Need help fixing audio for a home video

Cubase
1

Hi All,

I’m making a video with material from a canon zr100 camcorder. The camera has self-adjusting volume but still, some parts are too loud, some parts are too soft and some parts are too noisy. I’ve also inserted some music in .wav format that is too loud. I exported the audio from the video editing program and imported it into cubase studio 5 without a hitch. I would like to accomplish the following:

  1. get the volume levels more even
  2. get rid of some of the hiss (or whatever) noise from the camera audio

If you’re asking yourself, “doesn’t this guy know anything about limiters and compressors”, the correct answer is, no he doesn’t. I realize that this could be a rather complicated subject so just some suggestions on a general approach would be appreciated. If you recommend the use of a compressor or limiter please include information on the settings that I might use (just to get me in the ballpark) as I have never used them. If you are aware of any tutorials on this general subject that are specific to the cubase plugins, please let me know.

Thanks

2

Or you could just send me the files and I’ll do it for you. :slight_smile:

3

But then they wouldn’t learn anything… :wink:

How about looking at the automation?

4

It is impossible to say what settings you should use, it all depends on the material.
I think the best way is that you first learn the basics of the tools you need.
Try watch some explaining video clips about the following tools:
Compressors
EQs
“Denoisers”

Or read the following (just googled):

5

Open a compressor insert on your audio track
Set the threshold to minimum (-60, say)
Set attack and release to 0
Set ratio to 10
Set makup gain to 80% of maximum

Try it out. Use the makeup gain as the new “volume” control. Adjust the ratio to return some realism to the audio (raising the threshold can help with this too) if it sounds to “pumpy”.

For dealing with the hiss, add an EQ insert and use a low pass filter. Adjust the frequency to taste.

There are other, better ways to deal with your problem (see msy’s links above), but this’ll get you started.

6

Thanks very much for the replies. All I needed was a starting point and the audio already sounds much better. First I selected the tracks that were too loud and adjusted them with the gain function and then I used the compressor and then the low pass filter. This is a BIG improvement so thanks again.