Hoopoe on the oboe

[Brendan Marnell]

On the plains of Spain ... a summer migrant from Africa ... looking for a mate.

I'm looking for a way to eliminate the noise of XM2 (in post with PremierePro?) which seems much louder when I'm shooting from inside a car.
Is it possible to isolate the pitch at which a particular level of sound is recorded?

[Grant Sherman]

I'd love to see one of these birds.

I'll have a play with the sound - see what I can come-up with. Can you post a copy of the original sound track?

[Brendan Marnell]

Hoopoe is most handsome when he opens the crest on his head into a fan that matches the colours on his wings ... rarely does it when calling.

If I can find an unspoilt recording of his voice from any clip I could delete the present track and dub the voice to synchronise with his actions but it would be much neater if there was some way of deleting the sound of the cam motor without wiping the rest of the track ... here's the unedited soundtrack ... I would be delighted if you can find a way of selectively deleting certain pitch levels and leaving others ... and no matter how it turns out thank you Grant for offering to try.

[Grant Sherman]

Hi Brendan,

Here's my best effort. I managed to remove most of the camera noise. It's left the song sounding a bit hollow - see what you think.

[Brendan Marnell]

You should have been a surgeon Grant.

That's a remarkable piece of editing.
I'm trying to practice using the pen tool with keyframes in Premiere pro 1.5 to eliminate the intros & exits but I am amazed at how much extraneous noise you have eliminated. There is a change in the voice quality but that may not be the end of it yet.

What editing tools did you use?

[Grant Sherman]

I used Sony Vegas. It helped that the Hoopoe's song is like an oboe - there's just a couple of frequencies.

The main frequency is around 500-600Hz. I used the Equaliser to boost this frequency and cut any higher or lower frequencies. I then rendered this as a .wav file

I opened the new file and used the Equaliser again to boost 500Hz by 15dB and 1000Hz by 7.5dB. These to processes increased the signal to noise ratio of your recording. Then I used a noise gate - adjusting the threshold level to remove most of the noise.

This still left a couple of clicks on the track. These were just cut out.


I've just been searching for Hoopoe sonograms to see what they should sound like. I'll have another go at this later.

Grant

[Brendan Marnell]

Thank you for the inspiration, Grant. There's nothing like a gentle kick in the arse to get me going!

I eventually found "noise reduction" in Adobe Audition and here's what I should have posted here the first day ...

[Grant Sherman]

Good fun this audio editing. I've had another go. I've also included a sonogram made with SeaWave

http://www.nauta-rcs.it/SEA/seawave_index.html

[Brendan Marnell]

all we need now is a nasal voiceover and a drum synthesizer and we'll be ready to go public, alright? ... is 50/50 okay with you or should we line up a chirpy backing group first ... some applicants have sent in their tapes already. Here are a few samples to keep you editing -

[Grant Sherman]

50/50 is fine. We can pay the backing group with peanuts.

[Brendan Marnell]

What an idea, I thought to myself; only a bird-lover like me would think of peanuts ... and then this arrived ... just in case the message doesn't seem as urgent as it is I'll summarise it here & now ...

firstly, it's himself on the line, Cetti's Warbler; he never shows up unless it's heavy stuff. He says, for a start, it's my fault for lowering the tone of proceedings by referring to the tape sample as "chirpy" but when you offered peanuts the other songsters promptly appointed him to advise both of us that "Songbirds do not eat peanuts, understood!?" Either we line up an endless exotic menu of insects and seeds or we can, more or less, call the crows ... here's the original ...

[Dale Guthormsen]

Brendan/Grant,

First, what a totally cool bird!!! thanks for sharing brenden!!

I have heard that Vegas is outstanding with its Audio tools. Grant shows us how useful these tools can be!!!

I to use adobe 1.5 and Audition they have numerous tools but for the most part I only use a handful. I think most people do not know how to optimize the audio software they have. Probably from not really having the time to do the necessary exploration and expirmentation.

Now here is a challange. today i shot some footage in 70 to 90 km/h winds and gusts. I got down low to the ground, turned my audio down to minimum (using my gl/xm 2) and the wind noise is totally out of hand. obviously I do not think I can use any of the audio even though I could hear birds making all kinds of sounds.

In the evening we had an invading sky, winds still bad I shot footage of the sky and i could hear Partridge calling in the distance. On the camera all you hear is noise. to windy even for a foamy and a muff.

[Grant Sherman]

These software tools are useful but no substitute for a good recording. Here's a wren recorded with a Sennheiser ME67 onto a Canon XL2. No audio editing. I'm going to miss my XL2 this month.

[Brendan Marnell]

Delightful songster, Grant. Were they gulls or kittiwakes in the background?

I wish, like many since 1988 when Richard Ranft of the British Library made this uniquely classical recording of the the Musician Wren in Amacayacu, Colombia, that there was a video clip to go with it ...

mms://audio.bl.uk/media/wren01.wma

I'm half-seriously plotting to go out there and die in my wellies trying to track this little bird in vast Amazonas ...

[Dale Guthormsen]

Grant,

My xl2 is supposed to be back late next week, its been three already and was supposed to be rushed, yea right. supposedly waiting for a part, an easy excuse. I really miss it.

that was terrific audio, nice to see there was no noticable wind!!

Curiously, what kind of mic do you think the xl comes with?? I have a rode shotgun and use it often but i am thinking of going with the Sen. modular mic. any opinions??