Hi Rob,
thanks for chipping in! You're spot on with the cleaning up to dirty it again process.
Knowing the beeb, they probably recorded it with authentic gear of the time anyway to help out in the long run, so I am trying to be realistic with how far I can get bearing in mind what I'm dealing with.
The whole process has brought about some interesting challenges for me though so for that reason alone, I love it!
I have tried leaving the tracks as is and not gating things but to be honest, the conditions they recorded in vary so much that in some clips there sounds like a ground loop or power hum in there, some it's echoey as hell and some are surprisingly good! I actually stuck the gates on and region trimmed just to get some kind of base consistency.
It's a straight to DVD first time effort for all of us really and the guys who wrote it are under no illusions with respect to what the outcome can be... but saying that, I like a challenge and want to have the best crack at it I can.
To give you an idea, of where I'm at, I've put a before and where I'm at right now with it sample down below. Listening to the snippets attached, this orig clip is actually really clean compared to some parts of it... but you get the idea.
Any feedback more than welcome and if you'd like/ interested in a list of what I've done so far, I can do that too
Cheers,
john