I create videos. I use Audacity when my video editing software doesn’t have enough possibilities to improve upon poor sound.
I just purchased a new laptop and downloaded Audacity to it. I realized that there are free plugins.
Which plugins should I choose?
Echo Indoors respectively wind noise outdoors often occur. Sometimes clippings. That are the most common problems.
No, I need nothing for Music Creation. I am almost tone deaf, so I typically ask somebody else to give me some Music to my videos.
A lot of these problems can’t be fixed. 
Pros still record in soundproof studios and TV & radio stations are soundproof, etc. With “on location” news they often get noise and other problems (which there isn’t time to fix anyway) and those problems show-up on-air.
A wind sock on an outdoor mic can reduce wind noise but it’s not “perfect”.
There is a “clip fix” effect and it should help if you have “clean” digital clipping but there is no way of knowing the original unclipped wave height or shape.
There are some new AI plug-ins that MIGHT help with noise, and AI is getting smarter everyday! Some non-Audacity AI may help too, but I don’t know.
Nice that you want to help me.
OK, I should had told more details about my situation.
Yes, I put a “dead cat” on my shotgun microphone when I use it outdoors.
No, it is not realistic for me to film in a studio.
Yes, I know that clippings means that information is lost, so solving that problem means that the computer program must guess what is missing.
OK, the newest version of Audacity has a clippings fixing. That was news for me because on my old computer I have used an older version of Audacity. And I also noticed in one of your links “Audacity plugins such as Clip Fix”.
About the other link. I guess you mean “Noise Suppression” from Intel OpenVINO.
Get yourself a 32-bit float recorder, and record with it alongside your video. You can find cheap ones as low as $100US. They were created for situations like yours.
Of course… I just mentioned that so you’ll understand why you aren’t getting pro-studio results.
Close micing (lapel mics, etc.) might also help in some situations.
Clip Fix has been built-into Audacity as long as I can remember. Just to make sure we’re talking about the same thing… Clipping is regular “overload distortion”. You get clipping if you try to go over 0dBFS digitally, or if you try to get 110 Watts out of a 100W amplifier, etc.
Or as Wrecks0 says, a 32-bit floating-point recorder can go over 0dB without clipping (and Audacity uses floating-point internally so Audacity itself essentially has no upper or lower limits).
Thanks for reminding me about 32-bit float recorder. I am not a tech nerd, so I don’t know everything.
So I should connect my Rode NTG1
to such a recorder rather than to the camcorder’s 48 Volt phantom power?
Lapel mics. Sure, we used them when I administrated a large number of studio interviews at a television station about 20 years ago.
With my present situation, shotgun mics are preferable. And I have used those large microphones one puts close to others when I have interviewed strangers.
Sure, I should check that clip fix is included in the edition of Audacity I just downloaded.
You probably will not be able to plug that microphone into one of the cheap $100 field recorders. You will need one of the most expensive 32-bit field recorders to do that.
You probably wouldn’t plug a $250 microphone into a $100 recorder anyway.
Thanks for further comments.
I realized that I may have expressed myself poorly.
Like everyone else, I have problems with sound recordings.
Some problems I have easily corrected already with my old equipment.
But echo means problems. And when it comes to wind noise, sometimes the problem is too big.
Clippings is a smaller problem. Often I connect the microphone with a y-cable. With different volume settings for Channel 1 and Channel 2.
In most cases that is enough to minimize the problem, but anybody can have bad luck.
When it comes to using a 32-bit float recorder. My projects typically mean that I make about 1,000 video recordings.
If I start to use a separate sound recorder, I would presumably have to synchronise in my editing computer.
Or is there some way to synchronise during filming?
By the way, I can’t find the clipping correction. Possibly the reason is that I have Audacity in my native language. Where am I supposed to find it?
Dear friends,
Since I didn’t find the clipping tool, I asked AI. Now I understand why I have earlier not found it. The tool was translated as “åtgärda klipp”, which one normally interprets to mean “repair the whole file”. It would had been better to write “åtgärda distortion”. Because “distortion” is what one normally calls clipping in my native language.
And I decided to check for some 32-bit float recorder. I found the Zoom H4essential, which costs the same as my shotgun microphone. I guess that is the one to buy if I decide to buy, but please correct me if I have misunderstood.
If I were doing what you are doing, the H4essential is probably the one I would buy.
Don’t buy the Bluetooth timecode accessory unless your video camera supports it. If you use a clapboard at the beginning of each recording, you won’t need it.
Yes, I have a clapboard.
Fun you would mention Bluetooth, because it was developed here in Lund, the city where I live, so I once visited the place.
After posting I also found the Zoom H1 XLR, but for that one it is harder to find a retailer in my country.
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