Monday, June 13, 2005

Can you the fix the audio on a VHS tape my sister recorded?

Q: Hi there Chris. My name is Justine. I have a question about a home video that I have on VHS format. My sister in-law has a birthday coming up and I thought I could try to do something for her. She took her video camera ( I am not sure what kind, but I can find out ) with her when she went to visit the set of her favorite T.V. show and got loads of behind the scenes stuff, but unfortunately she didn't know much about film or anything of that nature so the sound is pretty bad. She was pretty crushed when she got back home, transfered the film to VHS, and took it to my house to show me. The whole experience was nothing but, 'What are they saying?'. Here is my question. For her birthday ( June ) I would like to see if I can enhance the sound enough that we can hear what the actors are saying. Unfortantly the tape is mostly outdoors so that might be a problam, but I am not looking for perfect sound here. Just enough to understand the dialogue and make my sister very happy. Is there any possible way?
Thanks, Justine

A: Hmmmmm... I think it would be very difficult to enhance the sound. It might be possible to boost certain parts of the soundtrack, but everything on it would be louder, you wouldn't be able to hear dialogue or comments made by people.

The problem is that the microphone on the camera is specifically designed to pick up everything around it, so things closest to the microphone will be louder than anything far away, no matter what you do. Sorry that I couldn't give you happier news.