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Filtering Specific Sounds (Heavy Breathing) From Audio...
  • I cannot tell you how painfull it is to say this, but...

    I'm a life-long smoker, and I found out, much to my chagrin, that I have labored breathing.

    Which is to say that using the built-in microphones in my GH-2 last weekend to shoot a woman of transcendental beauty, one can hear me breathing in the background.

    I need to edit this out.

    My suspicion is that I could find an otherwise silent spot in the video, identify the frequency of the offending sound, and filter it out.

    From what I know--virtually nothing--of FCPX, this is not one of the features of the software.

    Is there another, relatively inexpensive program that would allow me to do this?

    Thanks in Advance.

    RBD

    N.B. Yes, next time I will use a directional mike.

  • 6 Replies sorted by
  • @RBD

    Chenage topic title to something more specific (removing breathing from recorded sound track), as it is hard to get.

  • @Vitaliy_Kiselev

    In another life, VK, I was a journalist, and my degree is in English.

    I will never miss an opportunity for ambiguity.

    Because, of course, I want folks to read this thread.

    In English, "Heavy Breathing" is a perhaps humorous reference to sexual excitement.

    On a daily basis I'm impressed by your English, VK, but, of course, this is idiom.

    My pleasure to comply.

    RBD

  • I used Izotope RX 2 lately and I find it to be a very good tool.

    If the breathing frequency profile is constant you could used the notch filter (aka hum filter). You need to analyze it a bit to find out exactly how it looks.

    If you can find a spot where only the undesired sound is present you ca also try the noise removal filter by selecting the breathing as the "noise profile" and then trying noise removal where else it appears. Not sure it will work well enough though.

  • Ditto on isotope RX2, I used it recently to completely remove a ceiling fan noisy bearing from spoken word recording. Incredible software. Just select a small sample where there is no speech, apply fix and use the sliders if any artefacts are present to fine tune.

  • I doubt you can get rid of the breathing through EQ or pattern isolation, those work best if the sound is constant and of narrow frequency. Breathing is neither constant nor of narrow frequency. The best route is to edit the audio tracks directly by first cutting out any areas between the meaningful audio. I routinely do this while editing audio tracks for musicians. I usually cut everything between words or sounds. This might include breathing, bleed from the headphones, Air conditioning, background noise like cars and such, movements of clothes, swallowing, etc. Usually if the source of the meaningful audio is loud enough it will mask the other sounds. However, if your breathing is too loud, there isn't much you can do that won't cause the meaningful audio to sound strange.

  • Upload a 1 min sample and let members here experiment with it for you with the different software/ methods available to them. The results will speak for themselves.