Wind Noise

Grecian wrote on 11/14/2011, 2:55 AM

I use Vegas Movie Studio 10 and film in AVCHD. My outdoor footage often has significant wind noise.

I can edit my video footage in VSM10, but have never done any sound editing.

Is it possible to reduce wind noise using VSM10,?

Comments

Jack S wrote on 11/14/2011, 4:08 AM

Hi Grecian
I posted a similar message some time back. See the following

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=12&MessageID=770426

There is, apparantly, nothing that can be done about it.

richard-amirault wrote on 11/14/2011, 6:17 AM

There is, apparantly, nothing that can be done about it.

Well, yes and no ... you REALLY need to deal with this when you shoot .. not when you edit.

Use an external mic (if you camera accepts one) and put a "dead cat" type of wind shield over it. If you can't put an external mic on your camcorder you may be able to find "dead cat" type stick on's to put over the mic holes.

laz wrote on 11/14/2011, 6:33 AM

You might be able to reduce the noise using an audio editor like Audacity (free) http://audacity.sourceforge.net/, then you can import the edited file into the suite.

Tim L wrote on 11/14/2011, 6:56 AM

One thing that might help salvage things is checking to see if the wind noise is equally bad on both channels (left and right). I had a short clip with some really strong wind noise, and realized that one channel was far worse than the other.

For example, the wind was blowing from the left, so it was blowing directly onto the left camcorder mic element, and the right element wasn't quite as bad. I right-clicked on the audio event on the Vegas timeline, selected "Channels", then selected "Right Only". This means that Vegas will take only the right channel audio and send it to both the left and right channels of your project. The result still had obvious wind noise, but at least it was better than it would have been.

Apart from that, you can still improve things -- but not totally "fix" them -- by applying an Equallizer effect to your audio. For simplicity, apply the "Graphic EQ" effect to your clip. Then open the Graphic EQ FX window, and along the bottom click on the "20 Band" tab. This will give you an easy-to-use equalizer with lots of sliders. At this point, all you can do is play around and try to make things better. To get rid of low "rumble" sounds, reduce the sliders below 200-300 Hz or so. Experiment with other settings to see if they make things better or not. But everything you do will alter the tone and quality of what you're trying to save.

For example, if the wind noise is really bad, you may have to choose between "bad wind noise" and "sounds tinny but intelligible". If someone is talking, and that's what you really want to hear, you might be able to save the frequencies of their voice and kill most of the frequencies below and above. Now you can better understand what they are saying, but the audio recording does not sound natural.

If you are doing nature type recordings -- just scenery and such -- see if you can steal audio from a different part of your project and use it in place of the audio with wind noise.

Tim L

Grecian wrote on 11/25/2011, 3:14 PM

Thanks for the various suggestions and ideas about how to deal with wind noise. Obviously no easy answer and probably best to concentrate on minimizing it.
Best wishes
Peter

Byron K wrote on 11/29/2011, 12:42 PM

You can also try filtering the noise w/ izotope RX. Download the trial. Take a sample of the wind noise and filter it. you may have to do a couple of passes for the different frequencies in the wind and/or filter specific sections.

http://www.izotope.com/products/audio/rx/

Use this as a learning.
Eluding to what brigherside wrote, as the old Benjamin Franklin saying goes: "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" (;