Video sound - they are very far away.........

[DominicPerry]

I have my first piece of video work tomorrow, unpaid, of course. In fact my first bit of any studio work for anyone other than myself.
As is traditional, I will have only a few hours to complete it and I can't see/hear it until tomorrow evening - needs delivering by midnight.
The guy has over an hour of video (to be edited down to 15 mins - which he's doing himself), various interviews, with on-camera sound which is terrible, loads of background noise, low levels etc. I said I'd try to help clean up the audio a bit as his only alternative was download software he's unfamiliar with and do it himself. So I planned to download some software I'm unfamiliar with and do it instead.
I'm pretty sure I can do a lot of good with just some EQ, comp and gate and the magic levelizer.
But I also thought that some other stuff might be useful - I've downloaded Izotope RX and played around with it and I have a demo version of Diamond Cut 7. I've seen the suggestions elsewhere for Acon and Virtos but is there anything which people can specifically recommend for this particular 'distant voice' problem?

Thanks

Dominic

[Bud Johnson]

Does it sound distant because of room reflections, or because of volume and source to noise ratio?
If the prior, try Stillwell's "Transient Monster". With some careful tweeking, it can really put the source on the mic.
If the latter, people have lots of favs to remove unwanted noise.

[Dave Labrecque]

Dominic,

Good luck with that.

Nothing I hate more than poorly-recorded location sound. And nothing I have more of right now on this film project. Ugh. I've tried the Sony NR 2.0 approach to bad S/N issues and generator background hum, etc., and it's no use. The noise is too broadband and too loud. It just mucks up the dialogue when I try it. LOTS of ADR coming up on this one.

The other problem: poor micing on the set. Lots of distant voices and rooms that aren't helping with their lousy acoustics. My solution: ADR.

People keep talking about a transient control plug-in like the Stillwell plug, but I don't know. The ambiance is buried throughout entire lines, not just at the ends of lines. How's it supposed to fix that?

Grumble, grumble. Maybe I'll download some stuff. Just enough time!!!

Gee, I guess I didn't help you at all. Sorry.

[studio-c]

I'm with you, Dave.
I hate fixing other peoples' goofups. Like, what the heck were these people thinking the entire time they were shooting and checking the dailies? And of course at the audio sweetening end of the project, they're out of money. Grr...
Sometimes it's most rewarding to say no to certain projects

[DominicPerry]

Luckily the guy was so disorganised we ran out of time before I even started. I learnt a few things on the way though, mainly about Izotope RX. I got hold of one bit of video, which SAW reads fine, it's an mpg, and the audio is shocking, other very loud conversations going on in the vicinity of the speaker, I would have had no idea what to do with it. The guy was still phoning me up later that evening asking what plug-in to use clean it up. So I'm glad he didn't offer me any money, it would have been impossible to earn it.

Dominic

[studio-c]

unpaid, of course.

LOL, I just saw this part of your post.
If I promise not to give you any money, will you hit yourself over the head with a hammer?
Who are these people and is there a reason you're taking this on?

Another type of gig I try to turn away:
"I'm going through a divorce because my wife was having an affair and I put a microcassette recorder in my briefcase in the trunk of my car to record them, because I didn't want her to find it when she was in the bedroom. Can you boost the sound so I can hear what they're saying?" I used to get these once a month, the freebie miracle stuff that has no chance of building into a good profitable client relationship. The crazies... Just say no

[DominicPerry]

Who are these people and is there a reason you're taking this on?

Just say no

I'm not paid for doing any audio/video work, it's not my day job, so I thought I'd offer to do some for free in order to learn as well as to help. I did learn - as you suggest - to just say no in future.
I can't really charge for something I know nothing about, although I guess people do....

Dominic

[Dave Labrecque]

I'm with you, Dave.
I hate fixing other peoples' goofups. Like, what the heck were these people thinking the entire time they were shooting and checking the dailies? And of course at the audio sweetening end of the project, they're out of money. Grr...

I've got characters in this one who weren't even mic'd. At all. All you hear is bleed into someone else's lav or an across-the-room shotgun.

Sometimes it's most rewarding to say no to certain projects

I'm still working on that one. I guess it comes with age and/or experience. I'd like to think I have enough of both at this point.

[Dave Labrecque]

LOL, I just saw this part of your post.
If I promise not to give you any money, will you hit yourself over the head with a hammer?
Who are these people and is there a reason you're taking this on?

Another type of gig I try to turn away:
"I'm going through a divorce because my wife was having an affair and I put a microcassette recorder in my briefcase in the trunk of my car to record them, because I didn't want her to find it when she was in the bedroom. Can you boost the sound so I can hear what they're saying?" I used to get these once a month, the freebie miracle stuff that has no chance of building into a good profitable client relationship. The crazies... Just say no

LOL. I've had a couple of those.

One guy ended up stiffing me for the balance due once he realized my forensic testimony wouldn't help him in court. Lovely.