Film Crackle Sound Effect

[Michele Firmasyah]

Hithere! I've been struggling for finding a proper way to create that retro audio that when you hear it, you know you're watching an 80's or backwards movie. I'm not referring about the "vintage radio" effect, which is the only thing I've found on the Internet when looking for a retro audio effect, but that high saturated sound that I don't know how to achieve, something like this: =_8AzKj5qlp0

So basically I would like to know how to make my audio sound like that, you can hear the audio quality that I mean on 70's and 80's movie trailers, specially the grindhouse style ones. I know it must be something really easy, but I've played around with the different audio effects on both Premiere and Audition and I'm unable to find it.

I've had to do this a number of times and have found a free plugin called "Isotope Vinyl" useful. As the name implies, it's actually designed to make audio sound like old records but, but playing with the various options, you can get various forms of noise, crackle and clicks.. iZotope Vinyl: Free Vinyl Simulator Plug-in Free AAX, VST, AU Plug-in

Mostly this is about compression, and having all of the dynamics squashed out of the sound - but also you need to restrict the frequency range, to cut off everything above about 9-10 kHz and some of the bass. Specifically how you achieve the classic 'movie' sound is slightly more complicated than that, and you need to understand about the 'academy curve', which dictates what the actual response curve is.

It's not that difficult to achieve within Audition, but there's actually more than one curve you can apply - depends on how far you want to go. The later curve leaves slightly more of the higher frequencies in, and generally sounds 'cleaner' to my ears, but how far you go is up to you. Anyway, the basic information about this is here: Welcome Secrets of Home Theater and High Fidelity

Apropos of nothing, here's a short clip I did for a theatre production a few years back. It starts off with the sound and lighting (and the actors were inside what looked like a cinema screen) than morphs into live action. Dr X Open.mp3 - Box

But I gotta say this Isotope Vinyl one looks pretty nice for me, also gives the option of giving different scratches and dust sound effects, and that's cool. I've made some tests with this plugin and also putted in practice what you guys have been talking about of the EQ and so, and I like how the effect looks (or better said, sounds) like.

I can make the audio crackling disappear in the editor by increasing the buffer size in the program settings/playback, but whenever I export the movie, it gets some heavy crackling sounds on a particular part of the movie with a thunder sound, regardless of the buffer settings I define, which includes bringing the 'Preview size and 'Multitrack size' to maximum and increasing the parallel track optimization from 0 to 20.

I've lowered the audio to make sure it's not due to clipping and have changed the export settings in multiple ways. No matter what, I cannot export the movie without the audio problem described. I've tried the video file with Vegas and Davinci Resolve and it works without any problem, which tells me that something is wrong with Movie Edit Pro v21.

I have all drivers up to date and I've wasted a full day around this problem. Can someone please provide any assistance?

Thank you.

Download and install MediaInfo and analyse one of the video clips that causes the crackle, or if audio file(s) these, and post the results, see this tutorial if you are not familiar with MediaInfo on how to setup MediaInfo and analyse a video clip.

If the buffer settings are OK and you are not hearing crackling in the editor than the sound is OK within the editor but that is using a 32 bit sound engine and almost impossible to clip or distort the sound.

Alternatively in your export settings you may not have the best quality audio sampling rate and thunder is a wide spectrum spread pink noise requiring as high a sampling and bit rate as the program will allow. (48kHz 192 kbs.) Even then you will lose a bit of quality as audio the file format used is not lossy. You may not hear much difference though.

The amount of buffers used for audio beyond a certain point where it sounds OK in the editor will not give you any further benefit in regards to the rendered output. Nor will bringing the 'Preview size and 'Multitrack size' to maximum and increasing the parallel track optimization from 0 to 20 as that is there for another purpose entirely.

1 x 250GB Evo 970 NVMe: drive for C: drive backup 1 x 1TB Sabrent NVMe drive for Operating System / Programs only. 1X WD BLACK 1TB internal SATA 7,200rpm hard drives.1 for internal projects, 1 for Library clips/sounds/music/stills./backup of working projects. 1x500GB SSD current project only drive, 2x WD RED 2TB drives for latest footage storage. Total 21TB of 8 external WD drives for backup.

Thank you for the replies. I made a video to fully demonstrate the issue, I think it is easier this way. As it turns out, the issue is still present on the editor, it is just less noticeable with increased buffer size.

You will see the sound playing slowly solo without any problems, then, in a crossfade with some crackling, and then the same audio playing together in 2 tracks, with the same issue. I've lowered the master volume considerably and lowered the volume of each track to around -5db. It really doesn't matter how much I lower it, I can always hear the cracklings.

@johnebaker

The audio is part of the video recording; I didn't add or change it; both video and audio were recorded by OBS.

What I find interesting is that this seems to happen with low frequencies, like explosions, thumping footsteps, or thunders, and they really don't need to be loud at all.

Also, the crackling is random. I don't get the same cracking sounds in the exact same spot whenever I playback it.

If needed, I could send the original footage.

Thank you.

Can you post a still image of the timeline with it zoomed in both vertically and horizontally to show about 10 secs of the video where the transition occurs with the waveform showing on the audio, as shown in the example below

I am not completely sure how how the program handles audio but it is more important to the program that it be accurate to the frame than cutting the audio wave at a zero crossover point, volume wise, so could be the result of the click,

I suggest try making two wave file copies with the front and end volume faded by a couple of frames. Use the Export as wav file option (16 bit 48kHz) and label them Thunder one and thunder two (or whatever). That way there is no really sudden volume change at either end of the files and the files have separate memory addresses to be read from when loaded to ram for use. That should alleviate any possible problems with the file being misread from the project drive ans any possible problems caused by not having a zero volume crossover point.

It may not work but worth seeing if it does. Video editors don't always handle sound the same way dedicated audio editors do and I have sometimes found the differences to be problematic. The method I have outlined has worked for me in the past with similar sounds but I do the sound editing preparation of the sound clips in a dedicated DAW first to allow me to work at higher bit depths, then import the files into the editing program, sometimes doing the mixing back and forth between the programs to reduce the amount of sound files in use.

The files in the image above do not have the volume handles moved inward as that was done when I blended the original files together and remixed them for the initial timings. Neither the beginning or end of the file ends in a loud volume as the volume curve was adjusted in a prior mix-down when the files were separate.. The cut in the middle was done after to alter the speed and frequency of the last wand as I wanted to slow down that last burst of energy coming from the wand tip.

@johnebaker

Hello again,

Here is a demo project with the original file, showing the problematic crossfading section.

=share_link

@CubeAce

Yes, it has clipping at the end because I cropped the media in Movie Editor for demonstration purposes without caring how it would end. Regardless, the crackling happens multiple times throughout the crossfading/playback of the 2 files together, as heard in the video.

My struggle is over! I built my (now) system 2 in 2011 when DV was king and MPEG 2 was just coming onto the scene and I needed a more powerful system to cope. Since then we've advanced to MP4 and to bigger and bigger resolutions. I was really suffering, not so much in editing (with proxies) but in encoding, which just took ages. A video, with Neat Video noise reduction applied, would encode at 12% of film speed. My new system 1 does the same job at 160% of film speed. Marvellous. I'm keeping my old system as a capture station for analogue video tapes and DV.

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