Audacity question

goldenjes

We spent a long time getting a 5 minute skit recorded for DS2's class today.  I only have a basic handheld Kodak recorder but it usually does OK.  The video seemed good when I played it back on the recorder, but when playing it on my laptop, the audio is a bit messed up due to wind.

 The boys (4 sixth graders) think they might be able to clean it up tomorrow at school using Audacity.  Does anyone know if that will work?

Tyrna

Not sure about the program, but I wanted to say how awesome it is that you helped the boys get it recorded!  Kuddos, Mom!

lite-bright

It's worth a try, but kind of depends on how compromised the recording is. 

I've worked with Audacity, although not recently; so I'm not sure if they've changed any of their clean-up capabilities. But IME, once sound is in there as background, it's hard to get it out. I don't think Audacity has the capability, say, to isolate a voice/voices from background noise like wind for separate editing; although they'll probably be able to use its general noise reduction function and get some improvement. The question is how the noise reduction will affect the voice recording, and they may find that if they reduce the noise, they lose the voices or clarity; it can be tricky to balance the two when you're working with a recording that has a lot of background noise. 

You can do a lot of cropping out sounds that are in-between when people are speaking with Audacity, but I've definitely run into situations where I had to leave in distracting or superfluous background noise because in order to cut out the sound, I would've had to cut out the person's speech right along with it. 

Still definitely worth a try, though!

katydid17

Audacity might work, but if they have access to something like Adobe Audition, Premiere, or even Audition's predecessor, Soundbooth, it'd be even better. ;-) Good luck.