AC vs. AI

I've been working on a video for the Household of Faith Deliverance Worship Center. It will star members of the church talking about its history and will be shown at their anniversary celebration at the end of the year.

The video shoot was held at the church last month, on June 22, a 98° day. When we started, there was an air conditioner rumbling away at the back of the room. I recorded the first segments hoping the AC was far enough away that the microphones wouldn't pick it up.

Then I thought better of it and turned it off. It was hot in there, but the participants were eager to make this a great video. There was a lot of sweating, but no complaints. I made sure the AC was back on whenever we weren't shooting.

Afterwards, I found that the audio without the AC sounds great, but that first part, with the AC running, sounds like this:

I did some research into removing air conditioner noise from audio tracks and discovered what I needed was an AI function called Voice Isolation; AI analyzes an audio track, removing everything it doesn't identify as a human voice. Unfortunately, Adobe Premiere (what I use) doesn't have it yet.

There are several audio editing programs available that include it. I asked the Route22 group about it at our last meeting and was told that editing suite DaVinci Resolve has it, but only in the Studio version, not the free version.

Having used the free version, I know DaVinci is great for improving audio and color. So I bought DaVinci Studio, installed it, and pressed the Voice Isolation button.

The result is amazing. The AC is 100% gone, leaving the voices unmarred. I added some reverb to match it to the segments with the AC turned off and now I can't tell the difference.

AI saved this project from a muffled fate. The noise reduction functions I'd normally use aren't nearly as effective as flat out separating one sound from another.

I know Peter Jackson used AI to enhance audio for The Beatles: Get Back, but didn't realize until now that the software became widely available last year. Until the terminators show up, you won't hear me complaining about AI.