which audio filter?

Hi There.

I've got an interview clip that has some builders hammering in the background from about half way through.

We shot some C/A material of the builders hammering away, and are using this shot as a run in too the interview.

I've pulled the sound from the ext shot over the beginning of the interior shot to link the two shots, and to prepare the viewer for the noise when it starts up again.

What I want to do is to treat the ext noise so that it sounds more like it has been recorded from inside the room, sort of similar to the 'telephone voice' device.

Any help is much appreciated.

ps. Its an observational documentary so its not a problem that you can hear whats going on outside too much!

You might try an EQ filter and hope that hit noise is not in the same frequency range as the voice. The EQ will deaden a specific range of frequencies and lower the overall background noises as well.

The other thing to try is the noise removal function of Soundtrack Pro. It may be able to develop a noise print that can be removed as long as the interval of hits are reasonably close together.

If I understand you correctly, you are starting with an ext. shot of the builders, then cutting to the interior for the interview subject and you want to coninue the hammering from the ext shot for a while on the cut to the interior. If that's the case then the first thing to do is cut the audio track from the ext. shot at the same point you go to the interior interview shot. Now put that audio on a seperate track so you can lower the level and EQ it differently to the first part of it. To make it sound muffled you need to roll off all the high end and high mids. It is going to be a matter of playing with the EQ and maybe applying heavy compression until you get it to match, or close to the sound that will come later during the interview.

Thank you both for your input, EQ seems the way to go.

Frank, you did understand me correctly, thanks for taking me through the steps.

Sam

High Pass filter works well for this effect. When sound travels through walls and over distance, you lose the "attack" -- the highs and high mids, as Frank points out -- and you get a muffled boom, like dance music travelling across apartments. Watch out, though -- is the pounding sound part of your interior sync sound, or are you adding it in as a clean track? If you have the noises on your sync sound track, you may have to leave it alone or the two noises won't match.

Oops, it actually should be Low Pass filter.

Derek, Thanks as always. The hammering sound was recorded twice; once as an exterior cut away [which will be matched & tweaked to sound similar to] the interview recording from inside the house. With everyone's help Ive got it sorted out.

Also, I was reading your advice on another posting re: creating a visible timecode burned into the movie, created on an extra line of video, using the text tool (as opposed to nesting the sequence) that can be toggled on/off. I cannot remember how to set the text tool so that it can run the length of the timeline (2hrs) rather than simply being 2mins long (or whatever the limit is).

I'm assuming its in some kind of sequence setting/preferences, but cannot find where. sorry this is off topic for the post.

Any help is much appreciated.

Sam