wind noise removal

M

Mino

Northern Dreamer
Hey guys...A client brought me a dvd of a wedding performed in Hawaii on a beach with only the groom wearing a lapel mic. There is not a lot of vocal presence on the tape as it is and it also had to be the windiest day on record for that beach. Client wanted me to remove the wind so the vows could be heard, I told him I could subdue the wind noise but that removal was not possible in my estimation. I used Adobe Audition running a high pass filter and then used a general vocal enhancement filter but of course I'm now missing some of the low end frequencies of the voices. Can you guys think of anymore tricks I might try to get more low end back into the vocals without reintroducing the wind rumble? Any help would be apreciated...Thanks

PS...What would you guys charge for this service, the part I have to fix is 15 minutes long...Thanks
 
You may want to try running noise reduction in Audition. Capture the noise profile for a section of the file with just wind and see if you obtain a better result.

Mike
 
I've had good results with the noise reduction in audition, but if the wind isn't constant, you will probably still need to use a high pass. To add lows back to the voices, I would try to find or borrow a subharmonic enhancer (either plugin or outboard.) It's used mostly in live music, but should work for what you're looking for.
 
serenity 737

That sounds like a great plan...Now you'll have to excuse me while I go figure out what it means! LOL. I think I get what you're saying though I profess to be no wizard in Audition. If I understand what you're saying, which I think I do, I think I can figure that out...If the learning curve isn't too steep. One just can't ever get out of school! My guess is that you're telling me to take a sample of the wind noise and tell the filter to remove it...Am I right?...Did I win?...Thanks a bunch for the idea if you can give me more on the process I'd be estatic! In the meantime I'll go poke at it and see if I can Maggoo it:)
 
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shawnmaddock said:
I've had good results with the noise reduction in audition, but if the wind isn't constant, you will probably still need to use a high pass. To add lows back to the voices, I would try to find or borrow a subharmonic enhancer (either plugin or outboard.) It's used mostly in live music, but should work for what you're looking for.
Click to expand...

This wind is the main character and very constant and the voices are wrapped around it like a vine on a chimney. I will look into the plugin version. Thanks
 
Hey Serenity...Great stuff, although the overall tone of the piece took a bit of a dive, the wind is all but gone and every word of the vows can be heard. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction...Pure magic!

Thanks to all for your help with this beast:)
 
Well at the end of the day the client was not sold on the product I delivered, he had it in his mind that I could remove only the wind noise and the vocals would remain totally intact as if there had been no wind at all that day. I explained to him that were the vocals and the wind not recorded as one mixed sound then we would not have lost any voice quality during the reduction process. The fault, I explained, totally lay with the crew that shot the video as there is a sweet spot where the minister stands for a moment in front of the winds path to the lav placed on the groom and when he is in that spot the sound is pristine. It seems to me that a good videographer/crew would have performed some sort of rudimentary sound check and found that sweet spot and rotated the whole shot to suit. Failing that, they could have abandoned the idea of using a lav in those conditions and maybe opted for a boom/shotgun aproach with proper wind reduction system in place. The poor guy put his faith in the hands of so called pros and fifteen hundred dollars later he has only fair quality video coupled with audio that is at best uninteligable. He appreciated my efforts and even slipped me a few bucks more than I'd asked for...Just wish I could have done more!
 
Can you make ten or fifteen seconds of a problematic section of the audio available for download so we can take a stab at it?
 
That was a tough one, there seem to be problems with the audio besides the wind noise. The person officiating the ceremony sometimes seems to face away from the mike, or there is an obstruction in between.

I've been playing with the file, and I'm not happy with the results I'm getting from SoundSoap 2. The output either sounds like the people are in a sub, or there is still lots of wind noise left. I'll give it another shot tomorrow, and I'll let you check out the results.

I used SS2 on some footage this last Sunday where I had recorded a speaker standing next to a big (at least 3 foot diameter) fan that was facing me and the audience, and SS2 did a fantastic job in cleaning that up. It's weird seeing the video with the fan spinning, and hearing only the slightest trace of it.
 
That pretty well describes my results. Personally I think the sub sound will be the tradeoff at the end of the day for having no wind noise. I told the client I would keep messing with it in my spare time to see if I might improve the quality but I really have my doubts at this stage.
 
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