As hinted at in some previous posts, I now have a new instructional video available – my second, I believe. This one has a simple technique to reduce the background or recording hiss from the audio within video clips, and can make your video sound much cleaner and slicker. Even better, it can be accomplished with open-source freeware that’s available for Linux, Windows, and Mac.
Audacity audio editing software.
Kdenlive video editing software.
The important thing to remember is that it’s easy to overdo the settings, sounding good initially but clipping some of the wanted background sounds or introducing warble or distortion, and it’s better to err on the side of ‘imperfect’ rather than produce something that starts to sound edited or unreal.
I am by no means a master of this kind of thing (No! Really?!) and you may find better techniques out there. I’ve been learning editing as I go, occasionally seeking out specific functions as needed rather than, you know, trying to learn the software from the ground up, or through a comprehensive course. This technique is identical to the standard noise reduction function that should be used for all audio recordings, one that I’ve been using for years, and applying it to the audio track of a video clip only takes a sample of the background hiss (recorded in a silent room) and then the trivial task of swapping the audio tracks in the video editor, and adds only a few minutes to the entire editing process. Hopefully it helps someone.
I still have one more video project to complete, now in the voiceover stage, so you’ll see that here within a few days. To say nothing of whatever else might pop up in the interim…