I'm trying to edit a home video before uploading it to Utube and the sound quality sucks.

December 28, 2008 9:47 PM

I recorded it using the web cam on my HP Touchsmart PC and the playback makes a distorted, squelch sound every time there is a loud part in the video. What's the best way to keep the original soundtrack, but remove the feedback noise? Also, is there a way to adjust the recording levels to improve audio on future projects?
posted by dthm42 to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

It's called clipping. And, unfortunately, there's almost nothing to be done about it. It isn't noise on top of the signal, it is the signal itself going out of band. (Perhaps an audio engineer has a trick that helps, though. I never found one during film school.)

As for next time: get a preamp. You want a field recording or portable preamp, with a level meter. You'll put that between the microphone and the recording device. Then, have your actors speak some lines as loudly as they intend to during the performance, and adjust the levels until they're in range during the entire thing.
posted by Netzapper at 10:00 PM on December 28, 2008

I should've read my own wiki link. While I was correct that you'll never get the real signal back, they say that you *can* partially reconstruct the lost signal through interpolation/extrapolation. You'll need pro-quality audio editing software, with this feature, however.
posted by Netzapper at 10:06 PM on December 28, 2008

In recording, you might try plugging in a cheap ($20?) conference microphone & recording from that instead.

Levelator helps with making volume levels relatively constant. That could be useful in post-production. (In case it isn't clipping, but a crap mic or a borked software amp or something.)
posted by Pronoiac at 1:39 AM on December 29, 2008