salvaging low volume audio on a windy day

Dan_B wrote on 10/12/2007, 3:52 PM
Hello,
I recently shot an outdoor wedding and during the rehearsel if was a quite windy day.
To further complicate things, I had the mic volume too low. Has anyone else made a blunder like this and how did you find your way out?

Some parts are going to have to be wind noise - no speech is detectable at all. Other places the volume is so low, I can only hear it with a audio compressor (i.e. Wave Hammer) running at quite high levels. I'm sure there is someone out there that has some methods of improving this - I'm quite a loss with out it soundy "tinny".

Thanks for reading and considering

Dan

Comments

Kennymusicman wrote on 10/12/2007, 7:04 PM
Post a sample somewhere, and I will take a look.

Ken
adowrx wrote on 10/12/2007, 8:04 PM
ADR
rraud wrote on 10/13/2007, 4:30 PM
Repairing wind problems "may" be helped by rolling off the low end frequencies starting at around 300Hz.
Low levels can be increased ... which will also raise the initial recording noise floor. ie; electronic circuits from mics, mixers, pre-amps and RF, EMI, ground loops, ect.... plus acoustical born noise as well.
Without actually hearing the audio, this is a guess at best.
Troy Duran wrote on 10/16/2007, 7:51 AM
Hey Dan, depending on how bad the audio is, here are a couple of suggestions:

1) If you don't already have Soundforge 9, buy it, if only for the Noise reduction tool that comes with it. That thing is incredible for removing noise. First, I'd jack up the playback level to where you can see the wave form ok. Highlight a sample of the noise (Probably the general wind, not the gusts). Check the 'Capture Noiseprint' box and preview. Then go up to your edit menu, click 'Select All', and then 'ok' . I'd use the default settings first, then adjust as needed. I think it's better to do a couple of passes with smaller amounts of noise reduction than one big one.

2) Barring that, try isolating the frequency where the wind noise is loudest and roll off everything from there on down. You'll probably want to take out anything above 7khz as well, since it's going to be really noisy when with the levels up as high as you need them

Hope that helps!