need help with 2 issues

Mark-Trahan wrote on 4/10/2020, 6:37 PM

Greetings,

I purchased MAGIX Video Sound Cleaning Lab two days ago on April 8th.

I purchased this product primarily to fix the audio on an hour-and-a-half video where the speech part of the audio track is SEVERELY muffled and hard to understand. Interestingly, any music or other background noise seem to sound just fine. For some reason, only the spoken dialogue is muffled.

I'm writing for two reasons:

First, when I loaded the video into MAGIX Video Sound Cleaning Lab and clicked the 'play' button, instead of the video and audio playing normally, it's playing super speeded up !?

Why is it doing that and how do I get it to play normally?

The file is a normal avi file and not some rare and exotic codec.

Second, and this is VERY IMPORTANT...I have no idea on how to fix 'muffled' speech. Can you PLEASE give me some idea on how to fix this muffled speech issue?

I've read online that the treble has to be really brought up, but I don't know how to do that.

Also, if your solution includes using an equalizer, please tell me how to do that as every equalizer I've ever seen has multiple bands from 5 to 10 or so. How would I know which of these multiple bands to raise and/or lower as I've never used an equalizer before?

Here are my computer specs:

[CPU]
cpu="Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q8200 @ 2.33GHz"

[OS]
os="Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate Service Pack 1 64-bit"

[Memory]
memory="Available: 8,387,816 bytes, Free: 4,137,820 bytes"
I do all work on a new 10 TB external hard drive

[Graphics]
g1="NVIDIA GeForce 210 1920x1080"

[Sound]
s1="NVIDIA High Definition Audio (ok)"
s2="NVIDIA Virtual Audio Device (Wave Extensible) (WDM) (ok)"
s3="High Definition Audio Device (ok)"
s4="NVIDIA High Definition Audio (ok)"
s5="NVIDIA High Definition Audio (ok)"
s6="NVIDIA High Definition Audio (ok)"

[Browsers]
b0="Firefox Nightly (Version: 74.0a1)"
b1="Firefox Nightly (Version: 74.0a1)"
b2="Internet Explorer (Version: 8.00.7600.16385 (win7_rtm.090713-1255))"

Any and all help with both of these matters is GREATLY appreciated.

By the way, after my MAGIX Video Sound Cleaning Lab purchase, MAGIX sent me an email about another seemingly similar program called SOUND FORGE Audio Cleaning Lab 2.

Both of these programs sound similar, but would SOUND FORGE Audio Cleaning Lab 2 be better for solving my 'muffled speech' problem?

Thanks again and I look forward to your reply...Mark Trahan

Comments

emmrecs wrote on 4/11/2020, 3:43 AM

@Mark-Trahan

Welcome to the Magix forums.

First, given your problem of the apparently speeded-up playback in VSCL I think it would be helpful if you downloaded and installed the free MediaInfo utility, pointed it at your video file and copied the results of the Text view to any reply you make here. My suspicion is that the audio of your source file was recorded at 44.1kHz, or perhaps even lower, and VSCL will "expect" the footage to be at 48kHz.

However, I honestly do not think the problem of "muffled speech" is totally fixable by any software, either VSCL or even SFACL2. Depending on how much it is muffled you may be able to "improve" it but not "fix" it. In terms of using an equaliser to attempt this, you will need to be prepared to experiment. Open your file (once the speed problem is resolved - once you come back with the MediaInfo data we should be able to suggest how you do that) in VSCL and start playback. I can't remember what equalisation facility VSCL offers but, if it is anything like SFACL2, you will need to select the Mastering tab and open the Parametric EQ which should look something like this:

To attempt to improve muffled audio, concentrate initially on the five "faders" I have highlighted. Start by dragging number 6 slowly upwards and/or slowly sideways whilst always listening to the audio. Do the same with number 5, then 4, and so on. Number 2 may well benefit from being pulled downwards. You will then end up with something that looks a little like this:

Please do not attempt to exactly copy those settings; the screenshot is purely for illustration!

As I said before, be prepared to experiment and for this to take a long time and for success to be limited. "Muffled" audio is among the sound engineer's worst nightmares!

HTH

Please post back and let us know how you get on!

BTW, do you also use one of Magix video editor packages? If so, which one. Much of the above workflow is also applicable to them.

Jeff

Mark-Trahan wrote on 4/13/2020, 11:28 AM

Hey Jeff,

Thank you for both responding to my post as well as the nice welcome to the forums.

I would have responded to your post a couple of days ago, but within hours of my original post I caught a whopper of a flu and was bed ridden for the last two days.

