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Reduce noise in video and clean up the audio

Cut fan hum, rumble and background noise, make speech clearer and balance the level. The audio-cleaning steps in Weditra, from one click to fine control.

A nicely shot video is often spoiled by its sound: air-conditioner hum, a computer fan, traffic, a weak microphone. The good news is that much of this can be reduced afterwards. The honest news is that no tool turns a bad recording into a studio one. The goal is to make it comfortable to listen to.

The quickest way: Quick fix

  1. Select the audio or video clip on the timeline.
  2. In the right panel, open the Audio tab and press the Clean up voice chip under Quick fix. It aims for clean, even speech in one click.
  3. The Balance level chip evens out the loudness.
  4. Listen to the preview. If you don’t like it, undo.

More control: the Audio tab

  1. Select the clip and open the Audio tab.
  2. In the Basic sub-tab, use Clean up the sound. It removes low rumble, mains hum (50/60 Hz, detected from the sound itself), clicks and noise.
  3. A cleaned copy is made in the background. The preview and the export play the same copy, so what you hear is what you get.
  4. For individual control, Advanced has Rumble, Hum (automatic or manual), Repair clipping and Remove clicks.

All steps run on one copy in a fixed order: rumble, hum, clipping, clicks, noise, speech levelling.

Reduce noise: pick a level

In Professional mode, Reduce noise has three levels:

  • Light: changes the speech the least.
  • Medium: the balanced choice for most recordings.
  • Strong: removes the most noise but changes the speech a little more.

The character of the noise is measured from the sound, so choose by situation: a fan, traffic or a roomy echo. Start with Medium; if the voice sounds underwater, go down one level.

Balance the level

If the speech is a whisper in one place and a shout in another, two tools help:

  • Even out speech brings the quiet and loud parts closer together. It also lifts room noise between words, so it works best together with cleaning.
  • Balance the level measures the clip and brings it to −14 LUFS, never exceeding −1 dBTP. That’s a sensible target for social media.

If the volume is changing through keyframes, remove the keyframes first; the tool tells you so.

When there’s music

For talking over music, use Duck music under speech in Smart tools: the music dips automatically where someone speaks and comes back up afterwards.

When you export

Prevent clipping puts a soft limiter on the output so the mix can’t go past 0 dB and distort. It’s on by default in new projects and you hear the same thing in the preview.

Tips

  • Reducing noise at the shoot is always easier: move the microphone closer, switch off the air conditioner and the fan.
  • Listen to the same spot before and after, and choose the level by ear.
  • Clean the sound before making captions; recognition gets better. See the automatic subtitles guide.

The full list of audio tools is on the Pro tools page.

FAQ

Is my original audio changed? No. A cleaned copy is made, and every step can be undone.

Is audio sent anywhere? No. Everything runs on your computer.

Can a very bad recording be rescued? It improves to a degree, but if the recording is very poor the result stays limited; re-record if you can.

Weditra is free with no watermark; see the Download page for the Windows version.

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