Wind sound on audio - any way to minimize it?

[David Delaney]

I taped a football game but didn't realise how windy it was (open field - using the cameras built in mic). Is there any tips or tricks to minimize the wind sound without compromising the overall audio quality too much?

[David Jimerson]

Not really. Anything you do will compromise quality; wind noise saturates the entire audio spectrum. This is why you have to take every step possible to avoid it, as well as monitor your sound while you're recording so that you know when it's a problem.

You can try things like the noise gate, etc., but chances are you're stuck with the wind.

[Seth Bloombaum]

There may be more to the story.

There are several elements in recorded wind noise. One of the most objectionable is *somewhat* fixable, and that's the extreme low freqs produced by wind rattling the diaphram on a condensor mic. This sounds like, um, almost nothing else... something like hitting a basketball with the meaty part of your closed fist, only lower in pitch.

Rolling off bass frequencies may take such a clip from "no way" to "maybe"... David is, of course, correct, that taking too big a bite out of bass will also affect dialog. It's a bit of a balancing act, and reference monitors are pretty important for this kind of work.

To do this in Vegas, go to the audio track fx, select the Track EQ tab, and click and drag the "1" dot (Low Shelf) down. Keep it below the middle line, but move it up and down, left and right, while listening to playback. You might want to loop playback over a really bad section. Find a setting that gets rid of some low freq wind noise without hurting dialog too much... if you can!

[David Delaney]

Thanks for that. I did try and it seem not to help much. I am going to try and lower the bass on the track using some other methods and see if I can make anything sound better.