How do I Clean Up Audio?

Noise Reduction removes background noise from a video's sound, such as fans, air conditioning, electrical hum and room noise. You can compare the original and cleaned sound before applying anything.

Applying noise reduction re-encodes the clip's audio only. The video is copied across untouched.

Before You Start

• The video must have finished processing. Otherwise the panel says This clip is encoding. Noise reduction can be set once it finishes.
• Its original file must still exist. If it was deleted, the panel says The original for this clip was deleted to free up space, so there is nothing left to clean up.
• The channel needs storage for the re-encode.

Open Noise Reduction

1. In the Media Library, click the video to open its preview.
2. Under Audio Stream, find Noise Reduction.
3. Switch on Clean up background noise.

Choose a Method

Method	Good for
Automatic	Speech and interviews. Nothing to tune
Manual	Music, a choir, or anything the automatic method harms

Automatic

• What is on this recording: choose the option that matches the material:

  • Voice, recorded room
  • Speech, recorded room
  • Voice, general noise
  • General audio, recorded room
  • General audio, general noise

  "Recorded room" options expect the noise of a real space; "general noise" options are broader.

• Strength: how much of the cleaned sound is used.

⚠️ Automatic can damage music

The voice and speech options are trained on voices. On sustained music, such as a choir or an instrumental bed, they treat the performance as noise and will damage it. Use Manual for music.

Manual

• Kind of noise: Broadband (fans, hiss, air), Vinyl or Shellac.
• Reduction strength: how far down to push what's identified as noise. Above 20, listen for a watery, burbling sound around voices: past that point the side effects are usually worse than the noise.
• Noise floor: the level treated as noise. Set it below the recording's own noise level and nothing is removed. If you're unsure, click Measure this clip.
• Advanced: Residual floor, and Follow noise as it changes. Switch that on for air conditioning that cycles or a room that fills up. Off means one fixed noise profile for the whole clip.

Measure the Clip

Click Measure this clip to analyse a minute of the recording, starting a third of the way in. The panel shows the clip's noise floor and peaks, for example floor -34 dB · peaks -3 dB, to guide your Noise floor setting.

Remove Rumble and Hum

These work with either method:

• Low rumble: removes wind, air conditioning and desk thumps, which sit below the voice. Above about 150 Hz, deeper voices start to lose their body.
• Electrical hum: removes the steady buzz from mains power. Choose 50 Hz in Nigeria, Europe and most of Asia, 60 Hz in the Americas, or None.
• Catch peaks after cleaning: evens out sudden loud peaks after the noise is removed.

Compare Before and After

Nothing is saved while you experiment.

1. In Listen from, choose where in the clip to listen.
2. Click Original to hear 15 seconds of the untouched sound from that point.
3. Click Cleaned to hear the same 15 seconds with your settings.
4. Adjust the settings and listen again until you're happy.

Apply Noise Reduction

Click Apply & re-encode. The clip goes back to Queued, then processes again.

The button says	Meaning
Apply & re-encode	You've changed the settings. Click to apply them
Remove & re-encode	You've switched cleaning off. Click to re-encode without it
Queueing…	The re-encode is being started
Applied	The clip already has these settings
No changes	There's nothing new to apply

• Downloads: re-encoding deletes the clip's MP4 download. Generate it again afterwards. See How do I Download Media as MP4?.
• If the re-encode is refused: for example, because the channel is out of storage, your settings are still saved. Apply them again once there's room.