Background noise cleanup with Soundforge 8.0 - possible?
 

Hi there,

I have a few video clips I shot in some coffee shops with my digital still camera. There is a lot of background noise/hiss/room-ambient noise in them.

I know that an experienced sound engineer can probably do some sound post production to clean them up and I'm told that Sony Soundforge (or other audio post software can) but... I'm not sure how to do it. It is a low pass filter or noise gate or something?

Can someone here either point me to a tutorial on how to clean up background noise or can someone help me do it if I upload the file.

Each clip is 1 to 3 minutes long.

Thanks!

Ronald

NR-2 works well on constant "din" type noise. ie: HVAC, camera motors, ect.
It does not work on random occurrences like footsteps and coughs.

- Get a good noise print. 100 millisec.s is usually adequate.. of just the amb. sound you wish to attenuate. (room tone)
- Apply a few process' with less reduction opposed to a single with a lot to minimize artifacts.

NR-2 is bit confusing if you are not used to it. If you need exact instructions.. which buttons to push: Search the Sony "Sound Forge" forum.

Sony Creative Software - Forums - Sound Forge Product Family

There are also some quite nice packages like SoundSoap or Izotope RX.

SoundForge 9 is the first version that includes noise reduction.

You might try GoldWave. It has a very liberal try-before-you-buy policy and it's only $50. It's roughly as effective as the NR in SF9.

In Goldwave, just open the file, highlight a "silent" section with noise, and copy it into the clipboard. (Ctrl-C) When you apply noise reduction to the whole clip, choose clipboard.

There used to be two really pretty good "sort of shareware" package. One was Gold Wave, the other was Cool Edit.

Cool Edit was picked up by Adobe as Audition.