distorted audio on DV concert(too close to amps)-how to fix?

[Celestial]

I recently videotaped a concert using a Sony DV camera. For some of the songs, I stood close to the amps, and when there's singing, it sounds "explosive" (sorry, newbie, dunno what to call it... sounds like when you turn the volume up on crappy speakers that can't handle the wattage and you get that crappy distorted sound...). I was wondering how I can fix this somehow when encoding and authoring to DVD. I'm using Premiere 6.5 w/ it's MPEG encoder, so maybe there's some Premiere filter I could use to take off some of that distortion. I'm not sure what audio level I would have to play around with and tweak; I just want to get rid of some of that distortion. If anyone can suggest any methods and/or audio tools to use, it would be much appreciated.

Thanks

[Thorn]

I don't really know how to do it... but since most video encoding programs focus heavily on video, you'll want to use something audio-specific and process the audio separately. Sound Forge is one of the big names in audio processing, but I'm sure there are other good ones (nothing low-end will do you much good). I think audio is harder to clean up than video, so there will be a limit to how much you can improve the audio -- you can easily lower the volume, but cleaning up the distortion may be impossible.

[BJ_M]

u can use wavelab - or sound forge .. wavelab is a little better at that job .. and start applying some compression .. use various preset settings . but 6:1 @ -10 and DO NOT enable auto levels would be a good start ..

then use eq and set -18dB over 1/2 octive centered at 40Hz or completly roll off below 80Hz at a steep filter ..

take a look at your wave form (blow it up some ) see the tops of the waves are all squared off... you will need to make those rounded is the simplest explanation ..

you can apply smoothing - going one direction in smoothing enhances high end -- you want to go the other direction ..


always enable undo for each step and if you dont like it you can go back

sound forge 6 is really good as it is non destructive untill you save .. which means you could change 100 things and in 1 click go back to source ..

[BJ_M]

btw -- you can load the whole video into sound forge 6 .. and it will display video and audio ...

might be easier for you to use

[Celestial]

Thanks ya'll for the tips, I'll give those a shot.

[Gargantuan]

btw -- you can load the whole video into sound forge 6 .. and it will display video and audio ...

might be easier for you to use

So does this mean that you can convert the capture(with another app), then use sound forge to play the video and edit the sound at the same time? And you would be able to save the video with the fixed sound?

Or would you have to save the sound as a wav then edit the sound in sound forge?

Sorry!(newbie)

[BJ_M]

with sound forge you can load both mpeg 1 and 2 (if you have installed the mainconcept plug in on any one of the SoFo apllications) and a avi file. you can watch the video (small frame but ok ) as your editing the audio -- but you cant edit the video ..

[Gargantuan]

Cool Thanks, BJ_M!!

I just videotaped a concert also, and I was right up front with the speakers blasting away. The sound is terrible!! But I have a feeling that Sound Forge will be able to fix it. Thanks again for your input!!