Clean up distorted audio in mpg file?

[brownstem]

Hi, I've recorded several very good quality mpg files (last weekend's NFL games) using a Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-USB2 card. The video is outstanding, since I fed the Hauppauge card via an S-Video cable coming out of an over-the-air HDTV receiver. My problem is the audio, which sounds like crap despite my having used the default settings for the card (MPEG-2, 384kbps). Everything sounds either slightly distorted/raspy or as if it had been recorded at too high a level. Sort of the way an old cassette recorder would record your voice if you had the mic too close to your mouth. Hauppauge has since sent me a registry patch to fix this problem for future recordings, but I really want to clean up the audio on these games if possible. Does anyone know of an easy-to-use audio editor with a filter I can run these mpg files through to clean up the sound? Thx.

[redwudz]

Audacity is free. How much you can clean up, I don't know. Cool Edit works better, but is complex (sometimes good) and expensive. Goldwave is reasonably priced and popular.

[Soopafresh]

Short of running it through the $200.00 Sonic Foundry/Sony /clipped peak restoration plugin, the answer is "not much". When the source is bad, the result is bad. At least there are a few more games left of the season.

[rkr1958]

I've used Goldwave to clean up audio captured from a personal recording device. It did a good job. Goldwave gives you a trial so you could download it and try it out on your audio. Good Luck.

[junkmalle]

Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-USB2... distorted sound... Hauppauge has since sent me a registry patch

Could you post the patch here? (You can open REG files with notepad to copy/paste the text.) I'm curious to see what they changed.

[brownstem]

Thanks, everyone, much appreciated. Junkmalle, I'll post the patch later today when I get a chance. Alternatively, I could email it to you.

[brownstem]

Here it is:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\Conexant\Parameters\ivac15\DrvUSB]
"PreScale_Scart_EXT"=dword:00001000

[junkmalle]

Thanks, Brownstem. That's interesting because a lot of people with the PVR-150 are having problems with audio that's too loud and distorted. Maybe this will work for them.

[brownstem]

That's a damn shame, since as a video card it seems to be very good.

[brownstem]

OK, so I've got Goldwave installed, and I run my mpg file through the Noise Reduction filter (just as a first go, seems an obvious choice). It runs, then when I try to save the file it tells me that it can't save in the original file format, and prompts me with mp3, wav, etc. as choices. Anyone know how/if I can get it to save as an mpg file? I'm not extracting audio, just trying to edit the audio inside the mpg, and I really don't want to have to demux/edit/remux. Thanks.

[Soopafresh]

Man, that would be NICE, but alas, you'll have to save it as a WAV, and ultimately remux it.