Video Editing: Improve Audio

[Manchester]

Hiya, I'm after some advice please.

I videoed my mates giving a best mans speech at a mates wedding yesterday, which was captured via camera in .mov format.

I was sat around 10 metres away, so there voices are slightly too quiet to hear properly, with the local background noise (minimal) and clapping from the guests so much louder than the actual speech.

Can anyone recommend a programme / app that will allow me to improve the quality of the audio when the lads are giving the speech.

 

[THX1139]

Hiya, I'm after some advice please.

I videoed my mates giving a best mans speech at a mates wedding yesterday, which was captured via camera in .mov format.

I was sat around 10 metres away, so there voices are slightly too quiet to hear properly, with the local background noise (minimal) and clapping from the guests so much louder than the actual speech.

Can anyone recommend a programme / app that will allow me to improve the quality of the audio when the lads are giving the speech.

Soundtrack Pro has the ability to deaden some background noise, but it also can have a negative effect on the vocals in the same frequency ranges.

Or, you could use any other of the myriad of sound editing programs to adjust the levels somewhat if you can isolate those frequencies. But don't expect miracles... garbage in = garbage out, especially when it comes to audio. You should've had the mic on the speaker, not the camera! Too late now. Your problem is going to be that it's going to be almost impossible to drop the volume of the clapping while boosting the voice UNLESS the claps are on a different frequency. But, chances are that some of the audio frequencies overlap with the vocal range and when you pull those down, it will distort the voice and make him sound like a robot, or like he is underwater. Eh good luck with it, but I'm afraid you going to have to make major compromises that will sound obvious to the listener.

 

[Manchester]

Soundtrack Pro has the ability to deaden some background noise, but it also can have a negative effect on the vocals in the same frequency ranges.

Or, you could use any other of the myriad of sound editing programs to adjust the levels somewhat if you can isolate those frequencies. But don't expect miracles... garbage in = garbage out, especially when it comes to audio. You should've had the mic on the speaker, not the camera! Too late now. Your problem is going to be that it's going to be almost impossible to drop the volume of the clapping while boosting the voice UNLESS the claps are on a different frequency. But, chances are that some of the audio frequencies overlap with the vocal range and when you pull those down, it will distort the voice and make him sound like a robot, or like he is underwater. Eh good luck with it, but I'm afraid you going to have to make major compromises that will sound obvious to the listener.

Thanks for the reply, although I must point out that I'm no pro videographer, just that I had a digital camera with a video recording facility, and with no external mic to set up for this off the cuff recording.

Unless there are any other options, I'll just try and use iMovie to increase the volume of the areas which clearly don't have clapping in them, which seem to be quite identifiable from the volume graph.

Appreciate any thoughts or options that I can try though.

 

[ppc_michael]

Try a program like Soundtrack Pro or Reaper that has a parametric EQ. You can probably at least take some of the edge off the clapping if you start to roll off around 5kHz or so. You could also try a dynamic compressor to push down the parts that get too loud because of clapping.

But unfortunately, don't expect too much.

 

[Manchester]

Try a program like Soundtrack Pro or Reaper that has a parametric EQ. You can probably at least take some of the edge off the clapping if you start to roll off around 5kHz or so. You could also try a dynamic compressor to push down the parts that get too loud because of clapping.

But unfortunately, don't expect too much.

Using one of those programmes, do I need to extract the audio, and then reattach it to the video? Or will it edit the audio, and save it within the video container?

Cheers.

 

[CaptainChunk]

A lot of audio tools can pull in the audio portion of a Quicktime file, but will only output to an audio file (AIFF, WAV, etc.) on export. As long as you don't modify the duration of the clip, you shouldn't have a problem syncing the clean audio back to the timeline in your NLE.