Fixing Bad Wind Noise Rumble in Post

[Barrie M. Yacher]

I am editing my footage with Adobe Premiere 6.5 and want to eliminate the rumble from wind noise in the back ground. I used a camera without any type of wind protection on the microphone. Can anyone tell me what pitch is wind noise? Is it considered a low frequency?Are there any other generic tips? It looks like 6.5 might even have an equalizer application, what changes might I make to the various "bands" to eliminate the rumble. Thanks, Barrie

[Jordan Block]

Roll off the bass, start at say 80 or 100Hz and see if it makes a difference. Without any sort of wind protection, I'd think the mic probably got overloaded and theres probably not a lot you can do but learn from it.

[Battle Vaughan]

Got my curiosity up, I looked a a wind-noisy news clip that came in yesterday...Inspector filter shows a lot of energy from 20 hz to 1600 hz, which I took out with a low cut shelving filter. Bad news is that took out most of the voices and everything else of value....you can cut to about 150hz without impacting voices too much, but above that it starts to hurt. At 300 hz, which is the lower end of the telephone passband, it starts to sound like a phone filter...

You might try a dedicated app like SoundSoap, (Welcome to BIAS!) which works pretty well for us with many things, but (particularly if the amplitude of the wind exceeds the level of the other audio) we have never been very successful at removing wind rumble and leaving the other audio intact. / Battle Vaughan/miamiherald.com video team

[Greg Boston]

Yup, as Battle points out, the wind noise also occupies the voice spectrum and while you might minimize it a bit, you'll never get rid of it without killing the vocal content along with it. Same goes for things like air conditioner noise, fan noise, etc. I'm talking about the sound of the air, not the motors.

-gb-

[Vasco Dones]

Barrie,

I agree: not very much you can do
(believe me: I've spent three days trying to fix 15" of audio...).
You can give it a try with a good denoiser
(for example: the one in Audition, or iZotope),
and tweak your settings until you get a decent result,
which will be - as usual - a compromise:
a little less wind noise, a low degree of artifacts and a still
acceptable frequency range in the voice.
If you apply too much denoising, you'll end up with
a lot of ugly, metallic-sounding artifacts.
Sorry...
But as Jordan said, you can learn from it
(I did, and got myself a much better windscreen...)

Best

Vasco

[Dean Sensui]

Barrie...

While I don't have any suggestions on how to get rid of noise, here are a few that might help prevent it in the future:

-- Use a fuzzy windscreen. I have an older Lightwave over an AT-4051a, and the bass rolloff is turned "on" to reduce rumble. It works amazingly well in gusty winds. The newer lightwave furry covers aren't as fluffy as the old ones and probably not as effective. So check out the ones by Rycote. Rycote - Softies

-- Hide lav mics under a shirt. Use a piece of felt as a "sock" around the mic capsule to reduce wind noise. Or use a MicroCat or Windjammer if it's gusting Rycote - Personal Microphone Solutions.

I always monitor the audio. A lot of problems are caught as they happen and can be fixed right away. My mantra is five minutes in the field is worth more than an hour in post.