Audio EQ/mix suggestions?

Question for the resident geniuses with golden ears... I'm stuck using a bunch of audio from a flip camera's built-in mic. It's from an interior, in a moderately lively kitchen so there's some low hissing from stovetops, and the voices are just cutting through really sharply.

What's the best strategy for hitting that with some EQ to help smooth it out? Bring down the midranges to smooth things out? Or would I get better results with a dynamic compressor or one of those other audio filters that are all greek to me?

Thanks!

Jeff

>I'm stuck using a bunch of audio from a flip camera's built-in mic

If you are stuck with the camera's built in mic, to a large degree, you are stuck with the crappy audio that it records.

You could denoise it, EQ out the bass and the treble, but because chances are, you couldn't get a high signal to noise ratio, you are stuck.



www.strypesinpost.com

Three magic letters:

A. D. R.


www.derekmok.com

@Derek - I should be so lucky! The footage is a couple of minutes of a cooking demo.

Client isn't going to be picky about the audio on this one, they know what it is. I just want my ears to stop bleeding as I'm working on this!

Why didn't you use a microphone? Or set up a backup audio recorder? A Flip would be awful at audio.


www.derekmok.com

Because I didn't shoot it. Didn't even have any input on shooting it. And sometimes you have to live with what your clients hand you.

"Awful" doesn't quite cover it with the Flip, too. In fact, "awful" is a rather generous assessment of its audio capabilities.

They commissioned a cooking show and used a Flip? Ouch.


www.derekmok.com

That's why they're clients!

Including the person that did production planning? They gotta be smoking.



www.strypesinpost.com

Welcome to high end broadcast video production circa 2010. What is acceptable quality to many is plummeting by the minute. Don't hire a competent crew, just whip out your Flip and shoot a television show.

Yeesh.

Dan

Quote
They commissioned a cooking show and used a Flip? Ouch.

Flips are good for those boiling water POVs

Michael Horton
-------------------

Michael, if you mean dropping the Flip camera into a pot of boiling water for a POV look at the chef, you're on the money.

Okay, since it appears that you are getting a lot of flack for your camera choice, I will actually try to help you out!

Like you, I use my mobile phone to shoot a lot of stuff that I upload to youtube about my travels. Yes I have a real camera and real microphones, but a lot of the stuff I see and situations I get into, there is no time to whip that out, and so my Smart Phone at least gets SOMETHING of the experience, and my audience is never the wiser.
One of the problems, is that these great SMART phones are not so smart when it comes to the quality of the onboard mic, which in my case, means it distorts like crazy.
Distortion is not so easy to get rid of, but using a band limiting compressor, I can usually locate the crunchy frequencies, and at least soften them to the point that they are less noticeably, and in the very least not annoying to the ears.
In your case, with a ton of background noise, you only really have one choice if you cannot do ADR, or re-shoot.
It might be intimidating, it might look Greek, it will cost some coin, but I've said this to a lot of different people on this board: iZotope.
It can act as a stand alone, or, as an AU/VST effect. It looks fancy, but if you use your ears as the judge, and give yoursel some time to play with it, you will find it does a brilliant job of eliminating crap from your audio content. You WILL have to use an EQ, and you WILL have to use a compressor if you want to get really picky.
The other product is a much more quick and dirty SoundSoap Pro, but I find iZotope is much more capable.
If you plan to do more flip phone shoots, you gotta have it in your toolkit!
Treatment