How to Remove Background Noise

Hello everybody!

I am Michael.

 I've been making and publishing videos on YouTube since 2007.

I have 3 active YouTube channels.

And on average I publish 6 videos a week across all 3 channels.

A lot of work.

Buy USB Blue Yeti microphone on Amazon (paid link):

https://amzn.to/3wYAbWX

Buy Corel Video Studio on Amazon (paid link): 

https://amzn.to/3l4YAr8

Most of my videos comes with voice over.

In this video today I want to share with you what and how I do 

to get the cleanest audio record without any background noise for my videos.

All my voice overs and audios I record right here in my living room by this desk.

And basically it comes to 3 major steps that I go through for each audio record.

Step 1.

I reduce the background noise before I start recording.

Step 2 

use the proper microphone for the audio record.

And step 3

is to use software to clean up the audio record.

Now let's go over each particular step in more details.

The first step to reduce the background noise before we start recording.

I ask every one in my apartment to be quiet while I am recording.

No showers, no dishwashing machines.

No phone conversation even in other rooms -

microphone would pick it up too, easily.

And also, make sure that the windows closed.

Let me show you quick what would happen if the window is open.

Here is my window.

Get ready...

You can hear the background noise coming from the street.

Let's close the window.

That's quiet simple steps.

But necessary to get...to remove the background noise before you start recording.

The second step is to use the most suitable microphone for making audio records.

Here I have a video camera.

All video cameras comes with microphone.

I have a smart phone - iPhone.

All smart phones come with video camera and microphone.

And I have USB powered microphone that I can plug in computer to make audio records.

We have to try all available microphones to see which microphone makes the best sound.

Let's record 1 sample using all 3 devises and than we can compare which one is the most suitable.

Starting up.

One, two, three

Sample audio record.

Knock-knock - who is there?

Police - open up!

That should do :)

Now let's upload sample records we made on computer and compare them.

I put all 3 records on the desktop in the order I showed the equipment from left to right.

First let's listen to the record made with the video camera.

Now let's listen the record made with iPhone.

And the third is the audio record made with the USB microphone.

I personally like the sound recorded with USB powered Blue Yeti microphone.

It is a decade old microphone.

I've been using it to make voice overs for almost all my videos.

The 3rd step is to use software to reduce background noise.

I am going to show you how I use Audacity - 

the free open source audio editing software to reduce the background noise from my records on computer.

Audacity is free software you can download for Windows, Mac and some other OS.

Check the link in the description to the video.

I have Audacity already installed on my computer.

Let's launch it.

Audacity is very powerful and feature-rich audio software.

I will show only how I deal with the background noise.

Click File and choose Open to load the file you want to edit.

Or you can simply drag and drop the file into the Audacity window.

Audacity automatically extracts audio from video files.

Here you can see the top two audio tracks that Audacity extracted from my video records.

You can see the names of the files the audios were extracted from.

And the bottom file is the audio record I made with the USB microphone.

I am going to edit only this file.

So, let's close the first two files without making any changes.

Click play button or Space bar on the keyboard to play the audio files.

Select and play the beginning part without words to hear the background noise.

I hear the background noise and clicks.

Go to Effects and choose the Noise Reduction...

In this window you can adjust the settings before you apply them.

The filter saves the most recent used settings.

Click Get Noise Profile.

The Audacity analyses the noise for selected segment.

Now let's select the whole record.

I use keyboard shortcuts in Audacity all the time to work faster.

Click Ctrl + A to select all.

Now click Ctrl + R to apply the Noise Reduction to the entire track.

Ctrl + R shortcut is the same as going to Noise Reduction and clicking Okay - but much faster.

Click Space bar keyboard shortcut to play/stop your record.

Usually I sample noise at the beginning and the end of my records to apply for the whole track.

So, let's sample the noise at the end and apply the filter on the whole record as we did previously.

That should remove most of the noise from the record.

Play the record.

Select the beginning part where I hear some clicking noise.

Get Noise profile of that segment.

Click Ctrl +R two - three times to apply the filter in the selected segment only.

Play the record to check the results.

Work the entire record in this fashion to remove noise in every segment you hear it.

Use the mouse to adjust the selected area.

And you can use Ctrl + Z keyboard shortcut to undo changes if necessary.

I use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + R to apply filter 2-3 times on each selected segment.

Now let's listen the record from the beginning.

All sounds clean.

Go to File select Export and than Export as MP3 - I prefer MP3 format.

Select location to save your edited record.

And give the record some meaningful name.

Click Save.

You can add metadata and click OK.

Now we can close Audacity.

I saved the edited file on the desktop.

Right here - next to the raw audio record.

Let's play it one more time.

It sounds clean as it should without background noise.

Now let's use a video editing software to replace the original sound with the clean edited soundtrack.

I can use the edited soundtrack for the video recorded with iPhone or video camera.

Hmm...let's do the video camera file in this example.

I've been using Corel Video Studio for many years to make most of my videos.

I like it and got used to it.

You can use YouTube video editor or any other you like.

The workflow is basically the same in any editor.

Here I loaded the video and the audio files that I want to put together.

Put the video file in the video track.

Let's zoom it a bit for you to see it better.

If I play the video as it is you will hear the audio with the noise as it was recorded originally.

Put the edited audio file in the audio track.

The audio file should be the same length as the video file.

Select the video file and mute it.

Select all tracks and play it.

So we play the muted video with the clean edited audio without background noise.

All sounds and looks good.

Now we can save the muted video with the clean edited audio in the new video file.

Choose the format of the video.

Give it a name and click save.

It takes time to render the new video file.

Also, this video editor allows multiple tracks for videos and audios.

So I could add music for example on the top of my voice and such.

I saved the new video on the desktop.

Here it is.

Play the edited video to check it out.

All sounds great!

There is always one more thing :)

I've been using music in my videos.

Works as a magic to hide the background noise.

The only advise about it...

Use your own music, the one you created and own copyrights on.

Have fun and happy recordings :)