Audio editing question: removing an unwanted cough from a soundtrack

[lolachrome]

Hi all--I'm hoping someone might be able to guide me in the right direction to resolve this problem. I want to make a vid with a piece of music that is only available in live performance. The live performance that I want to use includes someone coughing at a couple of inopportune times; I really want those coughs out of there. I'm editing on a mac

Comments

[ext_219574]

That sounds quite difficult. Coughs are hard to peg down frequency-wise, and almost all editing is based on frequencies. The 'usual' method for dealing with a cough is to just cut that bit out and paste in some empty room noise. What you can try is something like a Band Pass Filter, use trial and error to target the main frequency of the cough and reduce only that narrow band. If that filters out too much of the music, you can try layering in a snippet of another recording of the song if it matches in timing well enough, and that additional music track would bump up any instrumental dBs that got hit by the Band Pass Filter.

[lolachrome]

That makes sense and gives me a place to start. Doesn't sound easy, but I'll give it a try and see what I can do! Thank you very much for the advice!