How to remove background noise in audacity?

[ItsBecky]

People are commenting on my videos and saying that i can remove my background noise with audacity but i dont know how to do that, unless i use audacity to record while filming my video as well, but i thought you could only do that with gaming videos?

I personally didnt even notice it tbh until it was pointed out, as i have music playing in the background, but the camera i use is a canon 600D which was quite an expensive camera and HD quality videos, so why is it giving me a slight static sound in the background?

Do all cameras do that?

Any help would be appreciated thankyou!

 

[Coffee Nova]

Pick an area of the audio track that has just the background noise it in and highlight it. Go to Effect and click Remove Noise. Then click Get Noise Profile. Back in your work space select the entire track (Ctrl A will do that if you don't want to drag your mouse over the whole thing) and then click Remove Noise again and let it run.

That should remove all the noise you had selected. Hope it helps.

 

[ItsBecky]

Thankyou so much! Its really bugging me now its been pointed out as i can hear it really clearly now haha, i will have to try it on my next video! Thankyou im still learning

 

[notjamie]

Buy a shotgun microphone. Audio is far more important than video quality. A really cheap microphone is the bower eletret condenser microphone. It is about $40 but gives way better sound. If you have a bigger budget, I would recommend the rode videomic rycote which comes in around $130. The rode videomic go is about $100 but the $30 to the videomic is definitely worth it.

Sorry if this isn't what you're asking for, but I would definitely recommend upgrading to a shotgun microphone instead of the built in mic on your camera.

 

[Coffee Nova]

Thankyou so much! Its really bugging me now its been pointed out as i can hear it really clearly now haha, i will have to try it on my next video! Thankyou im still learning

No problem. Audacity is pretty awesome when it comes cleaning up and tweaking audio so play around with the different effects and it may give you ideas on things to try in the future.

 

[ItsBecky]

Buy a shotgun microphone. Audio is far more important than video quality. A really cheap microphone is the bower eletret condenser microphone. It is about $40 but gives way better sound. If you have a bigger budget, I would recommend the rode videomic rycote which comes in around $130. The rode videomic go is about $100 but the $30 to the videomic is definitely worth it.

Sorry if this isn't what you're asking for, but I would definitely recommend upgrading to a shotgun microphone instead of the built in mic on your camera.

No thats fine thankyou, i have just bought a tablet and i have another year of uni to get through and pay for, so i dont want to spend a ton of money so i will just have to stick with playing around with audacity for now, i dont get tons of views currently and im not successful so its not a massive priority at the moment to buy equipment but thankyou

 

[Worldofpossible]

People are commenting on my videos and saying that i can remove my background noise with audacity but i dont know how to do that, unless i use audacity to record while filming my video as well, but i thought you could only do that with gaming videos?

I personally didnt even notice it tbh until it was pointed out, as i have music playing in the background, but the camera i use is a canon 600D which was quite an expensive camera and HD quality videos, so why is it giving me a slight static sound in the background?

Do all cameras do that?

Any help would be appreciated thankyou!

The easy way is to let microphone record with no talking for at least ten seconds. Then go to effects, noise reduction and while are your clip is highlighted click get noise profile. Now record your voice over. Highlight the voice over, and apply noise reduction. Keep tweaking until you have what you want. Normalize the audio if necessary and your done.

 

[Tarmack]

the camera i use is a canon 600D which was quite an expensive camera and HD quality videos, so why is it giving me a slight static sound in the background?

DSLRs aren't designed with good microphones because they're picture primary, video secondary. The main reason you have this problem is because you're not close to the microphone, so to get good audio, your volume is set higher than it needs to be which of course amplifies any background noise in the room. That's why you notice it in the recording, but not when just sitting in the room.

Audacity or other audio programs will help, with the noise removal function that others have described. Play with the settings a bit as noise removal can give a bit of a robotic sound because its' actually removing part of the audio signal, which often includes some audio you don't want to be removed.

The ideal solution is a microphone closer to you. You could probably get away with a small lapel mic that plugs into your camera's mic jack. It won't be amazing, but even a sub-$50 lapel mic will have better sound than your camera onboard mic.

 

[Worldofpossible]

DSLRs aren't designed with good microphones because they're picture primary, video secondary. The main reason you have this problem is because you're not close to the microphone, so to get good audio, your volume is set higher than it needs to be which of course amplifies any background noise in the room. That's why you notice it in the recording, but not when just sitting in the room.

Audacity or other audio programs will help, with the noise removal function that others have described. Play with the settings a bit as noise removal can give a bit of a robotic sound because its' actually removing part of the audio signal, which often includes some audio you don't want to be removed.

The ideal solution is a microphone closer to you. You could probably get away with a small lapel mic that plugs into your camera's mic jack. It won't be amazing, but even a sub-$50 lapel mic will have better sound than your camera onboard mic.

It's not a issue of how close mic is, although that can help, along with pop filter and gain down to zero. The problem is the white noise and almost any mic no matter the quality mic picks up a lot. That's why noise removal is the important factor here.

 

[Tarmack]

It's not a issue of how close mic is, although that can help, along with pop filter and gain down to zero. The problem is the white noise and almost any mic no matter the quality mic picks up a lot. That's why noise removal is the important factor here.

Not at all. The primary issue is mic distance. Noise removal is a wonderful tool but it is a bandaid fix to a problem. The pop filter has zero effect on background noise which comes from all angles and zero effect on white noise which is caused most often by unshielded equipment and overdriving a microphone, rather it's for plosive consonants only to reduce force of air from the mouth of the speaker. The lower the gain, the less white noise will be audible in the signal which is why mic distance is the primary factor as a closer mic picking up the main audio source at a higher db level means you can reduce the gain further.

I'm not discounting noise removal, but if your gear and recording setup are done properly you don't even need to use it. I used to use noise removal all the time. Now, with a proper noise gate and compressor, I don't bother anymore.

Anyone recording with a only DSLR is doing so by being too far from a crappy onboard mic that has to work too hard to get a good audio signal from their voice. It's that simple and using a mic closer to the source will help dramatically.