Best way to reduce white/background noise in audio?

Hulio

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This morning, I filmed some nice footage of a reflection at sunrise with an amazing amount of birds singing through it all. However, on top of typical white noise, there is a faint, distant drone of the vehicles on the highway. It is detracting from how nice this piece of video could possibly be.

Most of what I've read suggests using Audacity to fix this. What's are people's suggestions?

If the options happen to be budget conscious, or even free, I am okay with that : )
 

Farley Productions

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A lot of video editors have "noise reduction" in their volume effects options as well. If Audacity ain't working for ya for some reason.

As far as preventing it in the filming production. High Condenser Microphones help reduce white noise a ton where as normal stereo jack shotgun mics tend to pick up a lot more of the white noise. Only issue is carrying around the adapter and big microphone on top of it. But maybe something to consider down the road when the budget allows for it and you are really needing that audio for a high production project.
 

Xynudu

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Some cameras introduce a lot more white noise/hiss than others. I've found Canon to be particularly bad for this. Nikon and Lumix however are virtually dead silent. Yes, I have or do own one or more of each, so I'm qualified to mention this.

Canon may have lifted their game by now (I would hope so) but that is one major reason I went Nikon and now Lumix.

As for taking it out with software, I didn't find that terribly effective (without degrading the sound track) .

Cheers Rob
 

Jay R.

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Adobe Audition does a pretty damn good job but unfortunately, it's not free... Audacity's your best bet but I've never used it before.
If you use an external recorder, try bringing the camera's internal gain to its minimum and increase the gain of the external recorder.