Tutorial: Noise Reduction Using Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe Audition

Adobe Premiere Pro is a video editing application that supports high resolution video editing, Audio Sample level editing, and Surround Sound mixing. Beyond that, Premiere also has the ability to support 3D video editing utilizing 2D monitors. Audition is a supplement to Premier in that it allows for more extensive and technical audio modification. They are both part of the Adobe Creative Cloud application suite.

Premiere is my personal favorite Video editing software because the ease of use once an understanding has been achieved and the fact that it functions extremely reliably. I prefer it to iMovie.It offers more functions in video editing, and is more reliable as far as post production work; it can also be accessed on both MACs and Windows OSs.

I recommend the use of Premiere for any Digital Humanities projects focused on videography as well as any other video focused projects. One might use Premiere for editing videos such as time-lapses, documentaries, infographic video, and instructional videos. Personally, I prefer video and photography as my modes of presentation because I’m more of a visual person and I don’t think anything gets an idea across as well as having people lay there eyes on it.

For this Tutorial, I wanted to focus on the Audio editing portion of video editing because its the part that often gets forgotten or people find confusing. I focused on Noise Reduction, because that’s the most common issue I recognize when watching peer and semi-professional videos.

In video editing, Noise is any audio present in your video that is unintentional and unwanted. It usually presents itself in the sound of an AC or Radiator working in the background. The best way to prevent Noise is to film in an area without any or very little of it. Sometimes, however, it’s unavoidable. My goal is to provide a guide on how to reduce Noise in Premiere through Audition, if and when it occurs.

STEPS

1. Go through either parts of your video or the entire thing, listening specifically for Noise.
2. If you notice the presence of Noise, select (right click) the Audio Clip, and in the pop-up menu select “Open in Adobe Audition.”
3. In Adobe Audition find 4-5 seconds of the video where there is no one speaking but the Noise is present and highlight it by right clicking and sliding your cursor along.
   1. As a preemptive measure, if you notice, before or during, filming Noise in your environment, feel free to film just the Noise for around ten seconds at the start or end of the video to make this step easier.
4. Select “Effects” > “Noise Reduction/Restoration” > “Noise Reduction Process” > “Capture Noise Print;” and then close the opened tab.
5. De-select the highlighted portion.
6. Select the entire audio clip using “Command + A” on a MAC and “Ctrl + A” on a Windows.
7. Select “Effects” > “Noise Reduction/Restoration” > “Noise Reduction Process;” in the tab adjust the Noise Reduction level to between 60% and 80% (Anything more is likely to significantly distort other sound).
8. Quit Audition, making sure to select “Yes” when prompted to save.
9. Watch the video listening for any distortions, if there are any, go back to Audition and adjust the Reduction up or down to a level that sounds the cleanest without distorting the audio.

Steps are shown in the video below (No audio present in the video)

Additional Links

For more information on the Noise Reduction Setting you can watch the video below. AND you can access the Adobe Audition Noise Reduction Tutorial Page and video from this link.