The Gifted Babies

A lot of low budgets shorts I’ve seen for the past few years often neglect the audio recording quality during a shoot, rather than recording it separately from a external mic they commonly use the camera’s built in Microphone to do the job. The upside to this is that the camera operator needn’t worry about a shotgun getting into frame, it also allows for a smaller film crew and it’s less expensive. Of the many downsides I could list here there’s one in particular I like to address for the purpose of this tutorial alone. Camera noise.

Most mini- DV cameras come with an simple cooling system to prevent the camera from overheating and damaging the tape. As a result a buzzing noise is generated which is then easily picked up by the built in mic. It’s fine to use in outdoor settings since environmental noise masks it out but it’s far too audible in indoor shoots. Ideally you’d want to record the audio from an external source in this case but if you lack the resources to do so you can try your best to remove the noise in post production. In this tutorial we’re going to use Audacity. It’s free, powerful and relatively simple to use.

Download and install Audacity from this link.

Export the audio portion that you want to remove the camera buzzing noise from and import the file into Audacity.

Then select the area where repetitive noise is only present.

Choose the Noise Removal option from the Effect list.

Get Audacity to analyse the noise clip by selecting “Get Noise Profile”.

Then select the entire track.

Go back to the Noise Removal interface. Adjust the parameters and select “Preview” to listen to a small de-noised clip. You’re going to need a keen sense of hearing and some time on your hands. Once your satisfied with the resultant effect, select ‘Ok’ and the selected area will be de-noised.

Listen to the entire track to make sure there aren’t any strange artifacts that may have been introduced by the filter otherwise you can undo the effect, readjust the parameters and apply the effect again. Finally I added a separate noise track to the audacity project. It may seem strange as to why I’m adding noise to an audio file where I already performed noise removal from but it’s for the purpose of adding ambience and to avoid having absolute silence for certain parts as it can be quite uncomfortable to the viewer.

Export the audio file once you’re happy with the result. Here’s one I made earlier:

And another …