Cleaning up audio from the big wedding?

[Lowell Bernhardt]

Hello all!

I have just about completed the compilation of 4hours of tape into the video of my Brother In Law's wedding. Not to worry it all falls into the hour long mass wedding time frame! :shock:

I have gotten all of tthe video work done and I found that the easiest way to sync all of the audio to the video is to leave each clip with it's own audio not the "main" audio track. Whichever track is the main feature of the time leave that audio in the video and mute all the others. (I shot the wedding using 3 different cameras set up in different locals around the church)

My problem is this: each camera has it's own sound "signature". Each has a little different hum, acustics, echo, amplitude, etc. ( you get the idea :D )

I'm using Video Studio 11+ as my NLE software. Once the project is completed I was thinking about creating an audio file of the entire video and moving it to Audacity and trying to clean it up some and even it out a little. Do you think normalizing it would help this? Any suggestions as to what would help?

Once the audio file is cleaned up I'll reinstall the track to the project and viola?

Thanks in advance for all of your help.

Lowell

[Russ Holland]

Did you use onboard mics or externals?

Normalising wouldn't help as this would just boost your quiet areas and cause you even more trouble without actually helping solve your original problem.

I'd load each track into an audio editing program and noise sample and clear up each track but you have to be careful because too much noise reduction would reduce the vocal dynamics and other sound you want to keep.

Noise reduction is the first stage, you'd need to play with levels to boost / cut specific areas to match audio from all three sources, it's a long winded job.

[Lowell Bernhardt]

thanks Russ,

Everything was onboard mics. (I haven;t gotten enough money to purchase any shotguns yet).

Any pointers as to what you'd do in my situation? (specifically)



Thanks again!
Lowell

[Russ Holland]

I'm the same as you (reading your other wedding post) I trial and error. What you have is exactly what I had when I made "Fetch" (short film) and I boosted my noise reduction too much in one scene and lost alot of depth in the audio.

I also used an onboard mic (vx2100) for most of the film and it was definately not acceptable. If I were you I'd invest in a couple of RODE VideoMics - they're cheap enough and excellent for general use.

As for your audio problem now, it may take a while for you to fix it. Not really sure how you would do it. I would load each clip into an audio editor and play with the noise reduction to get rid of the hiss and mic specific noise, once that is clear play with the graphic equalisers to try to level out the bass/treble and other dynamics until you get the sound you are after.

May not be the right thing to do - I'm no audio expert - it might also take forever. There's bound to be a better way but start here and see where it takes you.

Sorry I'm not much more help than that.

[Oren Arieli]

Keep it simple. With audio, too much mixing and processing can make the sound worse (think video effects for video....a little goes a long way). I would isolate the sound from each camera to determine which has the overall BEST sound (most likely, the one closest to the sound source). Then use that for the entire piece. If there are some musical interludes or audience clapping that was captured better on another camera, use that audio during the appropriate time. You'll run into a HEAP o' trouble if you start mixing more than one camera's mic with another one further away. Phase cancellation can wreck havoc on your best attempt to 'sweeten' the audio.
My two cents...feel free to spend them as you wish

[Mark A. Foley]

For audio restoration...there is a big buzz on other forums with iZotope's new RX
http://www.izotope.com/products/audio/rx/

Great demo video on the site showing its capabilities...this thing leaves just about all the others in the dust....