Hard Light Productions Forums

Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Stealth on April 20, 2005, 07:56:33 pm

Title: sound editing --- removing background/room noise
Post by: Stealth on April 20, 2005, 07:56:33 pm
first, listen to this:

http://www.3dap.com/hlp/hosted/stealth/hostedpictures/soundcleaning.mp3

i've got literally hours of conversations like this, and i really need to be able to hear what's being said... i've tried cool edit pro, but it's a hard program... so i'm wondering: how would you remove this kind of "background" or "room" noise.  this conversation was recorded in a restaurant, and i need to know what the dude's saying, cause i can't remember.
Title: sound editing --- removing background/room noise
Post by: Sandwich on April 21, 2005, 01:17:30 am
Try sampling some "blank" (the guy's not speaking) room noise (there's a bit around 5 seconds in) in Cool Edit, Transform > Noise Reduction... Get Noise Profile from Selection button. Then hit "Close", select the entire file, and Transform, Noise Reduction, OK.
Title: sound editing --- removing background/room noise
Post by: Nuke on April 21, 2005, 01:46:40 am
if the noise is a looped sample try to recorde a clean sample of the noise without the vocals. then invert the waveform and resample it over the original sound track, it should cancel out the nois leaving only the dialog. of course i use sound forge so i dont know how cool edit would do it.
Title: sound editing --- removing background/room noise
Post by: StratComm on April 21, 2005, 01:48:23 am
From what I understand of the track, that won't work.  Never would.  Restaurant noise is inherently random in just about its purest form.
Title: sound editing --- removing background/room noise
Post by: WMCoolmon on April 21, 2005, 02:46:34 am
"(John. three. Bate. two-five) Uh, what you have to understand is that stuff like, why the **** did I give the blanket. like, like, (touch?) the stuff as a (reason?) account, and stuff like that,  then we got the-"

The four stars represent a word that starts with f and end with k. :p

I used Winamp, fooled around with the EQ but it didn't help at all. I wasn't sure about the first part, so I put down a rough phonetic equivelant. The "-ohn" and "ee-bay" and "oo-aye" sounds are pretty clear, the rest of that is garbled, it's said in an odd way that that sounds like a number (in which case the closest I could come up with would be 1-38-25, although the 1 would be pronounced more like "wand" than "wuhn")

Did I just do your homework for you?
Title: sound editing --- removing background/room noise
Post by: Stealth on April 21, 2005, 07:46:12 am
not really, cause i still don't know how to do it :( :( :(

let me try some of the suggestions that were made :nod:
Title: sound editing --- removing background/room noise
Post by: Stealth on April 21, 2005, 07:50:41 am
coolmon:  lol it's not that bad... here's what he's saying:

"... a pretty basic site.  Like, what you have to understand is that like, a lot of the stuff i did to Brian, like, take the stuff for 'add user accounts' " (then another guy pipes in): "yeah i say we...."
Title: sound editing --- removing background/room noise
Post by: Stealth on April 21, 2005, 07:51:50 am
Quote
Originally posted by Nuke
if the noise is a looped sample try to recorde a clean sample of the noise without the vocals. then invert the waveform and resample it over the original sound track, it should cancel out the nois leaving only the dialog. of course i use sound forge so i dont know how cool edit would do it.


i have soundforge too :D  how would i do it in soundforge?


Sandwich:  That didn't work :( :( :(
Title: sound editing --- removing background/room noise
Post by: Nuke on April 21, 2005, 06:05:14 pm
i havent a clue, if its just an open environment recording there is really no hope for you, you can filter out the various frequencys but in the end youl just get some garbeled sound quality. and honestly the only sounds ive been able to produce in soundforge were the gatling gun sounds for nukemod. all i know about sound editing is the theory behind it and some basic sampling techniques.
Title: sound editing --- removing background/room noise
Post by: Nix on April 21, 2005, 09:57:50 pm
I've tried in Sound Forge the noise gate/filter. I cant remember what it is right now, but it really doesnt work too well, but that may just save you if you play around with it a bit.  
I'd think if you have the full version of SF, there's gotta be some sort of advanced plugin to use, I've only got studio 6, and for what I do, it's pretty good.
Title: sound editing --- removing background/room noise
Post by: IceFire on April 21, 2005, 11:08:36 pm
What sort of background noise?  If its mechanical then you can probably EQ it out.  But if its other voices then its going to be REALLY hard to separate the levels to try and filter it.

Running a noise filter may work...as suggested, but difficult.  None of the typical sound editing tools work well enough for me to use them.  I was trained on more sophisticated stuff but I don't have access to it so I'm a theory guy only.
Title: sound editing --- removing background/room noise
Post by: Sandwich on April 22, 2005, 05:20:12 pm
Speak to Black Sheep.