audio in post
 

does anyone know if intermitent noise from a lav mic ( movement of clothing against cord or mic) can be reduced in post. If so, is there a software program for it or should it be sent out to a professional sound production company? Thanks.

If the noise is in between words you should be able to reduce the noise by grabbing a sample of it and then running the audio thru a Noise Reduction Program.
If its behind some of the actual voices you will have a much tougher time getting the noise out but you might be able to reduce it some by using the NR program.

Sony Noise Reduction, Audition are 2 that come to mind also Magix Audio Editior and possibly Audacity.

Don

You could just go in and remove it manually - if it is intermittant, noise removal probably won't work. EQ might help reduce the noise a bit. Personally I would remove it manually and put some second track over the parts you removed or attenuated to hide the sudden drop out of audio.

As Don said, if you can grab a sample of it from between words you can use that as a filter for the entire file. It might not be perfect, and depending upon the voice qualities (how close it matches the "noise") it might work fine.

Shareware www.goldwave.com does this nicely. i keep it on my system for that very reason. It is a fully functional version but you only get som many mouse clicks before you have to restart. It's a small program, easy download and you can try it free.

I have used Audacity for that as well, but find it's a bit more cumbersome.

FCP / Soundtrack Pro
 

..and if you're using Final Cut Studio on a Mac, you may find Soundtrack Pro does the trick. If the noise is consistent in 'shape' then there's a function in Soundtrack Pro which subtracts the sound print of the noise, but it requires that you can get a clean sample of the noise to start with - in between words for example..
Rgds, Ross.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I've had that problem recently also.
The problem can be somewhat solved if you had a lapel mic on one channle and the camera mic on the other.

There is a tedious fix, but if the clothing "rustle" carries over on top of the speaking, you have a problem. Using a program like PEAK or similar, you can go through the entire piece and delete audio in between words. I do this for Voice over sessions. I remove any breathes and noise to clean up the files. Problem is you need to be aware of the waveform and careful not to delete any syllables. A mixture of silencing / and fading in/out at the end of words can soften the transitions.

You'll want to sample some "room tone" to loop behind the voice track so that the listener doesn't notice the changes. Will there be music behind your video? That helps. Room tone is where you record a minute or so of the room noise before or after the video take. This is what you use for the background loop. If you didn't do that, see if you have room tone from the camera mic.
Remember- video or audio is a "garbage in-garbage out" process.

J Patnaude