Reducing Background Noise in Soundtrack Pro
By setting a noise print in Sountrack Pro, you can pin point a particular noise in your scene for removal. Let's say that after filming a scene, you discover in post that the drone of road construction is competing with your onscreen personalities dialog. Let's face it, you can't always control what's happening in the background of a scene that's being shot guerrilla style. Soundtrack Pro will let you select the problem area, create a noise print, then go back and pin point that noise for reduction in your scene. This technique will take some practice due to the fact that it is possible to reduce the overall sound quality of the scene by performing a noise reduction.
Setting a Noise Print and Reducing Noise
1 Drag a selection in the waveform display that contains only the noise that you want to remove. Whether it be a pause between sentences or before the dialog begins, capture the ambience you are pin pointing for removal.
2 Go to Process > Set Noise Print.
3 Go back to the waveform display and select the entire effected area including dialog.
4 Choose Process > Reduce Noice and the Reduce Noise Dialog Box will appear.
5 This is the part that will take practice. Move the Noise Threshold control to the left to lower the threshold and remove low signals or slide it to the right to raise the threshold and reduce high signals.
The goal here is to remove the unwanted noise without degrading the overall sound quality of the scene. This may call for you to add some bass back into the actors voices after you have made your adjustments. Play around with this functon to get the feel of removing problem noises from a scene.
You can also use SoundTrack Pro's Spectrum Analyzer to further reduce noise frequencies.
