Pro Tools

[Shiny]

I've recently shot a short film for school and there was a problem with the audio for one scene. In the background of the scene you can hear a very loud refrigerator rumbling. I've spoken to some professional editors about this and they say that it is possible to get rid of that rumbling, yet still be able to keep the dialogue via Pro Tools. The thing is, I've never used the program before and I'm not sure how to go about eliminating it on there. Are any of you familiar with this program and could you give me tips about fixing this problem? Thanks in advance. :freak:

[crono_logical]

I'd probably use Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/) instead, it's an open source audio editor, and apply a noise remover filter of some sort to achieve the result you're after :p If it's anything like when I've done this stuff in CoolEdit, you select a "silent" sample in the clip containing the rumble only, to allow the software to get a profile of the noise you don't want, then you can apply that filter to the whole track to remove the background noise. You may need to experiment a few times with stuff like how strong to apply the filter etc. to see what sounds acceptable in the end :p

[Rostum]

I absolutely love Pro Tools, but then again I've been trained in it. There are definitely some very cool noise reduction plug-ins, but unless you understand theory on audio and what knobs control what part of the sound envelope, then it can be a very daunting thing.

You could try Audacity, like Crono said. I've never used it, but if it has a simplified noise reduction plug-in then you might be able to get away with it. But again, I have no idea what the tools are like in that program; my guess is they are simplier because it is open source and free.

[Slothy]

I would think that if the rumble is sitting in a different frequency range than everything else in the scene then a simple cut with an EQ may suffice. Odds are it wouldn't be quite that easy though. Definitely go with Audacity though for attempting to get rid of it. It's free and extremely high quality considering. It's been quite a while since I used it but it is one of the better audio editors out there.

[Shiny]

I know people at my school that use Pro Tools extensively so working it isn't the problem. I need to know whether it will be able to eliminate the rumble altogether and if it won't, then that would save me having to ask. The huge problem is that the rumble is all in one track along with the dialogue. I was actually looking at audacity last night and I doubt it will work because the audio file is a Final Cut Pro file. I'm not sure if audacity would except that file, but I will try anyway. It seems to have the same stuff that Final Cut Pro and Soundtrack Pro has (i.e. the noise removal and normalize) which only made the dialogue sound like it was underwater.

[Rostum]

Yes, Pro Tools will do it. After all, it is pretty much the number one audio recording, editing, mixing and mastering software in the industry. All noise reduction does is takes the frequencies found in the rumbling envelope and then reduces it; very basic idea, anyway.

Edit: The thing is Pro Tools isn't free, and it can be a bit harder to get for free than other software. I am not sure about the newer versions, but usually you need some pretty heafty hardware and a good sound card (I use an Mbox as it came with a cheaper version of Pro Tools that does the job).

[Shiny]

No need to buy it, my school has that too; along with the audio boards. I'm thinking of investing in Avid for my PC though.

I have a problem with getting my Final Cut Pro file on to Audacity though. My firewire drive can't hook up to my PC. It only seems to work with MAC. =[ I wanted to put it in there so I could at least sync all the audio together because some parts sound higher than the others. Is there some sort of cable I need for it to work via PC? It says it's compatible with MAC, Vista and XP, but it won't work. Note: It's a Western Digital External Hard Drive.

[crono_logical]

Standard firewire cable will do, I believe even the same cable as mac takes, just make sure the PC has a firewire port to plug it into in the first place. :p If it's still not recognised though, I can only assume the disk has been formatted for mac so Windows won't be able to use it without reformatting, which would mean wiping all the data off it.