Another Dialogue / EQ & NR question.

[leeg1970]

Hi all,

Please excuse my rather basic way of putting this...

I'm going through some serious clothes noise over dialogue that was recorded direct to camera with a badly placed lav.
It is so bad I can picture the person talking whilst scratching the MIC with his nail.
Normally I don't have issues that are this bad (ADR is out of the question) and can get through it without to many troubles. I'm not sure the best approach.
I've already notched out certain frequencies in the dialogue to help reduce some of these noises, gotten rid of rumbles in the background. I've already told my client to NOT expect miracles. They think that by putting in a noisy background it'll improve things. For me, I'd rather spend the next 6 hours doing it right.
A bit of a dilema considering the ruslting is so thick and heavy.
I can't hire and do not have access to a Cedar (not even sure that would help!?). I'm using a friends RX in their studio.

Any ideas please?

Thanks very much in advance.

Lee


LEE G

[sailor]

Putting in a "noisy background" can sometimes mask bad continuity, but in this case that doesn't seem to be your real problem. You'd just be adding another layer of unwanted sound without solving anything.

At some point, you (and the client) will have to concede that you won't be able to magically remove every unwanted sound.....especially if they're just as loud as your dialog. We're not miracle workers. I'm not saying give up, just be realistic. Izotope and CEDAR can remove lots of ambient noise, but they can't erase errant discrete sounds.

Best bet....if you can do some clever editing, you should be able to salvage some of the lines. Look for words or syllables repeated elsewhere in the program and try to cut them in. Pitch shift them, doppler them, whatever you have to do. You may be surprised at how much you can reconstruct.

[leeg1970]

Thanks for taking the time to reply, Sailor.

I am clutching at straws in the hope there is something else I've not tried. I totaly agree about being realistic. Job came in last night budget stretches half a day but I will of done a whole day (xmas present money)
I've done the whole re-building thing before, in this case I don't have the time, besides it's a one take wonder with hardly any repeated words!
The Prod understands this...I just hate seeing recorded sound in such a state.

Thanks again!

Lee.

Originally Posted by sailor

Putting in a "noisy background" can sometimes mask bad continuity, but in this case that doesn't seem to be your real problem. You'd just be adding another layer of unwanted sound without solving anything.

At some point, you (and the client) will have to concede that you won't be able to magically remove every unwanted sound.....especially if they're just as loud as your dialog. We're not miracle workers. I'm not saying give up, just be realistic. Izotope and CEDAR can remove lots of ambient noise, but they can't erase errant discrete sounds.

Best bet....if you can do some clever editing, you should be able to salvage some of the lines. Look for words or syllables repeated elsewhere in the program and try to cut them in. Pitch shift them, doppler them, whatever you have to do. You may be surprised at how much you can reconstruct.

[sailor]

Originally Posted by leeg1970

Thanks for taking the time to reply, Sailor.

I am clutching at straws in the hope there is something else I've not tried. I totaly agree about being realistic. Job came in last night budget stretches half a day but I will of done a whole day (xmas present money)
I've done the whole re-building thing before, in this case I don't have the time, besides it's a one take wonder with hardly any repeated words!
The Prod understands this...I just hate seeing recorded sound in such a state.

Thanks again!

Lee.

Wish I'd been able to be the bearer of better tidings -- maybe someone else here has a trick up the sleeve that I'm not aware of. Good luck with it!

[leeg1970]

If the client is happy then I get paid. I'm not happy but will still pay myself!

Your tidings were accepted as good one's Sailor.

Thanks again and happy holidays to you.

Lee.

Originally Posted by sailor

Wish I'd been able to be the bearer of better tidings -- maybe someone else here has a trick up the sleeve that I'm not aware of. Good luck with it!

[mgoorevich]

Tools you may want to use in these situation:
1. Read the book "Diloge Editing for Motion Pictures" by mr John Purcell!
2. NoNoise Decrackle
3. NoNoise Production Declicking (as I remember. I am not in the studio).
4. iZotope RX

And before you apply any processing (plug-ins), clean manually what you can do. Replace ambience in pouses witht he healthy one. Trim the regions - it's ofetn there.
Replace words, letters or even phrases if you have somewhere earlier or later the same ones.
Work hard. It's gonna hurt.

[leeg1970]

Thanks mgoorevich - WOW. are you taking speed?
I've been bashing at this for a fair while now. I've tried and tested most NR plugs out there and IMO think the RX is the best for the money. As I mentioned before the dia is really BAD- Besides, my initial freak out about how bad the sound is, I've now managed to tame it somewhat.

