How to get rid of WIND/AMBIENT NOISE

[benny37]

I wasn't sure which sub forum this was best suited to..

Anyway, I'm curious what would be the exact method to take a video of myself talking in a beautiful, but very windy outdoor setting, isolate the audio and get rid of most of the wind. And whether logic is even suited to this?

THANKS!

[Eriksimon]

You should really avoid getting it on your soundtrack in the first place. Once it is on there, it may be impossible to remove, depending on how much it is. Problem with removing wind noise is that it is never constant (a steady hiss is easier to filter out) and tends to consist of white noise (= hisslike noise) and pink noise (= "rumbly" noise). The bursts of pink noise are the biggest problem.

Use a windbreaker. Interweb is loaded with ready mades and DIY video's, like this one:

 

Removing ambient noise is almost never really successfull, the processing is almost always (very) artifactsy and audible, and if it isn't, the denoising tends to be marginal. Also, you'ld need to buy 3rd party denoising software (like Waves X-noise or Z-Noise or Izotopes' RX Denoiser), since the denoisers built into Logic are not really useable for any sort of serious or even half-serious result.

 

So, bottom line: don't record the wind.

[Jordi Torres]

Wind hitting a mic results mostly in low end rumble (just like breathing/blowing into a mic), and clipping if it hits hard enough.

 

J.

[ski]

So, bottom line: don't record the wind.

 

I agree. That doesn't solve your problem, but now you know for the next time.

 

Getting rid of wind noise can be extremely problematic if not impossible. I watched an episode of "Survivorman" recently in which there was a ton of intermittent wind noise. But you could tell it was professionally dealt with because it didn't sound that awful, considering. Since the star of that show films himself in all kinds of extreme environments, it wasn't terribly inappropriate to hear. In fact, in some ways it added to the drama in that you could tell he was in a harsh, windy environment when the visuals didn't suggest it. Still, the fact that it happened more than just a few times became mildly annoying. And that's the risk you run whenever you don't record audio properly in the first place: annoying your audience.

 

Whether or not the plugins that come with Logic are suitable towards your attempts to fix the problem is impossible to say without hearing to what extent the noise is a problem. Even if it's mild, your skill in operating the various plugins will determine how successful you are, if at all. Even just automating a temporary low end rolloff for a mild occurrence of wind "wuh" has to be done with care and skill lest you thin out the dialog track too much. For that kind of thing, multi-band compression might be of help, where you're only treating the low end, bypassing the upper bands so they're not processed.

 

If your track contains wind-induced distortion, there's no way to fix it unless you have highly specialized audio restoration tools.

 

It could turn out that your best bet will be to use one of the 3rd party plugins that Erik suggested, or, hand the audio track over to a professional engineer who specializes in restoring audio. It'll cost ya, but your only other choices would be to ADR the dialog or otherwise loop background ambience in the problematic places. Or both.

[Nublu]

Try talking to an audio engineer who records political speeches or debates.....

 

they're always dealing with blasts of hot air delivered by gas bags... sometimes with great gusto...

yet the diction is so delightfully clear

 

 

 

 

(don't hassle me K? the thread has been answered)