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  1. Member
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    I have a lot of home video shot on VHS, VHS-C< 8mm and Hi8 which is taken outdoors at football fields. There is mic noise throughout all the video from the low quality mic's. It's a consistant and constant noise, very audible when volume is turned out.

    Is there any quick and easy ways to try and cancel out this noise?
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  2. Member edDV's Avatar
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    "quick and easy"

    no

    I'd assume low levels or high wind noise?

    Describe your shooting conditions.
    Last edited by edDV; 27th Apr 2010 at 18:40.
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  3. Member Cornucopia's Avatar
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    Barring one exception, if your NOISE is louder than your SIGNAL, there's really NO WAY of pulling the signal out of the noise.

    The exception has certain conditions:
    1. The Noise is very steady while the Signal isn't, and/or
    2. The Noise is only loud because of accumulation throughout ALL Frequency ranges, but isn't rediculously loud in the range of the Signal only (or)
    3. The Noise is in a different frequency range than the Signal

    Then, the combination of Bandpass filters (multiple), Channel Sum+Difference matrixing, Downward Expansion & Noise Gating and "Learned Acoustic Signature" cancelling COULD do it.

    However, unfortunately, I would guess that if you are already stuck with that level of equipment, you probably couldn't afford the time or cost of the tools that would be able to help you get rid of it.

    So I'm thinking you're SOL

    That's why people invented wireless lavs, boom mikes and parabolic reflector mikes! (And ultimately it's a heck of a lot easier to deal with the cost and use of those than to fix what's already broken)

    Scott
    Last edited by Cornucopia; 27th Apr 2010 at 19:25. Reason: misspelling
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    Now that I'm thinking about it, and hearing my VCR's motor noise while I capture this stuff, I think the noise is motor noise from the camcorder, picked up by the internal mic. The noise is consistant and constant, never changing, be it outdoors or indoors recordings .
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  5. Member edDV's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by HDClown View Post
    Now that I'm thinking about it, and hearing my VCR's motor noise while I capture this stuff, I think the noise is motor noise from the camcorder, picked up by the internal mic. The noise is consistant and constant, never changing, be it outdoors or indoors recordings .

    Motor noise is due to camcorder AGC. If it sees low audio level it jacks up gain to the point where only motor noise can be heard.
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    Try Audacity's Noise Removal filter. Find a portion that's only the motor noise, select it, and use that as the sample for the filter. Then select the whole track and apply the filter.
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    Here is a sample of the audio with the constant noise I was talking about. Is this motor hiss from the internal camcorder mic, or something else? THe original source material was either shot VHS or VHS-C, then various shots where dubbed together with 2 VHS decks onto a single tape. So this is 1 or 2 generations from original.
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    The level of this sample is too low. The music and talking is barely discernable. I don't believe you will ever be able to clean this up. If this is a sample of just the noise without your main audio, then it sounds like radio interference. You might be able to clean the audio by setting a gate just above the level of this sample.
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    Originally Posted by Khaver View Post
    The level of this sample is too low. The music and talking is barely discernable. I don't believe you will ever be able to clean this up. If this is a sample of just the noise without your main audio, then it sounds like radio interference. You might be able to clean the audio by setting a gate just above the level of this sample.

    The record level is kind of low, but I have no problem hearing it by turning up the volume on my computer output and turning up my speakers slightly. this is a full sample with music and the noise.
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  10. Member Cornucopia's Avatar
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    Using Adobe Audition (which is what I believe you used)

    Here's an example of what Normalizing, Bandpass Filtering (Graphic or Parametric EQ), DeEssing, Hiss + Broadband Noise Reduction (using an area of NON-Music as the noise signature source), Multiband Compression, Channel Summing, Noise Gating + Expansion, & Peak Limiting...

    That took about 1/2 hour. I'd spend a LOT more time on it if it were my own and I really needed good quality stuff.

    Something to remember: Sometimes, doing a number of little adjustments is much safer and better quality overall than doing just a coulple of BIG adjustments. And of course, ALWAYS work on a LOSSLESS format when doing these kinds of things.

    Scott
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    Man, that is a lot of adjustments. I did not use Adobe Audition (don't have that product). Earlier today I took a sample of audio which was primarily just the noise in question and used that as the reference for Noise Reduction filter in GoldWave and it did a very acceptable job to my ears, easily 100x better than the original. I'll probably just keep it simple and use this.
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