I'm pretty new to video editing and we recently filmed in a slightly crowded area. Any tips on how to minimize the background noise without affecting much the conversation of my main characters? BTW, I'm using Premiere for this.

  • Could you post an audio extract with both background noise and speech? (e.g. via soundcloud) – Michael Hansen Buur Oct 8 '15 at 8:54

Here are a few things to try:

  1. Use EQ to reduce frequencies not essential to the vocal: high pass from around 300-600 Hz depending on voice types, and low pass to around 4-5 KHz, maybe lower if result is ok for you. There may be some noise with a significant peak in the midrange which you also can reduce. The problem in general here is that you probably have frequency areas with both noise and speech.

  2. Use an expander to attenuate background noise in pauses: Find a safe threshold below the lowest volume speech part. Set the expander to reduce sounds below this level. This requires that your speech is consistently louder than the noise, and you must ensure that the ratio is not too hard, otherwise you'll get a gated feel to it, which won't sound natural.

  3. Dub it.. (i.e. rerecord the dialog, definitely last resort).
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  • Great suggestions. I searched EQ effect in Premiere and they looked very intimidating. A lot of knobs I can control. lol. For option 2, Can you further elaborate what setting I need to tweak on that? I like option 3 as the last resort. :) – etiwh Oct 9 '15 at 7:05

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