Original topic post is from Need help fixing attenuated audio...
Re: Re: Need help fixing attenuated audio...
Do you have a link to that video? I bet they're not working with "recorded distortion", just audio that clips but didn't "record" the distortion. You're camera recorded the distortion as your sound, and it is not be generated by clipping in STP.
You will only see the meters clip if the audio goes over 0db. Your audio was not recorded that high, it was compressed, but still recorded with the digital clipping. This is a HUGE MAJOR HORRID side effect of in-camera ATT. It doesn't stop clip distortion when the audio goes over, it records that, then afterwards compresses it so it doesn't physically go over 0db or whatever that specific camera was built to do. Good news, camera makes have auto-attenuation on their features list. Bad news, it doesn't work worth a gosh darned for anything. Why attenuate if you're going to "record the distortion" anyway? It should be illegal, IMHO, for camera makers to include this feature/curse in their products.
There is no way to get rid of it in post. It is recorded that way, the data you need was lost. It is just like if I shoot something really bright, and there are portions really blown out as way too bright. I will NEVER get that over blown bright section to look normal. The image data is just blobs of white, nothing else. Same for audio. Once distortion is "recorded" to the file, that's it, you recorded distortion, not clean sound, you can't fix it. I'm very sorry.
You can use EQ to try to patch it up as best as you can, but "recorded distortion" can not be eliminated.
Lesson learned, it is always MANDATORY to monitor the audio properly during shooting, or you risk so many things going wrong and rendering your audio totally unusable.
There is iZotope RX which can help more than anything else, but it won't remove all the distortion, it may not be able to do anything depending on how bad it is, and it is very, very expensive. Any chance I can hear a sample of this audio, raw from the camera?