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I record my class lectures with a digital recorder. However, they are very, very difficult to listen to because it also picks up a lot of other noise-- people sniffling, shuffling papers, bumping, breathing, everything. On tv shows and movies they always show a scene where they have a digital recording ( usually of a voice) but they can't make out what's on it because it's too busy. Then they clean up the extra noise in a manner of seconds, and they can hear perfectly what they were trying to hear.
What is this procedure called? Can I take my recordings somewhere for them to do this for me and how much would it cost? Can I hire someone if there's not a store to take them to? I plan to listen to these lectures many times and keep them my whole life so I am willing to spend money on this.
I've never used it but I heard Audacity is a good (free) audio editing sw that can remove unwanted noise from your recordings. I'm sure there are many good paid ones as well (Adobe,etc).
On tv shows and movies they always show a scene where they have a digital recording ( usually of a voice) but they can't make out what's on it because it's too busy.
Often what you see on TV especially in particular where video is concerned where they take a video and zoom in is just not realistic. There is a lot you can do to enhance digital files no matter what they are but there is also limitations, the limitations here is it's all on one track. The example I like to use with photos when trying to remove dust from scans is the software doesn't know the difference between dust on the surface of the image or something like snow flakes captured in the image. The same issue exists here.
Download Audacity as suggested above, it comes with a lot of filters. Since your situation is not unique research for what filters and settings to use, you should find some good examples of how to use it. Don't expect to remove all of the background noise but you will be able to minimize it.
If you want to hire someone to do this you basically need a sound engineer and there isn't exactly a plethora of people with those skills. You can try contacting the people at digitalfaq.com, he does lot of excellent video restoration work and I know he dabbles with audio too. If they aren't interested they might know someone that is. It's not going to be cheap especially if it's just a couple of recordings. Locally I'd inquire at the nearest music instrument store.
If it were just quiet or white noise it would be an easy fix but people breathing/coughing/sneezing/shuffling papers...someone would have to listen to the whole lecture and manually fix issues to make it sound better (if it's even fixable). You'd be paying out the wazoo for something like that.
Maybe just ask the professor if you could leave your recorder near his desk for the entirety of the lesson. Or ask if he would be willing to record and upload the lectures himself.
Or sneak into the classroom before it starts and hide it in a plant or something, haha.
"On tv shows and movies they always show a scene where they have a digital recording ( usually of a voice) but they can't make out what's on it because it's too busy. Then they clean up the extra noise in a manner of seconds, and they can hear perfectly what they were trying to hear.
What is this procedure called? "
Movie magic. As an example of how it is done, the actors might have lavalier mikes on them, and another mike is in the room picking up ambient noise as well as the conversation. In the first scene, the ambient mike is played hot. In the second it is mixed down and the lavaliers are dominant.
Aside from the suggestions adyn has, there are shotgun mikes and parabolic mikes. You could experiment with stuffing your digital recorder in a Pringles can or some other can you have lined with foam and then aiming the open end at the prof.
As already stated, there is no magic tool that just makes everything instantly super-clear like they do on TV. It takes a lot of hard work and even then, there are limitations to cutting out background noise.
You can probably make it legible through EQ and noise filters but it won't be pretty sounding.
You'll still hear other people talking over the guy no matter what filters you use if it's in the source material. The best you can do in that case is find the frequency of the guy's voice on the EQ and isolate part of it that isn't being shared by other people as best as you can. Unfortunately, the EQ plugin on Audacity is pretty rudimentary from what I remember. I'm not sure it could do it... at least not very well.
I'd start by cutting out everything above 3,500 Hz (3.5 kHz) and everything below 750 Hz on the EQ. That should at least help cut out a lot of people sniffing, breathing, ambient room tones, etc.
This is just one of the unfortunate facts of life when recording in uncontrolled environments.
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