I recently shot a video presentation using a camcorder I wasn't familiar with. Lots of things can go wrong when you use other people's equipment. In this case, the audio levels sounded fine in the headphones and appeared acceptable on the built-in meter during the shoot, but when I reviewed the footage later, the audio was very low. I had to jack the volume all the way up to hear the presenter. But when you raise the volume, you also raise the background noise too. Not cool!
| Fortunately, I found a way to remove noise and hiss from audio using Sony Vegas and another program called Audacity. The beauty of Audacity is that it's a free download. Free is a very good price if the program actually works. Click Here For Free Download. |  Click To Go to Audacity Website |
When I applied the noise cleaner in Audacity and imported the new audio back into Sony Vegas, the sound was noticeably better. I was so impressed with the results, I decided to make my own tutorial to spread the word to other video producers. The video is short, so I recommend watching it all the way through once to get a sense of the process, then watch it again and perform the steps. All the steps are also displayed below the video.
How To Remove Background Noise From Audio – The Video Tutorial
Step 1: Download & Install Audacity to your computer (remember where you saved it)
Step 2: In Sony Vegas, make Audacity The Preferred Audio Editor by selecting Options – Preferences-Audio Tab – Browse for Audacity (On my computer it's C:\Program Files (x86)\Audacity\audacity.exe) – Apply-OK
Step 3: Select the audio clip in Sony Vegas - Right Click – Open Copy in Audio Editor. This will open Audacity in a new window. I prefer the Copy Audio option so the original isn't touched.
Step 4: Find a noise sample and highlight it by left-clicking and dragging. It's very important to only select the noise you want to eliminate and nothing else you want to keep like vocals or other ambient noises.
Step 5: Click on Effects – Noise Removal – Get Noise Profile (Window will disappear).
Step 6: Now left-click and drag entire audio clip.
Step 7: Click on Effects – Noise Removal – OK (Whole audio clip gets cleaned up).
| | Step 8: Save File – pay attention to file name and save location. Use WAV files to keep quality. Step 9: Import new “clean” audio clip into Sony Vegas. If your results are like mine, you will hear a significant difference. Hopefully this helps some of your audio woes. If you try this out please let me know how it works for you. Comment here or on the YouTube channel. |
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