Clicks in FCP

Can anyone help me. My video clearly has the clicking/clomping sounds of my spokesperson walking. Every step she takes is a LOUD clomp, clomp, clomp she is wearing high hills on a wood floor. I have followed the instructions for audio editing in FCP and the movie tutorial presented in this format where you go in and mark the click and then reduce the sound level. Everything has been properly marked and the sound level has been taken to the bottom of the line for the clicks but the clomps are STILL there when I play the video. In FCP I have mono 1 and mono 2 which both have the clomping sounds so I just dumped mono 2 and edited mono1.

Then I went to Sound Track Pro and followed the instructions there for removing clicking sounds also found in this forum i.e. set noise print, reduce noise, etc. again everything was followed as per the instructions but the shoe clicking noise is still there! I

I am on FCP Academic and am using a G5Mac. The clomp sounds are all identified by a straight tall long line. In Sound Track Pro I have reduced the noise until that line is almost flat. In FCP I have brought the area where the clomp is to below the audio line in FCP. I have saved my edits.

can you post a clip?

In STPro, did you isolate a section of the audio where she's walking without speaking? You need to grab a 'clean' section to set your Noise Print, then apply that to the whole clip when you reduce the noise. When you adjust the noise removal settings, check the 'noise only' box so you can only hear the noise you're trying to remove; then tweak the sliders until you hear mostly the clomping and little to no voice. You may not be able to reduce it completely but hopefully you can muffle it.

Assuming you've tried that, any chance you can get her to re-record her dialogue?

JK

_______________________________________
SCQT! Self-contained QuickTime ? pass it on!

the problem is that footsteps dont really fall into the category of "noise". footsteps are more of an actual sound event. i would VERY seriously doubt that any noise reduction process is going to help that.

id say your best bet (IF the woman is NOT talking while she walks) is to manually select the waveform and just drop its level. then find some ambient room sound to lay over it.

if shes walking and talking. my money says youre mostly S.O.L.

The only thing I can think of is that you're not editing the correct source. Did you double click the clip on the timeline to load it into the viewer before applying the correction? I'm wondering if you're actually dropping the levels on the source footage and not making any changes to the timeline copy, which is why when you play the timeline you can still hear it.

I think you hit on the problem, first of all yes I have double clicked the clip on the timeline to load it into the viewer. I have applied the correction in the viewer. I have dropped the sound levels on the clicks to where they are flat on the viewer or approximately -60. When I finished marking and bringing down the sound levels of all the (clicks) in the viewer I have saved the project and played the timeline copy in which the clicks are still there. Is there a step I am missing after I do the editing in the viewer do I need to somehow drag the viewer edits down into the timeline? The edits I have made in the viewer all appear in the timeline.

Nope - that sounds like you're doing the right thing.

Have you maybe got another copy of the audio somewhere on the timeline further down that you haven't noticed?

Otherwise you might be drifting into 'trash your preferences' land..

Yes, do you want me to email you a copy of the clip. I am going to take the video out and send an
aiff file is that okay?

just post a link to it here...

Mixing 32k and 48 k audio on the same timeline can cause pops on output
to QT movie ect --
( on earlier versions FCP - dont know if it still happening
on newer versions)

Also corrupted preference files can cause popping to happen --Jay--

Hi, okay this is the aif file of the video. You can hear the clicks and the persons speaking along while they walk. I am sending you the original file NOT the one which I have attempted to edit because my editing didn't work anyway it sounds just like this. I really appreciate you help.

[www.zianet.com]

Did you already add the filters? It sounds to me like there's so little bottom end...but the 'clock-clocks' are still so prominent. Either you didn't target the right frequencies, or (even more likely) the shoes are so loud that they won't go away.

Others might have suggestions, but to me, if this is the tradeoff, I'd suggest that you either ADR the sound or live with the shoes. You can't let the onscreen dialogue be like this. Or, find an editing style that can use ADR lines and fix this -- for example, fade out all ambient noise, have her ADR voice on top with the walking footage, but obviously and completely unsynced -- ie. make the voice-over sound deliberately ADR, rather than fake it for sync sound.


www.derekmok.com

here's an unconventional idea.

if the footsteps and ambient noise are on the same track you are gonna need STpro to isolate the freq ( which should be between 125 - 210hz ).

you can also use the parametric eq in fcp to find it it has a lot of slides and one or two of them will do it.

The second problem is that when you do you may loose some of the voice or ambience, but no biggie cause you can double the audio and turn one ( without the eq ) way down then nest the 2 audios and adjust the over all volume.

If you can isolate the voice and cut out the heels. you will have a track that has the dialog but cuts out at every step setting this track to a very lo volume can enhance the voice a bit. You may find a happy medium between'st the lo dialog and the heel clicks.

the ambience is a bit annoying so loosing 2-4db off that isn't gonna hurt you anyways.

may not be the best audio work around but i have used something similar to this b4.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

WOW, this audio is crazy bad! you have way more problems than just the footsteps. your desired audio level isnt significantly higher than the ambient room noise. and you also have echo which further weaves the footsteps into the VO.

but its not totally unsalvageable...

i would suggest that you do a normalise, then noise reduction then go in and isolate the step-clicks and do an adjust amplitude on each one to about -9 to -14 db depending on their offense level.

in the future, if you have a room like this you might look into either a unidirectional lav mic or a really good shotgun mic.

also, keep a roll of that rubber meshy stuff you can get at bath+kitchen stores to line cabinets with and a roll of double sided tape to attach to the bottom of shoes. that way you can greatly reduce footsteps without having the talent slipping around.