Premiere Pro and Audition

FIXING BAD AUDIO

One of the great things about Premiere Pro is how seamlessly it integrates with other Adobe programs.  With just a few clicks, you can send your entire project to SpeedGrade for color work or replace a series of clips with an After Effects composition.  It’s also very easy to send audio clips to Adobe’s sound editing program, Audition.

We won’t be spending a lot of time using Audition in this class – there’s just too much to cover full and it’s not installed on all of the editing workstations.  There’s one technique using Audition that I think is absolutely worth knowing, though.  You will sometimes come across clips with audio that has a persistent hiss or buzz underneath, especially if the levels weren’t set properly during recording.  Fortunately, Audition lets you filter out specific areas of an audio spectrum, which often allows you to clean up this issue.

This technique works best on clips where there is at least a small section with only the unwanted sound audible (without speaking or other noises).  Right-click on the clip in the Timeline and choose “Edit Clip in Adobe Audition” from the menu.  As long as Audition is installed on the machine you’re using, it should open up with the audio from your clip.  Back in Premiere, the audio in the clip should change color.

In Audition, you should see the waveform of your audio.  Find a section where only the unwanted sound is present – you can use the “plus” and “minus” keys on the keyboard to zoom in and out.  Either by clicking and dragging with the mouse or using the “I” and “O” keys (in-point and out-point), highlight that section.  With the noise selection highlighted, go to the Effects dropdown, to Noise Reduction/Restoration, and select Capture Noise Print.  This stores the audio from only that area in the program’s memory.

Next, double-click on the waveform – the entire clip should become highlighted.  Go back to Noise Reduction/Restoration in the Effects menu and choose Noise Reduction (process)… to bring up a new menu.  This allows you filter the previously captured noise out of the entire clip.  Use the “Noise Reduction” and “Reduce By” sliders to adjust the intensity of the effect.  You can make fine adjustments by adding curves to the line in the graph, but this usually isn’t necessary.  You can preview the results with the play arrow.  It can also be useful to toggle the “Output Noise Only” switch on and off so that you can tell exactly what you’re taking out.  When you’re happy with the sound, click Apply.  The Noise Reduction menu will close and the original waveform will alter slightly to reflect the new effect.  Hit Command-S to save your work and the clip in Premiere will automatically update with your newly repaired audio track.

While you can get great results using this technique, it does have its limits.  Filtering out certain tones can result in vocals that sound robot or hollow.  As always, you’ll need to experiment to get the best out of the program.