Would like to remove or at least reduce wind sound from M2TS video

[kmw]

Hello all:
I have a Sony Handycam HDR -CX500V that I used to record my daughter's outdoor wedding a few months ago. The audio was set to record in Dolby 5.1. And the video file is a .M2TS. We ended up with a lot of wind on the recording. I'm looking for a way to remove or at least reduce the wind. I currently have the Corel Video Studio Pro X3 and the current Cyberlink Media Suite Ultra. I have no idea if I can use those or not. About 15 years ago I used a program called Cool Edit to edit and join audio clips and create multi layer sound effects for some educational software, but haven't done anything since that. I'm looking for a free or low cost solution, if possible. However, ultimately I'd also like to get whatever will do the best job. TIA for any help.

Kate

[redwudz]

That's not so easy to do. Especially with multichannel sound. You could experiment with something like the freeware Audacity and see if you can get some improvement with selective frequency filtering. But wind noise tends to have a fairly wide frequency range and reducing it will likely also reduce your desired audio that has the same frequencies.

Stripping the audio out for editing may be a bit complex, but I'll let others give you some suggestions there. Unless you were very close when you did the taping, or used multiple microphones, the 5.1, or even stereo won't have much in the way of multichannel dimensional effects, so you may be able to reduce it to stereo for the purposes of filtering.

And welcome to our forums.

[budwzr]

Well, "5.1 Surround" means there are 6 channels of audio, the ".1" is the subwoofer.

I would download a free trial of Sony Vegas and listen to each channel solo and see if anything is salvageable. If there is, you can render it out as Stereo or even Mono.

EDIT: Like Redbuds said, wind noise is broad spectrum noise. That's a toughie.

[netmask56]

If the bulk of the sound is dialog then you can start by high passing at around 80 to 120Hz. This will remove a lot of the meter buffering you may observe allowing you to lift the level a tad. Next use a moderate amount of boost around 3kHz to 5kHz to boost the presence of the voices say around 3 to 4db. Then if you have CoolEdit Pro or Adobe Audition check to see if there is a clear section of wind noise without voices, sample it and use it in the noise reduction plug in. Wind noise is best eliminated at source, hence the large wind gags you see on news crews for TV, The other audio plugin you could try is a noise gate but with a gentle threshold so as in the absence of voice the level is automatically ducked down about 3db. If you then mix over the live track an unobtrusive suitable music track this sometimes help to hide the nasties going on... Of course this all relies on the original track having good voice intelligibility.

In desperate situations you can safely go as far as 180Hz as the point for the high pass filter to cut in as long as you don't have an A-B situation where you have unfiltered sound butting filtered and you must put back a controlled background atmosphere in this extreme situation. Also dip filters can be used to get rid of a particular objectionable band of frequencies, sometimes known as an "absence" filter.
good luck!

[budwzr]

Lmfao!!!

[netmask56]

Well that was a fairly standard procedure for a national tv network I once worked for to clean up crap sound from stringers. It isn't straight forward but it's not difficult to do as long as you have the right tools - having the WAVES Inc set of plugins is also useful as you can do most of what I suggested with their C4 plugin . Wouldn't comment on the state of your derriere LOL