It's not always about reading. Practice also makes perfect! My misses has bought me Mr Purcell's book for Xmas and I shall be reading it intently...

Please don't get me wrong I appreciate your time but I feel you're going 100 miles per hour without considering what I actually can and can't do. I hope not to offend, but ranting like this makes me wonder if you bothered to read further into this post? Hard work is something I am very familiar with. I don't have the experience of a fair few here but I am no new-comer. As I stated before I can't replace words as there aren't any spare words!
Please read further before you rant in future...

Best.

Lee.

Originally Posted by mgoorevich

Tools you may want to use in these situation:
1. Read the book "Diloge Editing for Motion Pictures" by mr John Purcell!
2. NoNoise Decrackle
3. NoNoise Production Declicking (as I remember. I am not in the studio).
4. iZotope RX

And before you apply any processing (plug-ins), clean manually what you can do. Replace ambience in pouses witht he healthy one. Trim the regions - it's ofetn there.
Replace words, letters or even phrases if you have somewhere earlier or later the same ones.
Work hard. It's gonna hurt.

[soundboy]

You are going to have very limited success with any plug in for mic hits and cloth noise. Editing is really your best attack. There is the pencil tool in PT, and you would be supprised at how much of a word you can cut away and still have it sound ok.

[TVPostSound]

There is the pencil tool in PT, and you would be supprised at how much of a word you can cut away and still have it sound ok.

Exactly!!

Also, Izotope RX spectral repair, does that plus fills in with surrounding audio, one step up from the pencil tool.

[leeg1970]

Thanks, Charles & TV PostSound.

The MIC hits I've managed to reduce so they don't annoy - With EQ fine drawing with pencil then I used Izotopes Spectral repair to take out what was left. It's the dragging sound of cloth on MIC which I found the hardest to reduce. I've managed to bring it down so it's not above the dials now - not perfect by any means but as it's a internal corp video I don't think they give a S***. Not to say of course I don't hence my initial mail.

Thanks again for your time!

Lee

Originally Posted by soundboy

You are going to have very limited success with any plug in for mic hits and cloth noise. Editing is really your best attack. There is the pencil tool in PT, and you would be supprised at how much of a word you can cut away and still have it sound ok.

[Lipflap]

Originally Posted by leeg1970

Thanks, Charles & TV PostSound.

The MIC hits I've managed to reduce so they don't annoy - With EQ fine drawing with pencil then I used Izotopes Spectral repair to take out what was left. It's the dragging sound of cloth on MIC which I found the hardest to reduce. I've managed to bring it down so it's not above the dials now - not perfect by any means but as it's a internal corp video I don't think they give a S***. Not to say of course I don't hence my initial mail.

Thanks again for your time!

Lee

Quickie options for the lav mic noise might include a de-crackler/de-clicker (such as X-Click or X-Crackle, or the Izotope equivalent), combined with a de-esser afterward. Multiple gentle passes usually outshine super-agressive one pass solutions. These tools can all prove to be either ineffective or disastrous -or both, but you know the deal about desperate people and desperate things.

Good luck,

[leeg1970]

Thanks John!

I've been doing a 4 minute edit for 6 hours today, slowly taking all the intrusive noises away. I'm pretty happy with all the passes I've made.

Thanks for the heads up using the a de-esser.

Happy Holidays to you.

Lee.

P:S Looking forward to getting my head stuck into your book on Xmas day. Not sure the misses will be happy though thumbsup

Originally Posted by Lipflap

Quickie options for the lav mic noise might include a de-crackler/de-clicker (such as X-Click or X-Crackle, or the Izotope equivalent), combined with a de-esser afterward. Multiple gentle passes usually outshine super-agressive one pass solutions. These tools can all prove to be either ineffective or disastrous -or both, but you know the deal about desperate people and desperate things.

Good luck,

[philper]

It may seem obvious, but are there alt. takes that you can get clean(er) words or syllables from? This isn't the sort of audio problem that plugins have much traction with.

Philip Perkins

[mgoorevich]

Originally Posted by leeg1970

Hard work is something I am very familiar with. I don't have the experience of a fair few here but I am no new-comer. As I stated before I can't replace words as there aren't any spare words!
Please read further before you rant in future...

Okay sorry Lee. I just would like to explain my self better. I just re-read what I wrote and I think you got me wrong a bit.
I recommended this book because I do guggest this book as a GOOD source for super experience professional as well as for beginer. And this is my honest opinion.
Regarding "work hard, it's gonna hurt" - my point was "I feel your pain".

