Welcome to another BizVid Communications video tutorial.  Today I’m going to show you how to remove background noise like generators, hums or room noise from your video audio track.  The video clip I have selected to use today was recorded with my personal camcorder.  The subject is my granddaughter who is sitting a few feet away but, because of the ineffective microphone pick –up of the camcorder; the sound has a lot of background noise.  Maybe you can hear it.  If not, you will visually see it in just a few moments.  I have blurred the face of my granddaughter to protect her innocence.  By the way, you can learn how to blur a face by watching this tutorial on the subject.

For this tutorial, you need to have Adobe Audition.  That’s the software we are going to use to accomplish our mission.  So let’s begin.  The first item of business is to position your mouse on the audio track you want to repair then right click.  Next, in the drop down menu position your mouse on “Edit in Adobe Audition” and click.  This will launch Audition and this is where you will do your work.

Now, as you can see, the audio track that was imported is in stereo.  In another tutorial, I’ll show you how to convert a stereo voice track to mono then re-import it back into your video timeline…but for now, we’ll clean up this stereo track.  Okay let me play this track and listen very carefully to hear the background noise.  This noise can be problematic especially if you want to increase the volume in parts of your audio track.  That’s because, if you don’t remove the background noise it will increase in volume along with the voice….like this.  So let’s remove it.

The first thing to do is find a section of the audio track with no voice, just the noise.  Position your mouse at one point then click and drag it to another point.  Doing this isolates only the sound frequencies that you want to eliminate.  Look here on the VU meter, you can see it clearly. Next, position your mouse on the word “Effects” on the menu bar and click.  Then, scroll to “Noise Reduction / Restoration” and then over to “Capture Noise Point” and click.  You have now told Adobe Audition that this is the frequency you want removed from the audio track.

Now, since you want that noise removed from the entire track, on a PC select “Control A” to select the entire track.  Next, position your mouse on “Effects” then down to “Noise Reduction / Restoration” but this time position your mouse on “Noise Reduction (Process).”  This is the selection that will take the noise out of your track based upon the “Noise Capture” selection that you made earlier.  When I click a new screen will appear and this screen will allow you to control the degree at which the noise will be removed.  If, for example, some of the frequency you were removing fell within the range of a voice frequency, you can adjust the reduction of the background noise to the point where it will not affect the voice.  But, since our noise does not fall within voice frequency range, I am going to put both to 100% then click “Apply.”  Look at the voice track now.  It is clean and I can go adjust levels without worry of increased background noise. 

Next, click “file” then “save” and close the program.  Your clean audio track was automatically put back  into your video timeline and you are good to go.   Some sounds are more difficult than others to clean up but this will give you a good start on the process.  We have more tutorials on our BizVid Communicaitons YouTube channel or on our blog at BizVidCommunications.com/blog.  Thanks for joining me.