Audio Restoration

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CalmBiker

Roll on summer...
Hi all,

I'm using Sony Movie Studio 12 (Platinum Suite) for editing. On the web site it mentions the "Audio Restoration Plug-In". Does anyone know where this is? I can't seem to find it.

CB
 
What do you want to do with that plugin?
It seems like you're about to use a plugin unsuitable for the work.
"Audio restoration" is a pretty generic name for a plugin, it can be just a declicker.
You may find those listed as DirectX plugins if it was installed in your video suite.
 
I'm pretty new to all this stuff. Basically I get clicking in my audio. I'm trying to reduce this with various audio tests but if there's anything Movie Studio can do to help later I'd like to do it.
 
Clicking can mean your audio is clipping. Those are different terms that explain 2 different audio artifacts.
You can try to see what your audio looks like in any audio editor and pinpoint your problem.
Clipping is when the audio signal is of a too high amplitude and goes beyond the boundaries of your recording hardware. It looks like this, the signal normally is round and never touches the top or bottom of the scope view, here the signal goes beyond and is "clipped", the round top or bottom gets squared.
p18p.png


To fix clipped audio you would normally try to lower the volume in software, you'll end up with quieter audio but the clipping artifact is still there and will sound bad, it's like when you "burn" a picture, there's no way of getting the picture back, with audio is the same, you should try to fix it when recording by lowering the volume, gain or sensitivity of your microphone.
Now this is clicking, a rogue, short and high amplitude signal got captured by your microphone.
5f0k.png

It's easier to fix because a click is just a burst of high level signal that normally doesn't last too much, just a couple milliseconds. This can be fixed in software by lowering the volume or muting the audio part where the click happened, you can also try to "paint" by hand the waveform to remove the click or use a plugin to automatically remove it if it happens a lot on your audio.

You can upload a sample of bad audio to see exactly what your problem is and what you can do about it.
 
Ah, yes. Mine is the first. I've got the Drift HD 1080 and I've set the audio to 1. Setting it to zero seems to make it too quiet; I can increase the volume in editing but then it still seems clicky - perhaps that's the type of click that's easier to fix. I actually did a test of most settings and the audio's not bad that I have now but I'd still like to improve it if I can.

The raw test footage is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rh6rcqHrwAA. If anyone has the time to take a look and give any feedback I'd appreciate it.

Thanks :-)
 
It can be a bit of a faff but I process my audio track separately in a Audacity (free audio editor) to remove clipping then bring it back into Final Cut Pro and resync with the video. The workflow I use is based on what's recommended in Audacity's knowledge base:
  1. Amplify entire track by -10db (reduces volume) to allow headroom for clip fixing
  2. Highlight the part of the waveform that is clipped and apply Clip Fix from the effects menu.
Because the amplitude has been reduced, I use the Compressor tool to bring the peaks down to a reasonable level and bring the gain back up to 0db. Learning how to use the compressor is a bit of trial and error and I'm just getting to grips with it now.

The other option is that you record at "zero" on your Drift and use the Normalise effect in Audacity or you video editing program to bring the voice track back to reference level.

The first screenshot is the raw audio track from my Zoom H1 connected to a lav mic. (Red lines highlight where clipping is occurring)

Screen shot 2014-01-01 at 14.40.03.png


The final processed audio track (no red lines means no clipping), the peaks approaching 0db are while I'm talking. The background noise of the engine sits at around -10db. The aim is to get your voice waveforms approaching 0db to make sure it doesn't sound quiet.

Screen shot 2014-01-01 at 14.37.33.png


Hope that helps, I'm by no means an expert, but I've learnt most of this from watching podcasting audio tutorials on YouTube since a motovlog is pretty much a podcast but just on two wheels!
 
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