Remove music from clip, keep voice only

[bomadian]

Hi there, I want to take a clip from a DVD and remove the background music as much as possible and keep only the voices. Is there a specific program and filter that can do this effectively?

Many thanks

 

[bartelby]

Nope. Nothing can do this effectively.
You can use a load of filters to take away the frequencies used in the music, but you'll more than likely remove the frequencies for the voice too.

 

[CanadaRAM]

If you work hard at it, you can get some isolation of a centre channel - by cancelling out signals multiple times with reversed phase, or with a tool that does M-S encoding / decoding. This only works if the voices are dead centre.



Forum Discussion with links

Of course, if you have access to 5.1 tracks, you can see if the voice is better isolated in the centre speaker, and start with the optimum track.

 

[Ibanez Strummer]

I may be completely wrong so correct me if I am. I dont really know what I'm talking about lol!

Basically, I was reading a few months ago about the creation of acapellas and they were made by having the original song and an instrumental at the same bitrate in phase with each other (possibly with one reversed or something similar - search google, theres loads of stuff on them) which left only the vocals remaining.

Therefore, on your dvd, could you get an original copy of the song at the same bitrate as the film, do the special tricks to it and it only leave the voices in the film as there is no removal of that?

This is just an idea I thought up and I really don't know if it will work, but someone will correct me I'm sure!

 

[AviationFan]

Basically, I was reading a few months ago about the creation of acapellas and they were made by having the original song and an instrumental at the same bitrate in phase with each other (possibly with one reversed or something similar - search google, theres loads of stuff on them) which left only the vocals remaining.

You don't just need an instrumental version, you need the exact same version of the song, just without lyrics. Getting that will be very difficult, unless you have a good buddy who happened to be the engineer who mixed the song in the first place (in which case you might as well just ask for the vocal track directly). The few karaoke versions of popular songs that I've heard were not created from the original recording, but performed and recorded separately - but if a "perfect" karaoke version did exist, that I guess would make it possible.

The only other thing I can think of is what CanadaRAM suggested, relying on the vocals to be perfectly centered.

- Martin

 

[hakukani]

You might be able to seperate tracks if this software works:

http://www.celemony.com/cms/index.php?id=dna_intro4

 

[CanadaRAM]

- but if a "perfect" karaoke version did exist, that I guess would make it possible.

Practically speaking, no -- in order for this to work, it would have to be accurate down to the individual waveform.

http://www.celemony.com/cms/index.php?id=dna_intro4

No that's not what Melodyne does. Melodyne presumes you are feeding it a mono track with only the vocal, which you can then manipulate in time and pitch.

Melodyne is the ideal tool for improving individual tracks.