Hi,
I'm editing a video shot with a relatively cheap camera in a hotel conference room. It was shot using the camera's mike. The speaker at the conference is sitting at a table, which was situated relatively far from the camera, while the audience and exit door are much closer to the mike. As a result, the speaker's voice is very soft and I have to bring it up a lot to be audible. This also increases background noise and I've had to reduce it often two to three times at least, which then also resulted in the speaker's voice becoming distorted. In addition, there are background noises such as the murmur of people talking in another room, glasses clinking, coughs, paper being crumbled etc, all much closer to the mike and thus already very loud, but made even louder by bringing up the sound of the speaker's voice.
Question is, how can I get the best possible sound out of this audio? Ideally, the background noises would be eliminated or greatly reduced and the speaker's voice would be nice and clear. I know that's probably hard to do with what I've got, but does anyone have any sound editing tips that might help? Is there a better way to reduce background noise than capturing a noise print, so that it doesn't make the speaker's voice too robotic? What about the other background noises (coughs, crumbling paper, voices), especially those that are right on top of the speaker's words? Or is this pretty much a hopeless case?
I don't have audition, just Premiere Pro CS4 and Soundbooth.
Thanks for any tips!