Audio fix

Lightfoot wrote on 1/17/2008, 9:16 AM
any way to fix the audio in post where the automatic setting was turned off on a GL2 and the manual settings were at the highest vol setting. the footage is from a football game with alot of loud noise but it is over bearing and even sounds bad when turning down the volume envelope. I need the sound for background under the sound track.

Comments

Kennymusicman wrote on 1/17/2008, 9:59 AM
more than liekly - what is the noise problem? - ie, outside "football" noise, or residual machine/camera noise, or other? If you want, post a little clip and I can look at it for cleaning?
Lightfoot wrote on 1/17/2008, 10:10 AM
I guess I used the wrong word noise. the audio volume is so high that the sound is distorted, for example when my camera man is in the locker room it is very dificult to understand what the coach is saying because of the distortion.

I am not sure how to post a clip.

johnmeyer wrote on 1/17/2008, 10:38 AM
Use clip peak restoration in Sound Forge.

Or, download iZotope RX and use the Declipper function. Here's the description of that function from their help file:

"Declipper repairs digital and analog clipping artifacts that result when A/D converters are pushed too hard or magnetic tape is over-saturated. Declipper can be extremely useful for saving recordings that were made in a single pass, such as live concerts or interviews, and any audio that cannot be re-recorded."

While I love Sound Forge and its restoration plugins, iZotope's capabilities are one step beyond magic. You can use their demo to see if it can help.
Kennymusicman wrote on 1/17/2008, 10:39 AM
if it's distorted due to clipping through too high levels, then you can only do so much.
kdm wrote on 1/17/2008, 10:40 AM
Some distortion can be fixed - we have tools to restore clipping that are produce great results where most basic declippers don't work at all, but if it's too distorted, there is no recovery.

A basic rule of thumb is that clipping on peaks can be repaired, but clipping into the rms level of the audio often can not, at least not without a high level of degradation to the original signal. In short, if it's unintelligble, then unfortunately it's probably lost.

If you don't have a way to post a clip, feel free to email a short clip to me and I'll be happy to take a listen (see my profile for address).