Remove Unwanted Noise from Clips in Apple Soundtrack Pro 2

Great article, explains the process clearly.

Using this method I've successfully improved a number of soundtracks.

Sometimes though the background or foreground is such that trying to remove the noise compromises what's left too much - it can end up sounding like its being played down a telephone inside a metal bucket!

One trick to extend the range of the tool is to keep the reduction slider to no more than 70%, which seems to retain the integrity of the signal, then repeat the process. Oh, and normalize first so you have the maximum amount of data to play with.

Lots of very careful messing about with compression, expansion and gates can also help. Sometimes though it sounds so messed about with, I've gone back to using the original and putting some music on!

Posted by Phil Eastabrook on Thursday, July 3, 2008 @ 04:54 AM

Great article, but I wish I could hear this example clip. You would think in an audio tutorial, there would be some audio.

Thanks.

Posted by J. M. Hill on Thursday, July 3, 2008 @ 12:05 PM

Dear Mr. Watson,

Thanks for your helpful how to on Soundtrack Pro Noise Reduction. This has been an issue that has dogged me with FCP's relatively weak audio capacities, and after I followed your article step by step and I was impressed by the kind of results SountrackPro could yield. I do have one big problem...

I currently have an interview that has some pretty rough ambient noise married to the main track. It was recorded on 720p/24pN on the VX, so it's native 23.98.
The interview is long (80 minutes), and the source media files as broken up by the HVX on import to FCP are long as well (the shortest is about 25 minutes),

The interview is logged into subclips with detailed markers.

From applying noise reduction to the smallest of the source media files to a selection of subclips (ranging from 8-10 minutes each) when back in FCP after sending from Sountrack on playback the picture drifts out of sync, progressively worse. I am playing back from the exact same region in the FCP timeline from which I sent the media to soundtrack, and indeed the clip data for the affected clip in the timeline correctly reads as it being (sent) and contains the correct level of noise reduction.

The picture does not drift from the affected file in the Soundtrack timeline, so I'm guessing there is a preference in Soundtrack or an export setting i can use to correct this issue in fcp? I am a total novice on Sundtrack, so apologies if the answer is obvious.

The short term solution we thought of applying was to only effect selects from that interview once they're in the rough cut & final edit, but that's not practical in our situation. This is for a feature length doc, so as we make many changes, re-edits & multiple versions, it's not practical to do a clean up on our selects each time we have to output for a screening. I'd rather affect the entire interview and pull my edits from the entire thing with noise reduction.

Any thoughts?


Many Thanks in Advance,
Francisco Bello
Ropa Vieja Films, LLC
914.649.5447
francisco@rv-films.com
www.rv-films.com

Posted by Francisco Bello on Tuesday, July 29, 2008 @ 01:27 PM

The noise print works fine for me but I can't get the Frequency Selection Tool to work. In Soundbooth, once you select a frequency range in Spectrum View, you can listen to just that range, move it around until you have the right segment, then you can take the volume way down. In Soundtrack Pro I can't figure out how to listen to the segment selected by the Frequency Selection Tool so as to find the exact area I want to change. And even if I could, I don't see any way to play with the volume setting for the selection. All you can do is delete it, which will cause other problems. Am I missing something obvious here?

All help very much appreciated!
johntowsen@gmail.com

Posted by John Towsen on Monday, March 30, 2009 @ 07:47 PM