Wind Noise Reduction

[morrisonvp]

I'm using PPCS3 for a project and have a video interview piece that was shot outside. The subject was wearing a lav mic with a windscreen on it, but there is still a considerable amount of wind noise coming through. Can anyone suggest a way to at least reduce the wind noise without reducing the vocal quality too badly? I have the entire CS3 suite, so Soundbooth is also available to me.

Thank you in advance for your help.
-Ken

[Jim_Simon]

Wind typically is bass heavy. Most voices are more midrange slanted. Try reducing the bass frequencies.

[Bill_Seper]

I haven't used Soundbooth Ken, so I don't know if it has any NR features with it. Audition has some very good noise reduction tools though. There are NR plugins you can buy that may work well too, but I'm not sure of their prices.

If you get stuck, and it's a short file (like ten minutes or so) you're welcome to send it to me, and hit it with some NR for you. I do a lot more audio work than video actually.

If you want to try what Jim said, I would use a narrow band parametric EQ with a sweepable Q, lower it way down to about -20db, and just sweep the EQ across the frequncy spectrum until you hit the sweet spot. Once you find it bring the db back up until you find a place where it still sounds good but has also taken out much of the noise. It's not as good as using NR, but sometimes that works quite well.

[Rolando Arroyo]

Bill !

Thanks mate, you solved a big problem i have with some footage i need to edit for tomorrow

Big hug and thanks again

[pjl321]

Hi there Bill, or anyone else that could help,

I too have a wind problem!

I'm using CS6 Master Collection, pretty new to everything so please go easy.

I have a fair bit of open air footage with a huge amount of wind noise. I have played with the Noise Reduction effect in Audition (as there doesn't seem to be Soundbooth any longer?) but i have literally 'played', i mean i don't really know what i am doing. It doesn't seem to reduce the wind noise more just all noises, which obviously isn't that helpful.

Are you able to give me any help, point me in the direction of a tutorial, or better yet if you know a program / plug in that really gets to grips with wind noise?

It seems that most of the time people are wanting to use noise reduction to get rid of a constant, set noise like a hiss but wind noise is totally different as it’s a very dynamic noise, constantly changing so you can’t 'sample' a section as the next section might sound different but is still just as unwanted.

Thanks for any help anyone can offer.

[Steven L. Gotz]

Basically, since you can't rotoscope audio, you do the equivalent. You erase the noise a little bit at a time in Audion using the selection tools or healing brush in the spectral display. Tedious? Yes. Does it work? Yes.

[_raymond_setzer_]

The noise reduction tool in Soundbooth will do an ok job. Iv'e found
however that if the wind is light, it removes fairly well, but if you
have to remove some heavy whooshing sounds, you can get them out, but
the final output will be just a tad on the metallic side.

[Bill_Seper]

Also, rather than make one heavy pass with NR, sometimes it works better to make two light passes.

[morrisonvp]

Thanks everyone for your responses. I'll give them a try.
-Ken

[andyskullshoes]

Jim_Simon is right wind noise comes in boomy and muddy, but reducing only the frequencies involved with Equalisation isn't enough. The dynamics (loud and quiet) and boominess of the wind can be the most distracting part. You can use multi-band compression to tame and control the dynamics and then Equalisation to tame the frequencies and it can be very effective. This article was pretty useful in helping with wind noise 5-pro-tips-to-reducing-wind-noise