"is percussive, and it is very dirty (splatters all over the spectrum)"

IMO...
Based on this reality Izotope or any program would be little to no help.

It doesn't mean one shouldn't try it but personally (depending on project goal) I would have absolutely no expectations of salvaging the wave to my satisfaction.

OP....good luck...

The best (and only) advice i've given to many shooters who have brought me such material is "go back, turn off the AC, and shoot it again."

Thanks a lot guys. Since there's not much dialog there. I may try just recording the voice again since I do have a good wav of the background without the AC noise. Probably should just re-shoot and have it over with though. ;-)

Also wanted to mention that this is a great support site. I have asked for help before and got the help I needed. Some sites the people treat you like an idiot because you don't know the answer, have never been treated that way here. Thanks again!
Gary

"Probably should just re-shoot and have it over with though. ;-)"

Being a long time musician and recording my own material the above is what I would recommend....as painful as it may sound.

I'd guess that ambient noise probs will not occur in your future projects.<grin here>

Good luck....

HAHA, yeah, I'm learning the hard way alright! It will be really easy to re-shoot it. It's just outside of my house, but my 9 year old daughter has had about enough of my re-shoots! LOL Every day when I get home from work, I say guess what, we need to re-shoot just that one scene over . Then I have a high maintenance diva actress on my hands for a while. LOL

I think the worst i got handed was a shot of two people standing up on a bank beside a road, with traffic going by, with the camera operator zoomed in from across the field. Sure, they filled the screen from the waist up, as black silhouettes against a blue sky. The sound track was cars, birds, wind, and enough of the voices to know that they were actually talking, but not enough to recognize any words at all.

It's amazing how upset the client was when i told them it was hopeless and go redo it.

Chienworks...
It seems the client that wasn't aware that one does not get chicken salad out chicken sh!t?<grin here>

Ghoot
You may have to bribe the 9 year old diva with several oatmeal cookies.<another grin>

Doing any of our creations over again is quite unappealing given the time vampire that our projects are noted for.

Carry on....

Yeah. She had 2 friends over yesterday when we shot that part with the bad sound. The whole time they were right next to us in the back yard jumping on the trampoline, and "the talent" was giving me the what for the whole time about not getting to play with her friends. She played with them all day, but the 15 minutes I needed her somehow took all that away. :-)

Chienworks, that sounds about like one of my clips. I have a buddy that has shot a couple of short films that I plan to help on the set with for some of his next shoots, so I can learn some tricks of the trade, and learn to quit doing stupid stuff...as often anyway!

Do the re-shoot, ghoot. I lost my adult youngest daughter 3 years ago. I treasure every frame of video I ever shot of her, even the out-takes. Shoot, even the VHS!

Aww rdandrea, so sorry to hear that. Can't imagine how tough that has to be. My prayers go out to you.

That's why I started the video stuff, because she likes doing plays and singing and acting, so it gives us something to do together. Until the editing part. That's when she goes sour on me, because I spend so much time on that. ;-) I started to put a site together for her. It's rough and not really ready for public viewing, just have her singing 2 songs on it right now. She's quite a character.

www.EnsleyK.com is the site.

Thanks for the wise advice.
Gary