I agree with you and I should have chosen to say 'improve' the quality of the speech as opposed to 'fixing' it.

I just want to more clearly understand what is being said, which I do believe is possible.

Before I post the Mediainfo 'info' (thanks for informing about that handy utility by the way), let me answer your question about whether I also use any of the Magix video editor packages. Not yet, primarily because I'm unfamiliar with them.

A VERY important feature that is a 'must have' for me with regards to video editing is a 'sharpen' option/tool as many videos I work with can be a bit blurry or degraded. It seems every video editor on the face of planet earth has adjustments for brightness, contrast, saturation and hue, but very few also allow you to sharpen a blurry picture. AVS Video Editor has it and interestingly, ConvertXtoDVD also has a very good 'sharpen' feature.

I don't know if any of the Magix video programs have that feature. If any do, I'd definitely be interested.

Anywho, below is the text I'm pasting from Mediainfo:

General
Complete name                            : F:\TV Related\Mini-Series\Chiefs 1983 All Sets\Chiefs Extended Edition from German DVD\Chiefs Part 2.avi
Format                                   : AVI
Format/Info                              : Audio Video Interleave
File size                                : 881 MiB
Duration                                 : 1 h 32 min
Overall bit rate                         : 1 339 kb/s
Writing library                          : Boilsoft Joiner build 2411/release

Video
ID                                       : 0
Format                                   : MPEG-4 Visual
Format profile                           : Simple@L3
Format settings, BVOP                    : No
Format settings, QPel                    : No
Format settings, GMC                     : No warppoints
Format settings, Matrix                  : Default (H.263)
Codec ID                                 : XVID
Codec ID/Hint                            : XviD
Duration                                 : 1 h 32 min
Bit rate                                 : 1 201 kb/s
Width                                    : 640 pixels
Height                                   : 480 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 4:3
Frame rate                               : 25.000 FPS
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Progressive
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.156
Stream size                              : 790 MiB (90%)
Writing library                          : Magic0432

Audio
ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : MPEG Audio
Format version                           : Version 1
Format profile                           : Layer 3
Format settings                          : Joint stereo / MS Stereo
Codec ID                                 : 55
Codec ID/Hint                            : MP3
Duration                                 : 1 h 32 min
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 128 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Sampling rate                            : 44.1 kHz
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Stream size                              : 84.2 MiB (10%)
Alignment                                : Split across interleaves
Interleave, duration                     : 40 ms (1.00 video frame)
Interleave, preload duration             : 500 ms

Hopefully, the above will tell you everything that you need to know.

Thanks very much Jeff and I look forward to yor reply...Mark

emmrecs wrote on 4/13/2020, 1:28 PM

@Mark-Trahan

Hi again. Thanks for the update, hope you are now fully recovered.

From the MediaInfo data certain things strike me immediately:

File size                                : 881 MiB
Duration                                 : 1 h 32 min
Overall bit rate                         : 1 339 kb/s

That is an incredibly small file for a video of that length, but the reason is that bit rate which is much lower than I have ever seen before or, indeed, dealt with! What is the original source of the file? I notice it is XVID, which is a codec I have no experience with but I doubt that accounts for the file size. Hopefully, @johnebaker will see this thread and be able to comment in more detail than I have.

On the audio side I notice two things:

Format                                   : MPEG Audio
Format version                           : Version 1
Format profile                           : Layer 3

= mp3, and

Sampling rate : 44.1 kHz

As I wrote before, VSCL will almost certainly expect 48kHz, but I'm pretty certain you can actually change the Sample Rate settings in VSCL to 44.1kHz, so that should take care of the "speeding up".

However, the fact that the audio format is mp3, rather than .wav, may well be causing additional problems. Do you have any additional software that will convert mp3 to wav? This may not be especially easy to achieve because, ideally perhaps, one would separate the audio from the video, "treat" the audio and then remux the audio and video into one file. There is a free format convertor called Handbrake which should allow you to convert the mp3 to wav, whilst retaining the audio and video as one file.

Returning to your original question about the "muffled" speech, one thing I forgot to make clear before is that, if you test out my advice about the Parametric EQ and use something like those graph settings I showed, it will affect the music as well as the speech. The music could become "tinny" and not wholly pleasant to listen to! Unfortunately, whatever you do will be a compromise, you may be able to "improve" the speech but you will adversely affect the music.

As to video editing software, why not download and install the Trial version of Magix' Movie Edit Pro? You'll find it at this web page. If you decided to buy it the advice here is always to go for the Premium version, which is currently on sale for less than the Plus version! It does include a very useful Sharpening "tool"! And a lot of other very useful features also.

