Noise Reduction?

[LastChancey]

Hey all,

I'm editing a documentary at the moment, using separately-recorded audio for a lot of interviews. I recorded a TON of beautiful audio "coverage" from many locations (ambient sound, birds, footsteps, foley, etc.) but I'm finding it difficult to take advantage of all that work because often, the interview master tracks are too noisy.

This is almost entirely due to poor mic placement, I know. It was my first time working with separately recorded audio from an external microphone setup, and I hope I've learned my lesson.

But now I find myself wishing that I had some kind of noise-reduction tool to get rid of background noise. It would be so great to layer in all these little environmental details I've recorded, but right now, it just floods the soundscape with too much ambient audio. I've tried using some Final Cut Express "Hum Reduction" filters, but it's not really doing the trick.

Any advice, or links for noise-reduction software I could use? Free is best, but I DO have a company budget for this film and a solid third of it is still remaining. Any help would be appreciated. I have 2 weeks to get this baby on DVD and hand it in.

 

[JoshL]

I actually just spent some time doing just this last week for a commercial. I used the noise reduction tools in Wavelab, as well as iZotope's Ozone for compression, a little EQ and level normalizing. I haven't used iZotope's audio restoration software (Rx) but from using their other tools, they're usually a pretty good bang for the buck (the basic edition is MUCH cheaper than the Waves tool, though usually Waves are worth the money if you can afford it).

Or, if you'd rather use your budget to pay someone to give you a hand with it, I'd gladly demo a bit of your audio for you

 

[knightly]

COuld you post a sample for us to take a stab at and post our processes? All audio is different, and giving a blanket suggestion will only take you so far.

 

[Alcove Audio]

What kind of noise is it? Hum? Buzz? Hiss? Rumble? Excessive ambience? Each requires a different approach.

Also, are you trying to layer your "beautiful audio coverage" with the interviews?

 

[LastChancey]

Thanks for the replies!

Yeah, let me see if I can get a good sample up later this evening. My connection's a bit slow in the backwoods of Germany, so bear with me...

Alcove - A bit of everything. We did 90% of our interviews outdoor (I wanted to avoid getting too claustrophobic with the feel of the project) and set up a padded Pelican Case with Macbook and the Microphone (a Sennheiser MKE-400) beside the subject, blocking the wind. Despite having no problems with wind at all, this method was stupid, and I will always, always choose to use a boom positioned overhead in the future. (EDIT: or wireless lavs, which seem to sound pretty damn good in every example I can find.) So we did get a lot of generator buzz, footsteps, bird cheepage, and then some hiss because of the quality of the mic. Although the main issue would be what you're calling "Excessive Ambience."

And yes, I wanted to layer this audio coverage underneath the interviews, as subtly as possible. Since this is really the only time in the documentary that the music will fade completely to 0%, and the voiceover narration stops, I thought it would be cool to use that opportunity to give the audience a sampling of "soundscapes" individual to the various East African locations (i.e.: a bush station in Congo will sound different than a urban center in Nairobi, or a polytechnic university in Central Kenya's farmlands). But you're the professional audio guy, you tell me - bad idea?