I may be able to add. The Usenet newsgroups, at least the video ones, are dying, and these web-based forums are superseding them.
I apologize to C2V for coming off as a personal attack. I did not mean to do that and I am sorry for it. Please forgive me.
Richard Crowley
Veteran
"Noise" has an extraordinarily wide definition by the standards of people new to the audio field. But poor signal to noise ratio is primarily caused by inadequate signal level. Whether from poor performances by the actors, or noisy locations, or poor mic techniques, etc. If these are taken care of, even this camera has plenty of SNR that post-production de-hissing should never be necessary.
Removable of wide band noise (i.e. "hiss") without damage to the desired signal is the holy grail of audio. Companies with huge budgets and laboratories full of brilliant scientists, engineers and computer programmers continue to seek this ideal result. Very high-end software/hardware like CEDAR approach the desired effect, but at a huge cost. At least at the present state of the art.
David W. Richardson
Chapelgrove Films
Gotta agree with Richard here. When I read the original post, my first thought was: "Was the air conditioning turned off? What about the refrigerator? Water fountain?"
In other words, is the 'noise' environmental? That would be the first thing to look at, in my opinion.
If environmental issues are ruled out, then my next question would be levels. Were the audio levels set too low? Was any kind of gain or automatic level control used?
Richard is right -- we need more info from the OP in order to narrow down the cause.
In other words, is the 'noise' environmental? That would be the first thing to look at, in my opinion.
If environmental issues are ruled out, then my next question would be levels. Were the audio levels set too low? Was any kind of gain or automatic level control used?
Richard is right -- we need more info from the OP in order to narrow down the cause.
David W. Richardson
Chapelgrove Films
That's not the way I read it. It doesn't sound like he's shot some important piece of video, and now is trying to figure a way to salvage it by getting rid of the noise.
What I get from his posts is that he's trying to figure out why this mic is giving him the noise in the first place -- if, indeed, it is a mic (or some other hardware) problem. It sounds like he's shooting test video and trying to resolve the problem. Maybe I'm wrong.
The sooner the OP tells us more about the problem, or ideally posts an audio clip we can listen to, the sooner we can home in on a solution.
David W. Richardson
Chapelgrove Films
One other question.....is there a battery in the NTG-2? And is it fresh? (Okay, that was two questions.)
Ted Spencer
Veteran
This, as Richard Crowley also pointed out, is essential. Otherwise we have no idea what "noise" means in this case.
Hi all,
thank you very much for all posts.
the rode ntg-2 was conected with a new battery on the jack plugin on the cam. i have only the option on the cam to set 5.1 or stereo. it was stereo.
ok here the test:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrDmx8RRELE
The original sound is better than this link. I thing it's because i convert to mp4. But the noise problem is the same.
I hope you know what i mean with noise :=)
Please help me to get a nice quality with this mic.
Thank you
thank you very much for all posts.
the rode ntg-2 was conected with a new battery on the jack plugin on the cam. i have only the option on the cam to set 5.1 or stereo. it was stereo.
ok here the test:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrDmx8RRELE
The original sound is better than this link. I thing it's because i convert to mp4. But the noise problem is the same.
I hope you know what i mean with noise :=)
Please help me to get a nice quality with this mic.
Thank you
Richard Crowley
Veteran
Sorry, all I am hearing is the artifacts of compression. Or if that is what you mean by "noise" then it is distortion. If it isn't the artifacts of compression, then my first guess would be that the "plug-in power" from the camcorder is feeding back into the microphone in a way that does not agree with the mic output circuits.
We don't really need to see the video, since that is not the issue.
Can you post somewhere an uncompressed WAV file of the sound?