Any Suggestions for Noise Reduction Software

[blaqlion22]

Hi. I have a mpeg movie of a play that was filmed in a gym. I am wondering if there is any software out there that may be able to pull up voices talking and drown out the echoes of the gym. I know its a longshot. Thanks.

[guns1inger]

A very long shot. Your best bet would be to play around with the equaliser settings and hope you can suppress the worst of it without killing everything else. I don't know of any filters that will do what you are asking. Audacity has an EQ, as do all decent audio editors. If you have an editor that supports VST you might look at the PushTec filter, which works along the same line an an EQ filter, but with a smarter interface for working across ranges.

[AlanHK]

If you have an editor that supports VST

Which includes Audacity: http://www.audacityteam.org/vst/

[guns1inger]

Has Audacity's VST support improved lately ? I found it's inability to correctly render VST plugin interfaces meant that many simply could not be used in any meaningful way. The stability of the VST interface was also questionable. It would be nice to hear that it had improved enough to warrant using.

[AlanHK]

Has Audacity's VST support improved lately ?

I admit I've never used it; I just noticed it was a feature.
It's "version 1.1 - released March 3, 2007"

The Audacity forums would be the place to ask.

[netmask56]

Hi. I have a mpeg movie of a play that was filmed in a gym. I am wondering if there is any software out there that may be able to pull up voices talking and drown out the echoes of the gym. I know its a longshot. Thanks.

If there is a bit of acoustic space or separation between the voices and the background room rumble/reverb you could roll off the bass a tad and apply a little bit of midrange boost to highlight the voices followed by 3 to 4 db downward expansion. Most "noise gates" have this ability like in the Waves Ltd range of plugins.

[ZQX]

Has Audacity's VST support improved lately ? I found it's inability to correctly render VST plugin interfaces meant that many simply could not be used in any meaningful way. The stability of the VST interface was also questionable. It would be nice to hear that it had improved enough to warrant using.

No, Audacity still does not support VST guis, which is one reason why I moved elsewhere. Even Wavosaur (freeware) supports VST guis so I don't know what Audacity's problem is.

blaqlion22, give Reaper a whirl, maybe it's built-in ReaFir plugin can help suppress the unwanted echoes.

[AlanHK]

I don't know what Audacity's problem is.

Audacity is Open Source, VST's are proprietary.

Because of licensing issues, VST support must be kept separate from Audacity. This "VST Enabler" is mostly open-source, but the source code to Steinberg's VST SDK is required, and this must be downloaded from Steinberg separately.

So VST support is not well integrated.

Wavosaur is currently free, but not Open Source.

[ZQX]

Heh? That doesn't make sense. Is "open source" restrictive? Then why not just call your bloody software "freeware" instead of "open source"? Ridiculous.

[guns1inger]

The licensing issues are with Steinberg, which is not free or open source, and not with Audacity. Audacity cannot include Steinberg's libraries or code in their own project.

[ZQX]

Yeah but how then does Wavosaur and Kristal and all those other free audio engines get away with it?

[guns1inger]

They don't give away the source code

[AlanHK]

Heh? That doesn't make sense. Is "open source" restrictive? Then why not just call your bloody software "freeware" instead of "open source"? Ridiculous.

"Freeware" is not "open source".
Look it up.

[lordsmurf]

http://www.digitalfaq.com/guides/video/restore-audio-soundforge.htm
http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/showthread.php/pre-processing-audio-1428.html

SoundForge and/or Goldwave would do it.

Echos can be impossible to remove.

Maybe iZoTope, but it can take forever. Almost like NeatVideo.