sound soap, hum, final cut.. any brainiacs out there?

[dirtyvirus]

Hello folks, i've just joined from London, UK. How do i post in a section? i cant find 'new post here'. I think this is it?
I have made a short 23 min film, which has cost a few grand. For along time i've been trying fix the sound in final cut but dont kn ow how to. Does anybody know the best way to:
reduce hum from dialogue so it is crisp.
remove echo from dialoge.
NOW THE BIG PROBLEM. i have an exterior scene at night along a river where there were STUPID construction guys drilling. so i have this intimate part of my film with very loud drill noises etc, too loud. i dont mind having it as background noise i just need to reduce it without effecting the dialogue too uch. does anybody know any tricks? i am willing to send out these few files for someone to fix and pay them if they can do the job. ASAP. i have soundsoap 2, final cut but i donbt know what im doing. CHEERS GUYS, hope to hear from someone smarter than me

 

[HiRez]

reduce hum from dialogue so it is crisp.
remove echo from dialoge.
NOW THE BIG PROBLEM. i have an exterior scene at night along a river where there were STUPID construction guys drilling. so i have this intimate part of my film with very loud drill noises etc, too loud. i dont mind having it as background noise i just need to reduce it without effecting the dialogue too uch.

I don't know the exact steps, but Soundtrack (part of the FCP bundle) has a function where you select a sample of the offending noise and it'll run a filter on the whole thing to try to remove that noise. The results can be anywhere from blah to miraculous, depending on the audio. The hum can probably be all but eliminated because it's a very constant sound in a set frequency band. The jackhammer I dunno, that sounds tougher, but it can probably be reduced, if not with the magic filter, then by notch filtering/parametric EQ (you'd need to hand-tune this and do some experiments). Dialogue echo sounds the most difficult to me since you're dealing with the same frequencies as the dialogue itself, which you need to keep. You might be stuck with that. Good luck.

 

[LethalWolfe]

Hello folks, i've just joined from London, UK. How do i post in a section? i cant find 'new post here'. I think this is it?
I have made a short 23 min film, which has cost a few grand. For along time i've been trying fix the sound in final cut but dont kn ow how to. Does anybody know the best way to:
reduce hum from dialogue so it is crisp.
remove echo from dialoge.
NOW THE BIG PROBLEM. i have an exterior scene at night along a river where there were STUPID construction guys drilling. so i have this intimate part of my film with very loud drill noises etc, too loud. i dont mind having it as background noise i just need to reduce it without effecting the dialogue too uch. does anybody know any tricks? i am willing to send out these few files for someone to fix and pay them if they can do the job. ASAP. i have soundsoap 2, final cut but i donbt know what im doing. CHEERS GUYS, hope to hear from someone smarter than me

As HiRez mentioned a lot of the "fixability" depends on the frequency of the noise you want to remove. If the frequency is well above or below human speech then it's typically not to hard to clean it up a bit. But if it's in the mid tones then you might be screwed.

If you send me some samples of what you need fixed I'll take a listen to them.


Lethal

 

[MovieCutter]

It might be easier to do some ADR (Automatic dialog replacement) and re-record the voice of the actors in the scene in a makeshift studio and add in some ambient BG noise.

 

[jaysmith]

It might be easier to do some ADR (Automatic dialog replacement) and re-record the voice of the actors in the scene in a makeshift studio and add in some ambient BG noise.

this may even work out better because you can lose the norma background noise and make perfect custom ambient sounds to cater the shot.

 

[JFreak]

Google for "expander". Point is to make dialogue louder and keep the background quiet. You probably don't want to "gate" the background, because the background noise will be there when the gate opens, so it's likely better to leave it there at all times.

 

[Eastend]

I've got Soundtrack and Soundsoap. You can use Soundsoap within Soundtrack. But, like everyone here has been telling you, if the noise is in the middle range were the voice is, it will be almost impossible to clean it up. Whatever you do, do not over use Soundsoap or any of the plug-ins within Soundtrack Pro, if you do, you can make it sound worse very easily.

Brian

 

[killr_b]

I agree with MovieCutter, JaySmith and JFreak.

For the most part, you want to replace f***ed audio.
If you reduce the background drill noise while it's quiet, it will be loud again when they speak- which is bad.

Post some liks for audio clips so we can get a better idea.

 

[Lebowski]

I am fanatical about audio issues. I prefer to shoot with mics, and if a location shot has audio problems, i will just totally recreate the enviroment in soundtrack and have the actors loop the lines.

there are ways to really clean alot of junk using soundtrack, but i prefer prisine audio.