Removing distortion - for newbie

[Kevinator]

Howdy. I'm currently taking a peek at DC6 (DEMO). My gut tells me that the software is capable of solving my problem. Alas... I didn't find a mention removing distortion in the FAQ. Although some previous edits from earlier in the year helped.

PROBLEM:

Need advice on filtering out (loud) distortion from audio recording.

I've tried (DC6 6.0.4) several filters with no great luck. I find the terminology for various effects (attack, ratio, attenuation) to be unfamiliar, so I end up playing hit & miss.

SITUATION:

Children's talent show
Recorded from mixing board into camera (DV - transferred to AVI in Premiere)

Unfortunately, without warning me, the volunteer "audio engineer" turned up all microphones.

Consequently, I get heavy distortion covering mostly children's singing, piano and general talking.

I've tried multiple filters... "Continuous Noise | Spectral Subtraction" seemed to take me in the right direction - but, I can't reproduce the steps that led me to near-bliss.

Any advice is welcome... I have Qty. 15 x 2min clips that have this distortion, so I'm eager to buy a working product and perhaps even become a regular contributor to the board.

DESPERATION:

I promised several parents that I would make them a nice little DVD as memorabilia for their little darlings efforts. This was before I found out that the gain was set to "max" on my sound receiver. And, well... you know how modern parents can get. I'm worried for my life if I don't solve this one.

Kind regards,

Kevin.

PS: The sales price on Millenium is dated 1999, but looks like it might be a recent post (?). And, the price makes for an attractive impulse purchase. Is Millenium sufficient (or even appropriate) for home audio/video editing?

[Walter]

Distortion

You might try the clip removal tool

[Dan McDonald]

With the special on this week, I'd go for DC6 - can't beat that deal.

And yes, I think you'll find that DC6 is more than sufficient for this kind of thing, plus with Craig & Rick and everyone helping out, it's a real nice situation.

I second Walter's suggestion also.

Dan

[Kevinator]

Distortion - clip removal

Thanks to both Dan and Walter for the suggestions.

Unfortunately, I simply cannot find "clip removal" per.se. There is a forensic tool "de-clipper" which I suspect you're referring to. But, this is not avail in Millenium (I think).

When I tried DC6 de-clipper, but it errors out (not supported by my sound card). Alas...

I am finding *some* results again with the Continuous Noise Filter (CNF) in DC6... but, noticed (surprisingly) better results in Millenium (!?) which I wouldn't have expected.

There was a very interesting clue embedded in a thread between Roy & Dan from last week (recording concerts). I hadn't really understood the "sample noise" button until I re-read that thread. Then, it became clear... so, I found a blank spot in the recording, clipped that and then sampled the noise. I'm imagining this is how it works.

For any other lurking newbies, Millenium includes settings for "attack" and "release" but it's Attenuation that has the most obvious impact to the noise reduction.

Well... things got immensely better, but my real problem is that I have an absolutely horrendous original. It's fun to try and coax out the voice & piano. But, I'm just not sure I'll succeed. Wife says I can't buy it tonight (during the discount). I will tinker with this during a flight to Denver tomorrow and consider paying retail if I get it working.

Again, I'm enjoying the new learning curve around Audio. It's full of surprises.

Thanks for the input, if I find the exact solution, I'll share it outward and get my wallet out.

OH... as an aside, I have a friend who is a producer of film shorts... He mentioned that his first lesson in filmmaking was to stack-rank competencies... this forum will be delighted to learn that sound engineering was top of his list, significantly more important than perfect video!

1. Script
2. Acting
3. Sound
4. Editing
5. Camera work

Kind regards,
Kevin.

[Dan McDonald]

and TV is just radio with pictures... seriously. You can not watch tv for 15-20 minutes and just listen to the audio, and you won't miss a thing, but try turning the audio off and watching the video only.


Kevinator - for the distortion, you may want to lower the levels a little, then try the spectral subtraction version of the CNF if you have that in the software version you're working with. It seems like I got that to clean up some of the distortion I had on a tape before we had the declipping tool.

Other than that, one other trick I found worked sometimes is to find the most distorted area, zoom way in on it so that basically all you have is a split second of distortion, take a sample with the cnf and then zoom out and use that. Sometimes that has worked for me also.

Dan

[Craig Maier]

One of the tools that sometimes works for me on certain types of distortion is the Dynamics Processor De-Esser. But, there are so many different types of distortion that it is difficult to absolutely say what will or will not work in any given situation.

[Craig Maier]

Try using the CNF in artifact suppression mode. That will often reduce inter-modulation distortion.

Craig