I'd think the reverse audio would be quite frustrating for viewers trying to figure out why they couldn't understand what was said. Here a beep, and you instantly know the word wasn't supposed to be heard.

I agree with that, I found it distracting wondering what the word was.

+1 beep.

If you find the beep annoying just add silence and the audience will still figure out that it's word that was censored.

Reverse audio is just going to make the audience mad as they try and figure out what the word is.

~jr

In music on the radio, they either miss out the words or reverse it if there are explicit lyrics (beep is clearly out in this context). Both work in my opinion depending on the track. Perhaps try both to see how it comes out.

Years ago I had to create DVDs for high school students and their parents. The music was submitted by the kids and included lots of songs with explicit lyrics that would have offended many. I used several techniques to remove/alter the lyrics. They all worked well. Since it was music (well, some of it was rap, so as Ravel once said about Bolero: "unfortunately, it contains no music) I had to do it in a way that preserved the key and rhythm of the music.

1. Reverse. You've already tried that. This was the least successful of all the techniques.

2. Bridge the gap. iZotope RX has a "repair" function that can fill a blank gap with the surrounding material. Sometimes it works brilliantly, other times it fails.

3. Copy from some other part of the material. This can produce the best results, by far. Find something where the same person is saying or singing something that will fit, and insert this in place of the offensive sound. Blend at the edges. Sometimes you can copy over the top of the original, dropping its volume somewhat.

4. Use iZotope RX to remove the offending sound. This works great if the offending item is a tone (like a censor beep), AND if the original material is still there, buried underneath the tone.

5. Repeat adjacent material. This sometimes works, but it creates a "Max Headroom" stutter that can be annoying, especially if done too often.

6. Slow down adjacent material. Use the Elastique time stretch for the audio adjacent to the bad spot, and slow down the adjacent material. This one only works if you have the right material.

7. Do what Craig Ferguson did on the Late Show, which is to insert the same person saying a nonsense phrase. This still produces an interruption in the flow of the audio, but not as jarring as a beep or silence.

[edit]Here's an example of several of these techniques. This is my work, but I did not upload it to YouTube because of the copyright issues. Someone else uploaded it, and after all these years, no one objected so it is still there. I've queued it up to just before the first of many instances of the use of an offensive racial word, commonly used by rappers. When they sing, "when will you *** learn," you'll hear that something is missing, but the music continues, so it simply sounds like they decided not to sing the word at that point.



Ah, I just found out that the queuing doesn't work if I embed the link, so I edited this post to no include the HTML code. You can copy/paste this link into your browser and it will queue up to the correct place in the video.

Here's a link to the lyrics (warning: very offensive lyrics):

http://www.lyriczz.com/lyrics/roy-jones/16890-can%27t-be-touched/

You can play the video and then read the lyrics. You'll find several dozen places where I had to "fix" the song. I think you'll find that the song now meets most community guidelines and standards.

>>When they sing, "when will you *** learn," you'll hear that something is missing, but the music continues, so it simply sounds like they decided not to sing the word at that point.

Brilliant John. Your post is loaded with useful information (as usual).

The video is a great example of editing technique and skill that does not call attention to itself. Bravo.

Thanks for the compliments. The video itself was just the game films taken by the athletic department, to be shown before Monday practice. It was one camera, zoomed out to get the "all-22" view, taken by student volunteers who had never operated a camera. So, not great to work with. All I could do was add highlight circles, change speeds, stabilize, and do an occasional zoom (although the original was SD, so the result was fuzzy when I did that).


Only partially related to this ...

The job that propelled me into restoration was my forty-year quest to find the film of the high school football game I played in which clinched our acclamation as Illinois state champions. I finally restored it, and combined it with all the other game films I'd found, to create a complete record of the season. We then had a reunion of a large portion of the team, the two surviving coaches, and several of the cheerleaders. Here is the incredible catch (not by me) that was made in the last twenty seconds of the first game of the season. If our guy doesn't catch this, we lose, and therefore don't go undefeated, and most certainly don't get acclaimed state champion. Even after all the football highlights I've seen, this still hold up pretty well. It looks OK when played at full speed, but when you watch my frame-by-frame replay, you realize how amazing it really was:

+1 for the beep. Just keep the beep volume really, really low. Nothing punches like a pure sine wave. A little goes a long way.

>> Here is the incredible catch (not by me) that was made in the last twenty seconds

This is the kind of thing that you see in a Hollywood movie and say "Oh sure .. yeah .. right..." .. But stuff like this does happen. It's the stuff we remember best. The frame by frame really shows it too. Your football team reunion must have been blown away by the footage. I imagine the team carried you off the dance floor on their shoulders! All hail the EDITOR! .... right!