Can you use Noise Reduction 2.0 direct with Vegas, or do you need Sound Forge and use NR 2.0 as a plig-in?

You can use it with Vegas without having Sound Forge.
Tor

You can use NR with Vegas as a plug-in for the track, but I really apprecaite the extra features of using it with Sound Forge. With Vegas, NR is a track effect (you cannot automate it). With Sound Forge, you can open a copy of the audio and it will be used as a separate Take. The selection of a region for the noise print and previewing I find to be easier as well.

I've been working on a video shot under some trees and the rustling of the leaves becomes annoying when I boosted the gain for some soft speakers. NR did a fantastic job lowering the rustling sound.

glenl's situation brings up an interesting question, what's the best solution to that? My first instinct for bringing up a low voice without raising the background noise too much would be compression. Or possibly normalize. Is that the best way? Any one want to weigh in on this issue?

glenl, did you just boost the volume?

(accidental duplicate -- see my next post)

The Sony NR plug-in only works on tracks since even Vegas 5 still does not support audio plug-ins for events (like it does for video). This forces you to place audio events you wish to noise reduce on separate tracks. You will need a separate track for each separate set of NR settings you want to use. If you own SoundForge, you can export each event you wish to noise reduce to SoundForge, fix it up, and then save it as a new take. This is how I do it, but it requires that you own SoundForge, and it is a lot more awkward, especially if you are like me and want to go back and twiddle a few times. You end up with a lot of takes and it is not very interactive.

All that said, the Sony NR plug-in can be darn near magic at times, especially with impulse noise.

John,
You can say it three times and it still is not entirely right :-)
As a non real time effect you can use NR on an event. But it's good practise to isolate events with similar problems to their own tracks - be it audio or video. Then you can attack the problems more efficiently.
Tor

TorS,

Sorry about the duplicate post. I just went back and fixed that.

Yes, I stand corrected. You are right that you can apply the effect to each event. My description is definitely in error on that point. However, the reason why I had forgotten about this is that for NR, the "non-real time event fX" is pretty useless. The reason I say this is that, without the ability to capture a noiseprint. or interactively adjust the settings while listening in real time, the plug-in is pretty much useless. Also, if you attempt to achieve something approaching interactivity by chainging a setting and then quitting the dialog and then listening, you end up with dozens of takes for each event, which gets somewhat messy.

I wish Sony would change the way this works, but I strongly suspect they have not done so in order to protect their SoundForge franchise.

Buster, I'm kinda new on the audio tools, been using Vegas for a while. Reading about compression didn't seem like the right answer and normalizing was out of the question due to intermittent coughs that set the peak too high. So I used NR to lower the background rustle and then boosted the overall gain. Then using a volume envelope, I bracketed the coughs and laughs (from people closer to the camera – need a better mic, I know). It’s starting to sound a lot like manual compression, isn’t it?

I’d sure appreciate any suggestions on a better way to do this.

Thanks,
Glen

I'm not a programmer, so I only think things about these matters. But I would not be surprised if the superior quality of the Sony NR is directly related to its not being a real time effect. (Even whens used in Sound Forge it is hardly real time.)
However, I do think you can grab noiseprins when you use NR directly in Vegas. You select a "silent" section, select loop, open NR, and when it comes to selecting the noise print, press F12.
Tor

When I have a track with coughs or unusually loud sounds, I bring the volume on them down before I apply compression or normalization. This lets you correctly affect the range you want to affect. You could also just normalize and the coughs would be the loudest sounds, then after normalization you could take the down the volume of just the coughs. This may take your dialogue up enough to work.

For my projects, however, a cough is always extraneous information, not a dramatic device.

I do these in Sound Forge.

I assumed you were new, that's why I figured I would solicit adivce from the audio pros.

Hi All.

I'm at work and not near Vegas, so I can't go looking for it, so:

Is the Sony NR plugin included with Vegas? (I have Vegas 5) or is it something you need to get in addition?

Also, can anybody point me in the direction of any tutorials for this plugin or similar?

Cheers,

Andy

I'm sure busterkeaton knows the difference, but I'd like to state (for the benefit of the innocent bystander) that applying compression and normalisation is not the same thing.
Normalisation rises the level of everything so that the peaks reach the ceiling. Compression (as found in Graphic Dynamics) rises the levels beyond that, but still keeps the peaks within limits - resulting in a track where the difference between the loudest and the softest parts is smaller.
If you must make dramatic cuts because of coughs and such, applying a separate track of atmosphere (or music) may help to smoothe out the gaps.
Tor

Thank you for taking the time to highlight the differences. For my particular problem, neither seemed to be the right answer. The rustling leaves were too close in level to the soft speakers so raising both (I tried normalized but not compressed) just made the rustling background that much louder.

This seemed to be a common noise floor issue and is why I purchased Sound Forge. NR did a great job. Perhaps after I used NR I could then have used a compressor to bring up the soft speaker relative to the coughs. I still have a few segments to go so I'll try that tonight.

Thanks again.
Glen

Good thing you're on the right track. One tip about NR is to do several instances at low levels rather than big leaps. But do remember to get new noise samples each time.
Tor

Also if you are using both, the general rule is compression before normalization.

All the tools do an excellent job of making good audio into excellent audio. Trying to turn bad audio into good audio is a nightmare. Same goes for video but audio is much harder, our ears are far less forgiving than our eyes.

If you've got these sorts of problems you don't need to spend a fortune to make a big improvement. Even the cheapest mic close to what you're recording will leave on camera mics for dead. You can buy a cheap mic with a long lead for $50. If you don't want it in shot gaffer tape and a pole is pretty cheap. Don't like that idea, Sony make a little plastic on camera shotgunng mic. Much better than the mic on the cheap consummer cameras.
When the audio you want is not much higher in level than what you don't want it's an uphill battle. Even if you can improve the separation by only 10dB it'll make a much bigger difference when you use tools like NR2.
I'd also add that SF is a way better tool than Vegas for fixing audio. Vegas cannot easily work at the sample level, with SF you get very useful things like Snap to Zero Crossing. If you've got to cutout something only milliseconds long that alone makes it worth the price. Vegas on the other hand puts tiny faded on every audio cut, it does that to avoid clicks at the cut. You can turn that off but you then need to be careful or you'll start introducing nasties.


Bob.

Thank you, busterkeaton and TorS, for your suggestions. I knew that multiple passes with NR was better, but had missed that a new noise print was recommended with successive passes. Makes sense in that we have a moving target.

I experimented a bit with WaveHammer last night and liked the overall sound. I'll need to make a few adjustments to the levels but it seems as if it will be worth the couple of hours. It's definitely handy to be able to apply it to the entire track (I have the dialog on a separate track).

Any major differences/preferences between the standard Vegas track compressor and WaveHammer? This was definitely my most difficult audio project in the wind (rumble), under the trees (rustle), and 100' from a small river (swoosh).

Thanks again,
Glen