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Resource Thread: Isolating Music and Voices in Star Wars — Page 2

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Alright, I've been looking for some free options for reducing the center channel of the AC3 file some more, and came across KnOckOut, a plugin for Audacity. Placing the center channel above the right channel, I then pulled the center channel to read as a left channel, and pulled the right channel to read as the right channel. This is so Knockout thinks that it is a simple stereo file. Playing with the settings allowed for a really impressive result. Leia's voice is hardly garbled at all, and except for a single errant note, I was hard pressed to hear any music. This is more than sufficient for incorporating into a trailer, methinks.

The only problem was that this didn't work. It only worked when I clicked the "preview" option, which played the first five seconds perfectly. Trying to apply the effect to the whole track did absolutely nothing except amplify the track. So I did what any sane person would do and recorded the five second previews with Windows Audio Recorder and stitched them together in Audacity. Here are the settings, if anyone else is interested in working from the AC3 audio:

Knockout settings for Leia Reconstituted Audio:

Vocals plus music on top, left panned. Right music channel on bottom, right panned.

Select both tracks, start Knockout. Extract Centre off, R input gain 13 dB, Output gain 8 dB, all other settings off.

preview section, record with windows audio recorder.

The moral of this story: It is quite possible to isolate the Leia hologram speech, with some effort.

You probably don’t recognize me because of the red arm.
Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)

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 (Edited)

Not sure if you've seen this thread, but there might be some helpful information here:  http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/The-Prequel-Edit-Problem/topic/15331/

Check out the video from this post: http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/The-Prequel-Edit-Problem/post/637425/#TopicPost637425

http://vimeo.com/65440004

Obviously it does sound weird in places, but it's something.

Anyone remember different camera angles from ROTJ?

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 (Edited)

NeverarGreat said:

Knockout settings for Leia Reconstituted Audio:

Vocals plus music on top, left panned. Right music channel on bottom, right panned.

Select both tracks, start Knockout. Extract Centre off, R input gain 13 dB, Output gain 8 dB, all other settings off.

preview section, record with windows audio recorder.

 

The moral of this story: It is quite possible to isolate the Leia hologram speech, with some effort.

WOW, Nice work! 

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Joel said:

NeverarGreat said:

Knockout settings for Leia Reconstituted Audio:

Vocals plus music on top, left panned. Right music channel on bottom, right panned.

Select both tracks, start Knockout. Extract Centre off, R input gain 13 dB, Output gain 8 dB, all other settings off.

preview section, record with windows audio recorder.

 

The moral of this story: It is quite possible to isolate the Leia hologram speech, with some effort.

WOW, Nice work! 

Now don't be hasty, I'm uploading it now, so you can decide for yourselves whether it's worth the hype.

You probably don’t recognize me because of the red arm.
Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)

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 (Edited)

NeverarGreat said:

Alright, I've been looking for some free options for reducing the center channel of the AC3 file some more, and came across KnOckOut, a plugin for Audacity. Placing the center channel above the right channel, I then pulled the center channel to read as a left channel, and pulled the right channel to read as the right channel. This is so Knockout thinks that it is a simple stereo file. Playing with the settings allowed for a really impressive result. Leia's voice is hardly garbled at all, and except for a single errant note, I was hard pressed to hear any music. This is more than sufficient for incorporating into a trailer, methinks.

The only problem was that this didn't work. It only worked when I clicked the "preview" option, which played the first five seconds perfectly. Trying to apply the effect to the whole track did absolutely nothing except amplify the track. So I did what any sane person would do and recorded the five second previews with Windows Audio Recorder and stitched them together in Audacity. Here are the settings, if anyone else is interested in working from the AC3 audio:

Knockout settings for Leia Reconstituted Audio:

Vocals plus music on top, left panned. Right music channel on bottom, right panned.

Select both tracks, start Knockout. Extract Centre off, R input gain 13 dB, Output gain 8 dB, all other settings off.

preview section, record with windows audio recorder.

 

The moral of this story: It is quite possible to isolate the Leia hologram speech, with some effort.

Makes sense to me completely, example clip?

EDIT: Just saw your post above.

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Wow...that might not be perfect, but for my projects that could be extremely useful!

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Impressive. Most impressive. Especially considering what you had to start with! Even the warble effect/compression artifact you mention, which are not that bad, kind of blend with the filtered sound of the message audio anyway.

“That’s impossible, even for a computer!”

“You don't do ‘Star Wars’ in Dobly.”

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Very nice!

Can you test out this technique on another clip?

You know of the rebellion against the Empire?

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NeverarGreat said:

 

Now don't be hasty, I'm uploading it now, so you can decide for yourselves whether it's worth the hype.

Yep, totally worth the hype! Again, great work! 

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Dude, you're my hero.

 

Warning: Turn your audio down before watching, the quality is horrible.  I screwed up the windows audio recorder settings and I'm out of time, so I'll do a more representative version later.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjdrR3oSh04

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Wow that Leia clip is cool. For most projects music is gonna be added on anyway so the tiny tiny bit of distortion will be covered over anyway. Great Job.

VIZ TOP TIPS! - PARENTS. Impress your children by showing them a floppy disk and telling them it’s a 3D model of a save icon.

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 (Edited)

Your hat is nice.

@ Frink: Your version seems to remove all traces of the music, which is remarkable considering how much louder it is in this scene compared to the Leia Hologram scene. You mentioned that Windows Audio Recorder is whack, have you made sure that it's not using input from a microphone? That messed me up when I tried this approach.

I've made an audio clip from the Phantom Menace AC3, using the exact settings that I've outlined above, except that I increased the amplitude of the right channel by 3.

https://vimeo.com/78791476

Password: toostrong

It has a tinny ring to it as well, and you can still hear the music, but if you're planning on putting other music over it, it may be acceptable.

You probably don’t recognize me because of the red arm.
Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)

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 (Edited)

Here's another attempt, using a clip from TRM that always bugged me and better sound recorder settings.  The one change I made was to increase the output gain to 13db as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klTHFSV6mkk

As with your above example, it's a bit tinny, but in my edits the audio sources vary so greatly that I think it's worth it.

What do you mean when you say you increased the amplitude of the right channel by 3?

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I'd say your new attempt is quite an improvement, and probably not possible to get clean audio in a silent scene.

As to the amplitude change, I'm not sure it matters in any case. I used the Amplify effect in Audacity to make the volume of both tracks similar. The thinking behind it was carried over from when I was trying to cancel out audio by inverting the waveform of the copied audio track, and to successfully cancel the two waveforms they needed to be of equal height. Again, not sure that it matters when using Knockout, but I did the same thing to the Leia hologram speech and it seemed to improve the quality.

You probably don’t recognize me because of the red arm.
Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)

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clashradio said:

I use a program called DVD Audio Extractor. It rips all six tracks as WAV files. Then you can listen to each track and see which one you want to use for background music etc.

Thanks for sharing this! Downloading now. 

 

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Anything else you're doing? I'm planning to create a mix for Star Wars with no music, just SFX and voice.