Removing background music in a video

[muffinman123]

Say in a movie segment where music is playing while dialogs/sound effects are taking place

The music is modern classical, and it is not played back at normal volume throughout (not loud in some parts but louder in other parts.)

How should I edit the audio so that I can keep just the dialogs and sound effects?

If I could find the original music file, can I filter out the music and just have the vocals/sound effects remain? I recall youtube was able to filter out background music of a gameplay video, but my source is anime, so the music volume is not uniform like game videos are.

[redwudz]

Depends on the format of the video. If it's multichannel surround sound, you may be able to edit out the music if it's a separate channel.

If it's just two channel stereo, not to likely to be able to remove just the music.

But you can try an audio editor like Audacity and you may be able to filter it, or if it's multichannel, remove that channel.

[smrpix]

Theoretically you could lay a phase-reversed version of the music onto another track and cancel out the original music -- but there are so many other sounds, volume differences, possible edits, that it's very unlikely to succeed. Audacity is a good free audio editor.

[muffinman123]

So... what methods should I try in Audacity? I know that Audacity doesn't just do it with a single click like youtube. How do I do it manually in Audacity?

If it's just two channel stereo, not to likely to be able to remove just the music.

It is just 2 channel stereo by the way, so I expect not to get perfect result. How should I approach to minimize the background music?

[hech54]

Asked and answered(the same way) hundreds of times here, download some audio software and start filtering/equalizing. That's it.

[redwudz]

You can do a internet search for ' remove unwanted audio with audacity free ' and you should get some links to tutorials on removing unwanted audio.
Unfortunately, if the unwanted audio is in the same or similar frequency ranges as the wanted audio, near impossible to remove without damaging the wanted audio.

Audacity is easy to use. You might try the high and low pass filters and filter out audio above and below the voice frequencies. But it may end up sounding like bad telephone audio.
I would suggest you work with a copy of the original audio. And Audacity does have a 'Revert' selection if you mess up the filtering. Then you can just start over. Give it a try.

[muffinman123]

ugh, why can youtube do it so much more efficiently than me?

[smrpix]

ugh, why can youtube do it so much more efficiently than me?

Either because it's a separate track to begin with, or because it's much simpler digital music. Post a link if you want a response to a specific example.

[muffinman123]

This is the video I am looking at
from 19:45 to 20:30
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ca5S9MQc6lc&t=19m45s

This is the music I am trying to remove
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mO7FDs_q_og

[hech54]

She'll do it in seconds.

[El Heggunte]

.....

The music is modern classical

Nope, that's not 'modern classical', unless you love to be fooled by misnomers,
such as "dark matter"

This is the music I am trying to remove
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mO7FDs_q_og

[hech54]

How long do you think it will be until the OP comes back and says he accomplished it perfectly and easily....but will not elaborate? One week.....two weeks...a few days?

[dphirschler]

Assuming the music is stereo and the voice is centered, you should be able to:

1) invert the L channel and add it to the right channel (thus cancelling out anything common on the two channels, which presumably is the voice).
2) take the the resulting channel from step 1 and invert it and apply it to the original L channel and R channels independently.

Theoretically, it should remove the music if the voice is in the center. But I doubt it will be that easy.

Darryl