Hi Guys,

I need your help. I've agreed to help a local media outfit
digitize and post-produce their lectures/seminars to broad-
cast quality. Unfortunately, the majority of the events
have been filmed on miniDV and, you've guessed it, they've
been recorded using the camera's microphone.

The signal-to-noise ratio is outstandingly bad.

At their studios, I'm editing on Final Cut Pro and have
access to Pro Tools; there's hardly any outboard, but
there are small Behringer desks laying around.

At home, for hiss removal, I would normally use Audition,
but it's so bad in the case, that it's proving utterly
ineffectual.

Logic dictates we preamp the audio through the desk
and cut the high frequencies before it reaches the
hard-drive, but I'm wondering: what would a more
affluent post-production house use/start with?
Alternatively, any Audition/CEP tips would be
appreciated, or even decent FCP plugin suggestions.

I met Peter Howell (BBC Radiophonic Workshop) today,
and he suggested we pay the humble £20 for Amadeus II,
but I don't think software is the answer. My client's
budget isn't much, but this is a big job, so they would
probably splash out on a decent lump of outboard if I
convinced them it was worth it.

Thanks for reading.

Cheers,
D.

Edited by Dev D (02/09/04 01:37 AM)

I'm no expert, but can't you take a sound print of the hiss alone. And then eliminate it from the rest of the recording?

That would be My First port of call as well.,..

Seriously, I'd be looking to software rather than single ended hardware , for any kind of decent performance / cost ratio.....

(Single ended Noise reduction is any process that did not involve special encoding during recording...... Double ended DOES involve this, Such as All DBX and Dolby Systems on analogue cassette recorders.... )

In Older systems (OS9), I used to use Prosniq's Sonic Worx , TC's Spark or Bias Peak for this sort of job.

I haven't had to do it yet in OS X....

But Peak 4 would probably be a good place to start looking....

OR the TC restoration suite if they have a powercore card in a Computer somewhere.

Ultimately , CEDAR is the answer... but LOTS of money....

Max

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if you don't know who i am, i aint gonna tell you.

Cool Edit has some great noise reducing plugins on it if you've got a small section of isolated noise, very worth while, tho PC only iirc...

mate,

if you have got access to a pro tools system, then the only choice (in my opinion) is the restoration bundle from waves. You can run it for 14 days in demo mode and it is superb. I have used it recently to clear up the hiss on a childhood cassette recording. It let's you sample the noise and then you can set a threshold parameter for it to kick in - very effective indeed.

hope that helps

raygun is very good for hiss removal dunno how much it is though. one way just a guess would be to take a snippet from the recording of hiss put it to another track in a sequencer and invert the phase of it, this is roughly how the plugins do it i think. give it a try but certainly if you are wanting a bit of kit from your job then try get what you can from it.

Raygun is made by Arboretum, but unfortunately, after I
posted my original message, I did some digging around,
found out that CEDAR are state-of-the-art, but also I
came across Arboretum, but whose download links don't work.

Our hiss really is THAT bad, though, so it looks like
nothing less than CEDAR's say, DNS 1000 box will do.
Zeusknows how much it's going to cost. I have downloaded
the Waves Ltd stuff though. Also, people from the other
(General) forum I posted this at offered some great advice
(i.e. Virtos Audio) also.

I haven't installed anything yet, so we hope and pray...

Cheers,
D.

Quote:

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Zeusknows how much it's going to cost

---

Have you considered hiring the equipment for a day or two?

There are a number of ad's in SOS from rental companies.

C

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Dual 2Ghz G5 2.5GB RAM, Logic Pro 7.2, Logic Control, MOTU 828mkII Drumkit from Hell C&V and Superior, EW QLSO Gold, Zebra and Cameleon, Melodyne Uno, Atmosphere, Max/MSP