How to Fix the Audio Noise in a Video
When you shoot live video, sometimes background noise, such as a hum, buzz or white static, can find its way into your audio track and create problems with the overall rendering of your video. According to David McKnight of eventdv.net, your audience might forgive shaky video, but the audio quality plays a big role in determining whether your video is truly worthwhile or not. And while the best way to keep bad audio out of your video is preventing it in the first place, there are some small fixes you can make in editing software to improve the sound quality.
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Things You'll Need
- Video file
- Audio/video editing software, such as Sony Vegas 8
- Computer or laptop
Instructions
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Open the file you want to edit in the video editing software. You can drag and drop the file into the editing workspace or select the "File" and "Open" command. Typically, the video file will appear in the media bin near the preview pane or beneath the workspace.
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Drag the video file into the time-line workspace to begin the editing process. Typically the software automatically inserts the video and audio tracks into their respective sections without any further action.
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Click on the Track FX button on the affected audio track, which looks like a little green plug. This brings up a popup box with several common audio editing tools, such as an equalizer and the output gain. Eventdv.net suggests never raising your audio gain above the 0 decibel threshold, as this can ruin many speakers. Peak your audio files around -6 decibels instead.
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Start eliminating sharp sounds such as cracks, pops or excessive wind by looking for abnormally high peaks in the audio track. The audio track should look something like an even heartbeat, and if a certain section spans the entire height of the track, there's probably something wrong with that portion. To fix this problem if you cannot remove the sound altogether, use the selection tool to isolate this peak and normalize the audio with the Track FX plugin or similar audio command, depending on the software you're using.
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Reduce the noise in any section of audio you cannot remove or otherwise normalize. In Sony Vegas, this means selecting the noisy portion of video, opening the Plugin box, and choosing the "Noise Reduction" plugin. In most cases, the noise reduction plugin is "smart" and can identify the problem area in your selection.
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