Audio cleaning (windnoise)

wiel-gulpen wrote on 9/5/2020, 3:51 AM

Good morning,

A week ago I managed my first video with Vegas Pro 16 after 17 years of Pinnacle Studio. I'm satiesfied with the final product. My thanks go to the members of the Dutch Vegas Pro forum who helped me with some difficulties. It's a movie about our holiday on Mallorca last year september. Those days it was very windy. In Spain they call that period gota fria.

A lot of scenes contain windnoise. Now as the videopart of the movie is ready i'm looking to clean the audio (windnoise). I want to get rid of that. Not all, beacause it belongs to our 'Gota fria' holiday, but it should be less intense.

On Youtube I saw this movie of the Acon restauration Suite 2.

The results of cleaning up the windnoise are very good (third example in the movie). The cleaning software is used with another software, not Vegas Pro.

Who uses the Acon software togeter with Vegas Pro? Is it stable? Sometimes I read that VST-plugins cause problens with the NLE.

Greetings from Simpelveld,

Wiel

Comments

Musicvid wrote on 9/5/2020, 5:48 AM

Izotope RX

andyrpsmith wrote on 9/5/2020, 6:23 AM

Also Sound Cleaning lab 2 - cheaper than sound forge/Isotope elements (tried trial and sound cleaning lab did much the same or even better).

Dexcon wrote on 9/5/2020, 6:45 AM

How bad is the wind noise? Minor, like a bit of rumble in the background (probably under 300-400Hz on a spectrogram); Moderate (usually variable ranging from minor to peaks of 1 to 3 kHz or so) - but the bulk of the wanted audio is still mostly there); or Major, where the audio sounds like its been recorded at the top of an alpine peak during a blizzard. If the latter, it's the cutting room floor because nothing can save it.

While iZotope RX has an excellent de-wind noise function in the Advanced version, personally, I have for a long time used SpectraLayers (currently v7 from Steinberg.com) where the clone stamp (a la copy/paste) allows low level wind noise to be replaced by an equivalent frequency range elsewhere in the audio event where there is no wind noise. Medium wind noise is much trickier to do but time and patience helps a lot. There are other approaches as well.

Either iZotope RX Standard or Advanced can do this as well on the spectrogram view - in this regard, historically, I'm just more used to doing it in SpectraLayers over many years.

wiel-gulpen wrote on 9/5/2020, 4:15 PM

Hi Dexcon,

I think is Moderate sometimes tending to Major when walking nearby the cliffs of the Mediterranean and high waves.

Wiel

Dexcon wrote on 9/5/2020, 6:31 PM

@wiel-gulpen ... would it possible to upload (using the upload icon when making a Comment) an example of the audio. It doesn't need to be any longer than, say, 20 seconds. I can then give it a go in SpectraLayers to see if it is salvageable - and others may want to try it out as well.

set wrote on 9/5/2020, 6:33 PM

Advice: perhaps upload to dropbox / google drive / wetransfer and send link rather than comment upload, as it can modify any file.

wiel-gulpen wrote on 9/6/2020, 10:22 AM

This is a sample at the beach on Mallorca. In the last part you hear kids. The wind should be less dominant.

Greetings.

Wiel

Grazie wrote on 9/6/2020, 10:44 AM

@wiel-gulpen - Eh, right.... So what do you wish to keep?

wiel-gulpen wrote on 9/6/2020, 11:07 AM

Hi Grazie,

The kids talking en yelling at he beach.

Grazie wrote on 9/6/2020, 11:53 AM

@wiel-gulpen - OK, I have a Plan. Now, how can I download the Audio?

wiel-gulpen wrote on 9/6/2020, 2:42 PM

Where can I send the clip to?

john_dennis wrote on 9/6/2020, 2:58 PM

@wiel-gulpen

Now would be a good time to invest in a dead cat so you'll need less restoration in the future.

wiel-gulpen wrote on 9/6/2020, 3:05 PM

Hello John,

I have a deadcat for my Sennheiser MKE400, my Rode STVM pro en even my Zoom H2n. Sometimes you are in a hurry to catch the moment (grandchildren) and you only get the cam or the cellphone is the only camera at that moment. Then no external mic is mounted. I think everyone has that moments. And the only solution is then to repair in post. I got some clips due to that circumstances.

john_dennis wrote on 9/6/2020, 3:41 PM

"I think everyone has that moments."

I frequently shoot with the camera that I have, too.

Former user wrote on 9/6/2020, 7:28 PM

If you just want to lose the obnoxious bass of the wind use high pass filter on parametric equalizier, roll of around 200hz with 0db by 100hz, or to your liking. With ocean plus wind noise using noise removal will probably make it sound synthetic

On spectral pitch display remaining wind noise after notch filter applied is quite visible. Maybe something can be done about it without it sounding terrible

Dexcon wrote on 9/6/2020, 7:52 PM

@wiel-gulpen ... Thank you for uploading the audio sample. When I first listened to the track, my first thought was that the wind noise was quite bad, but the good news is that most of the wind noise is under 400Hz as can be seen from the spectrogram snapshot from SpectraLayers Pro 7:

I deleted everything under 400Hz and then used the clone stamp tool (a la copy/paste) to copy the 'clean' section between 400 and 700Hz and paste it progressively over the sections where there were still wind peaks above 400Hz. The first 3.5 secs was reduced in gain by about 3 or 4 dB. The clone tool was used to fill the valleys in the first 3.5 secs and at around 7 secs. The gain below around 1.6khz was reduced by about 3dB and the void below 400Hz was filled with the Noise Spray tool at -60dB. The spectrogram now looks like this:

... and the audio is now:

Of course, the volume of the audio below around 2khz is a personal choice.

I hope that this helps.

Former user wrote on 9/6/2020, 8:01 PM

It sounds like the kids moved from the windy beach to the airport

wiel-gulpen wrote on 9/7/2020, 3:41 PM

Good evening everyone,

thanks for the help!!

Wiel