Hi, First let me just say, that I am no sound engineer, so any assistance has to be at a layperson level please.
I have videos of myself hiking through the Australian bush. I narrate as I am going, but I am finding, particularly when walking fire trails, that the sound of my feet on the gravel overwhelms the voice.
What filters can I use to lower the low frequencies of the crunching but either keep or enhance the voice frequencies. I have tried experimenting, but without much success.
I tried to reproduce an audio file that would sound like yours.
A man talking and the sound of a person walking on gravel.
I’m no expert either, but I would recommend you try the Equalizer: Parametric filter and use one of the bands to try to isolate and mute as best as you can the walking frequency. In my file, it’s somewhere between 1,200.0 Hz and 1,300.0 Hz. But reducing the dB level of this range of frequency also changes the sound of the voice. It seams that both the voice and the foot steps share the same area of the spectrum.
Of course, your voice will be different and the sound of the footsteps too so by playing around with the frequency and bandwidth maybe you’ll be luckier than me.
Here’s what my tests sounds like. It’s not great, but it’s a slight improvement.
By the way, here’s the audio file I used, in case anyone else want to give it a try: techmoan-walk.zip (566.4 KB)
I had to ZIP it because the forum doesn’t accept audio files
I agree with MusicalBox that the “Equalize”-filter might propably be the best here, also beeing no sound expert. The advantage of the filter is that you can choose the frequency bandwidth that you want to lower. But the problem is, that walking on gravel can produce a broad spectrum of noise either, so it might be rather difficult and needs a lot of try and error. The best for outdoor shooting is always to use a separate mic with some kind of fur cover to reduce any wind noise
