Audio Editing Overview

If you are capturing video from an old video cassette or are using low quality audio cables, there is a chance that your captured video file will have a noticeable hiss during playback.  To correct this problem you can use the demo version of a program called Cool Edit 2000.  (You can get this from my Software page.)  Cool Edit 2000 has many powerful audio processing filters that enable you to remove unwanted background noise without noticeably affecting the audio quality.  Additionally, you can use Cool Edit 2000 to silence unwanted portions of audio, fade the audio in/out, and normalize the sound (adjust the volume level).

How to Check for Hiss In Your Audio

1)  Run VirtualDub, go to File - > Open Video File, make sure the "Automatically detect and load additional segments" box is checked, and open the file you just captured in AVI_IO.  (The file name you want to open is usually "capture.00.avi".)  

2)  Press the Play button with the little "I" to begin watching your captured video.  Adjust your computer's volume control so that you can clearly hear the audio of the video that is playing.

3)  Listen for a hiss that is present throughout your entire video.  You can most easily identify the hiss by listening to portions of your video where there should be complete silence.  Please note that if you have a slower computer, playback of the audio may be choppy.

4)  If you hear a hiss, you should probably use Cool Edit 2000 to remove the hiss.  If the hiss is unnoticeably quiet or not present at all, you might choose to skip using Cool Edit 2000.

If you would like to use Cool Edit 2000 to eliminate background noise (hiss), normalize your audio (adjust the volume level), fade the audio in/out, or silence unwanted portions of audio, read the following section, entitled Audio Editing.

If you do not want to fix up your audio, you may continue to my Low Resolution Video Processing page or my High Resolution Video Processing page.