You say your videos are often blurry or degraded. I will guess what you mean by this is that you see a lot of what is termed "Picture noise", artefacts like speckles, lines etc. Is that the case? If so, MEP (Movie Edit Pro) will go some way to helping you remove these but many user here, myself included, have bought the "Neat Video plugin for Magix" which is really quite remarkable in its ability to, at the very least, reduce the appearance of those "noises". I must make clear, it is an add-on to MEP and not cheap!

HTH

Jeff

johnebaker wrote on 4/13/2020, 2:48 PM

@Mark-Trahan

. . . . very few also allow you to sharpen a blurry picture. AVS Video Editor has it and interestingly, ConvertXtoDVD also has a very good 'sharpen' feature. . . . I don't know if any of the Magix video programs have that feature . . . .

Movie Edit Pro (MEP) does have this feature which can be applied to for both individual video and image objects and globally for export.

Additionally if you have the XVID codec installed on your computer MEP can use it for import and export.

Using MEP also means you do not have to use Boilsoft Joiner to join the AVI files .

From the MediaInfo analysis

Boilsoft Joiner build 2411/release
Format settings, Matrix : Default (H.263)
Alignment: Split across interleaves
Width: 640 pixels
Height : 480 pixels

The not so good news is that the recordings you are working with are of very low quality, below that of standard DVD, using an old codec which was not intended for video use and the audio is the wrong 'type' (AVI files have 2 ways of syncing the audio) - the latter may be the cause of the audio being muffled.

Try using DVDate to fix the AVI file.

Because of the low quality of the recordings, sharpening is not going to be limited in what it can achieve, especially if you are going to watch the resulting product on a HD TV.

@emmrecs

Hi Jeff, XVID is a fork off the open source version of DIVX which you may be more familiar with, and is now DIVX biggest rival.

John EB

Mark-Trahan wrote on 4/20/2020, 6:08 PM

Jeff and John,

First, I wanted to thank you both for all your help with my muffled speech video.

After what you guys said about the video rip itself being inferior,I decided to start from scratch.

I did not make the video rip myself. It was done back in 2012. Luckily, I had the original disc that the rip came from, so I re-ripped it myself.

Once I did that, I found it easier to demux the audio from the video as Jeff suggested and just work with the audio file in MAGIX Video Sound Cleaning Lab.

It turns out that MAGIX Video Sound Cleaning Lab has quite a few options, mostly in the 'Mastering' section, to clarify and improve speech.

I've spent the last few days tweaking and tinkering around with those, not only on the original video, but also on another video with the same issue and that's why you guys haven't heard from me until today. I finished last night at around 4:00 a.m.

Once both video's audio tracks were improved to my satisfaction, I muxed them back in and now both videos have a significantly improved sound and speech can be easily understood.

As you guys had mentioned, muffled speech usually can't be completely 'fixed', but it can be improved.

As a side note to the audio issue, I have some forensic audio software that law enforcement people use specifically for making speech clearer. Believe it or not, MAGIX Video Sound Cleaning Lab actually worked better than the forensic software!

As for your suggestion about trying Movie Edit Pro...I did take your suggestion and tried to install it.

I don't know if it's because my computer is outdated or what, but Movie Edit Pro got about ninety nine percent installed when an error window came up saying that it could not start the application.

I'm have a nine year old GATEWAY computer running WINDOWS 7 ULTIMATE SP 1 with a 2 TB hard drive and a 10 TB external drive where I do all of my work. It also has 8 GBs of RAM.

I'd REALLY like to try Movie Edit Pro, but it looks like I may not be able to.

At any rate, I did want to thank both of you guys for the help. I did take your suggestions and my muffled speech audio issue is as improved as I believe that it can get.

Thanks so much again and I look forward to the possibility of 'speaking' with one or both of you again in the near future...Mark

emmrecs wrote on 4/21/2020, 4:03 AM

@Mark-Trahan

Many thanks for the update! Glad to hear you have been able to "improve" the muffled audio.

Sorry to hear about the problems installing MEP. I think you may be right about the age/hardware of your computer being the limiting factor but I'm really not sure. @johnebaker, any thoughts?

Jeff

johnebaker wrote on 4/21/2020, 8:15 AM

@Mark-Trahan

. . . . age/hardware of your computer being the limiting factor . . . .

More than likely however:

. . . . have a nine year old GATEWAY computer. . . .

What is the full specification of the PC - see this topic for the required information . . . .

John EB