Removing Camera Noise

[Scottness]

Hey Matt in answer to your question which I just saw on another thread I haven't got so far as to removing the camera noise yet - and won't until quite a while yet - but I'll be experimenting with the usual noise reduction software, silencing selections and possible eq'ing too -- I'm also lucky (I hope) in that New Guinea where the film is set has alot of natural insect noise and general wildlife background sounds so I'm hoping that will mask alot of it - particularly the insects singing which might sound vaguely like cameras running anyway - only louder and more insisitent! So I might be able to get away with a bit there

-- anyone want to add what methods they've tried to get rid of this problem (this is apart from prevention - what cures have people tried?)

Scot M

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[mattias]

congratulations... ;-)

a noise gate might be difficult to set up if you have lots of background noise, but it could work really well, especially if the dialogue is clean and at the right level. use a proper expander and not a simple digital gate though. and you have to put the clean atmos back on afterwards of course, so make sure you have plenty of that.

also, filtering out 25 hz and it's harmonics removes a lot of camera noise. use a high q to avoid making your actors sound like robots.

the most important part of noise reduction is to keep the sound that shouldn't be removed though. sweetening your dialogue before as well as after removing the noise will be necessary. as will probably dubbing of new dialogue in some scenes. that's just the way it is, even without camera noise.

/matt

[MovieStuff]

I agree with everything Mattias has posted. I also want to say that looping should not be overlooked as a valid production tool. I won't risk the wrath of Pacini by waxing philosophically about the vitrues of looping, but I will say that it is used all the time in features and the audience is never the wiser - WHEN IT IS DONE CORRECTLY.

That said, location sound only works when it, too, is done correctly.

My only advice beyond what Mattias has posted is don't let your location sound problems dictate the way you edit. The movie has to work visually, first, in my opinion. So if a scene works visually and the sound sucks, use the scene anyway. Even if you got perfect location sound and you found that you needed to change the line up of a cut for more impact, just do it and deal with the audio issues later on. Looping, foley work and sweetening aren't "fixes". They are valid production tools, just like adding artificial light to make a scene look as if it were lit "naturally".

Now, if you ask my production manager, he'll tell you that a movie is about loading and unloading trucks. From his perspective I am sure that is true. From the standpoint of a director, a movie is just one big lie. And the trick is to tell the cheapest lie you can and still have the audience believe it.

Looping and artificial lighting pretty much are equal supporters of that lie.

My two cents...

Roger

[Matt Pacini]

Aaahhh, Scott, I'm almost in tears here!
I knew you would ignore my advice!

O.K., the masking of camera noise works only up to a point, and certinaly, you can't have crickets for your interiors, where camera noise is the biggest problem!
Also, scottness' advice ot keep the stuff in the frequency range of the dialog you need, is great advice, however, the problem is most camera noise is right smack dab in the middle of the frequency ranges that the human voice is!
It's fairly broadband, so there are low, mid and high frequencies going on to ruin the fidelity of your dialog tracks.
This is why I rant so much about this issue.
You're just not going to be able to get rid of all of it, or mask it with other sounds, without it being distracting and noticable.
Also, gating is VERY noticable, but the best way to do it, without it being as noticable, is to use fairly long gate times, so it comes in and out smoothly, instead of sounding like an onn/off switch.
Then, take a clip of a long bit of room tone (I hope you recorded some room tone. If not, you'll have to piece some together by finding the longest bits you can between dialog, and copying that and using it.)
To make room tone loops (so you can have longer clips, without the noticable glitch when one ends, and the other starts), take a clip into your audio editing software (SoundForge is great), copy the clip, paste it to the end of the first clip, then reverse the second one. That way it's a seamless loop. You have to mess with it a while to find a good start/stop loop point, but this works.
Other than that, the bad news is you're going to find you have to roll off quite a bit of high end to get rid of camera noise, and that makes the dialog harder to understand.
The "I'm talking into a pillow" sound.
Bummer. I can sympathise.
This is why I keep telling everyone, don't just shoot and try to fix it later, it's really a huge problem that needs to be dealt with before you jump into your project.
There is NO WAY to completely remove camera noise after the fact, other than ADR'ing, like Roger said.

Matt Pacini

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[mattias]

hey matt & scott,

if you send me an aiff or wav with a piece of "infected" dialogue, i'll see what i can do with it. you see, my brother is a professional sound engineer and music producer, and he did a *great* job on a test roll i shot for the pretty ambitious short i'm editing right now. he has some special software and hardware that helps, but says most of it can be done in protools free for example.

make sure there's some "silence" in the dialogue too, so i can find the right frequencies to remove, and some non infected room tone to fill the gated out parts...

/matt

[Matt Pacini]

Not to sound pessemistic, but I also have been a professional audio engineer, (actually, that's my first love, music), with lots of studio experience and education, and I know how to manipulate sound, and still, my results were quite disappointing.
If the camera noise were in the frequency range above or below the human voice, or was in a fairly narrow band, you could notch it out, but it's not.
I haven't used ProTools to do this however, so it may work, but remember, "camera noise" is not some universal standard.
Different cameras make different kind of noises, and the guys programming ProTools plugins, aren't exactly concerned with what a Super 8 camera sounds like, if you get my drift!
I would guess the plugins are for removing the slight amount of noise a Panavision 35mm or Arri makes, and not the screaming "egg beater in the room" noise of a Super 8 MOS camera!
But I could be wrong (and I hope I am!)

Matt Pacini

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[mattias]

if you click the info button on any of my posts you'll see it: [email protected].

/matt

[Scottness]

Okay first of all thanks guys for your advice - second of all (and I'll freely admit it is to save face!) - we did try and muffle or cover the camera - but sound still got out, which is what is on the takes -- we had someone who was going to build us a barney, but then she moved to Canberra and I didn't organise someone else, so we just ried to cover it with pillows etc - so anyway....Mattias I'll send you a wav - thanks for the offer - what's your email?

Scot M

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[Matt Pacini]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Courier, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by mattias:
if you click the info button on any of my posts you'll see it: [email protected].

/matt<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Huh?
What info button?
I don't get it?????

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[mattias]

??? ok, so it's not really a "button". why don't you just try and click all the icons on the top of any post and see which ones (two of them actually) will deliver. :-)

/matt