I want to recommend one more thing, though you should be very careful with it. You can shorten words by cutting some letters. If there is a strong click on "S" in the middle, try to make it shorter by deleting a problematic noise. E.G if an charachter say "Yesss" and on the 2-nd s there is a harsh click, cut it out, so it will sound like "Yess". Or goood as good e.t.c.
Now, it might be very tricky and you are about to walk on the edge.
From one side you improving your audio and thats good. But you must be careful NOT to: 1 - go out of synch. 2 - lose natural pronunciation 3 - make it less artistic and dramatic.
As it was mentioned before, you may use also time stratch and pitch shifts (maybe Vocalign sometimes). You may use reverb for deleting spikes in the end of the words and re-create new tails with it (Altiverb is good).
iZotope RX spectral repair may recreate missed spaces , then try gentle reverb for more natural results.
Also try to lower the volume in the places "you-just cannot fix". Sometimes it can make a trick. The hard thing is to still let it have intellegebility.
But again, it's a small steps way and you should re-check youself all the time.
Also sometimes it's preferable to leave it distorted rather over processed.
This is my opinion again.
Good luck! And sorry for my English.

[leeg1970]

Sadly it was a one take wonder, typical - no money we did it ourselves... When will these people learn to let people with the appropriate knowledge do the job in hand! ?

It's true in this situation I'll never be able to get the dials perfect, it's one of those take the money and run (although that's not what I feel about the whole scenario)

Thanks,

Lee.

Originally Posted by philper

It may seem obvious, but are there alt. takes that you can get clean(er) words or syllables from? This isn't the sort of audio problem that plugins have much traction with.

Philip Perkins

[leeg1970]

No problem, mgoorevich, thanks for taking the time again to explain

I am totaly excited to be getting this (among other) book this week! I hear what you're saying about it being a valuable tool. I already own many boks that I use either for reference or a reminder.

For time and pitch I use Serato's PNT Pro, which IMO is a god send! I've done a lot of ADR and am used to lip reading (my ears work fine btw :D ) working out timings etc... Thanks for the information though it's always nice to hear things that remind us.
Altiverb is great - I used it years ago in it's infancy. Since then I've pretty much been using TL Space (perhaps that'll change again one day budget allowing).

After working through all my passes I made today I reverted back to some of the original distorted parts as the character had goen slightly, just sounded thin.

The client should be happy considering the pre-student recording techniques they adopted. (not that I'm blaming them of course for me not making it 100%)

Cheers!

Lee.


LEE G

Originally Posted by mgoorevich

Okay sorry Lee. I just would like to explain my self better. I just re-read what I wrote and I think you got me wrong a bit.

I recommended this book because I do guggest this book as a GOOD source for super experience professional as well as for beginer. And this is my honest opinion.
Regarding "work hard, it's gonna hurt" - my point was "I feel your pain".

I want to recommend one more thing, though you should be very careful with it. You can shorten words by cutting some letters. If there is a strong click on "S" in the middle, try to make it shorter by deleting a problematic noise. E.G if an charachter say "Yesss" and on the 2-nd s there is a harsh click, cut it out, so it will sound like "Yess". Or goood as good e.t.c.
Now, it might be very tricky and you are about to walk on the edge.
From one side you improving your audio and thats good. But you must be careful NOT to: 1 - go out of synch. 2 - lose natural pronunciation 3 - make it less artistic and dramatic.
As it was mentioned before, you may use also time stratch and pitch shifts (maybe Vocalign sometimes). You may use reverb for deleting spikes in the end of the words and re-create new tails with it (Altiverb is good).
iZotope RX spectral repair may recreate missed spaces , then try gentle reverb for more natural results.
But again, it's a small steps way and you should re-check youself all the time.
Also sometimes it's preferable to leave it distorted rather over processed.
This is my opinion again.
Good luck! And sorry for my English.

[Jfriah]

Originally Posted by soundboy

You are going to have very limited success with any plug in for mic hits and cloth noise. Editing is really your best attack. There is the pencil tool in PT, and you would be supprised at how much of a word you can cut away and still have it sound ok.

I just had to fix about 6 hits (no ADR no ALTs) in a 20 minute show and my pencil tool got a good workout again.

A fave trick I like to do when I can't draw out a few samples is to cut at the waveform crossover point on either side of the offending glitch/sound and then cut a portion of the word(s) before or after, slide it to fill that gap and time-stretch to fit. Sometimes you can get good results on small sections.

Good luck! I feel your pain!

Jeff

[D'Animation]

I can't add any other suggestions as they have all been said above but I did a 52 part animated series (ie. VO booth, nice mics, should be pretty perfect etc)....not a hope - ended up chopping clicks and cloth rubs from all over the dialog. I feel your pain!!
Good luck with it
D