Comments

farss wrote on 11/11/2005, 1:29 PM
Pretty difficult as the cricket sound is quite broad spectrum.
Two approaches to try.
1) Gating. In other words turning the audio down when the cricket sound is all that there is on the track. Forget the noise gate that's part of the default track FX chain unless that's all that you've got. The Graphic Dynamics FX (which I think only ships with Sound Forge) is way better.
2) Noise Reduction 2, this is best done is Sound Forge and you'll need either multiple passes or else a long sample time to pick up all the frequencies that the crickets are generating. I'm far from confident that this will help much without doing damage to what you want to keep though.
3) Masking. Add amusic bed, preferably something that has sounds in it much like the crickets.

Oooops, that's three ways, sorry.
Bob.
jrazz wrote on 11/11/2005, 2:12 PM
Thanks Bob, I will give it a try and import into Sound Forge. Like you, I don't know how well it will work as the clips are all of family members giving their place and rank in the family (constant voice). I am afraid gating is not an option, but the noise reduction might work to an extent (hopefully I won't damage the audio too bad), but I might just have to live with it like it is.

As for the music... any suggestions on something that sounds like crickets and won't overpower the voice to blend with the crickets? Thanks again,
j razz
farss wrote on 11/11/2005, 3:45 PM
Sample the crickets into Acid and make a bed from that? :)
Sorry I'm the last guy to ask about music but hopefully someone here less tonally challenged than me will suggest something.
If you've got SF and have a clean sample of the noise you don't want here's what I find a better approach.
Analyse the offending sound with the spectrum analyser and then use notch filters to get rid of what parts you can while doing the least amount of damage to what you want.

Actually the cricket sampling idea mightn't be so silly, you can get crickets to change pitch by changing their temperature!
Bob.
musicvid10 wrote on 11/11/2005, 10:26 PM
In Sound Forge, select a short segment of JUST the crickets, then run the spectrum analysis tool. Identify the major fundamentals and harmonics, then apply a series of notch filters to the whole track to smooth out the bumps.

This approach won't silence the crickets, but will tame them and leave their chirping more tranparent to other audio material. Best advice is, don't overdo it.
craftech wrote on 11/12/2005, 4:02 AM
I ran into the same problem shooting an outdoor drama. It sounded ten times louder on the tape than it did in real life. I desperately wanted to get rid of it, but in the end I just left it alone because NOTHING would get rid of the crickets without destroying the dialogue. During the quiet scenes it was the worst.
I asked some testers (they were actually the actors) to review the tape and judge the quality. Not one of them even mentioned the crickets so I asked them directly, "what about the crickets"? They said, "What the hell did you expect in an outdoor drama? We were paying attention to the acting and the story line, not the crickets".
They were right. Cricket sounds, loud as they seem are mentally tuned out after you first start hearing them, especially if there is something else to focus the viewer's attention on.

Give the client a rough cut to review and ask the client to judge the quality. I'll bet he accepts the crickets as a fact of outdoor life.

John
jrazz wrote on 11/12/2005, 9:14 AM
Yeah, playing around in sound forge hasn't really produced any acceptable results. I will give them a sample cut to view... I guess that I am my own worse critic and I sure think those crickets are LOUD!

Thanks guys,
j razz
bullshark wrote on 11/12/2005, 9:41 AM
One method that worked for me. Double the soundtrack, EQ the cricket sound out of the double (cricket will hopefully be in a band narrow enough)and fine tune by adjusting respective level of both track (some automation writing might help here). You won't get all the cricket sound out this way, but might lower it by a lot while keeping the rest. Might be worth trying this method with the track you got with the noise remover also, I don't have the noise remover so I never tried.
craftech wrote on 11/13/2005, 5:55 AM
One method that worked for me. Double the soundtrack, EQ the cricket sound out of the double (cricket will hopefully be in a band narrow enough)and fine tune by adjusting respective level of both track (some automation writing might help here). You won't get all the cricket sound out this way, but might lower it by a lot while keeping the rest. Might be worth trying this method with the track you got with the noise remover also, I don't have the noise remover so I never tried.
========
The problem is that the damned things chirp at different frequencies. The males are at a different frequency than the females and they change it when they are ready to mate (trivial information no one gives a crap about unless they are an entomologist or a frustrated videographer faced with this particular situation).
In short the range is generally too wide to eliminate it all. The reduction in the levels of the people's voices following noise reduction attempts kill the ambiance of the audio almost completely so they don't really sound like they are outdoors. That is why I decided to leave it alone.

John