Removing sounds from a Track.

[can]

First, I am using version 2.1.1 and my OS is Windows 10.

I have cut out a song from a movie that I can’t find to buy online or as a CD, the soundtrack was never released. I want to remove the movie voices from the song, while leaving the song vocals in intact.

I have cut the whole movie down to about 2:40 minutes of what I want to keep, with four tracks, the movie came in a ac3 file with six tracks. The tracks I have are Mostly sounds (the song I want to keep) Left, right, Movie voices, and base.

After playing the song over and over again, while also playing around with the Movie voices track, I have found that the voices seem to spill over during the first 30 seconds and I can see them on the graph, while playing.

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I’ll try and say this another way, I have two tracks with a song I want to keep, but it has a some voices in the background. I do have another track with ‘JUST’ the voices.

How can I removed the spoken voices using the track three or the voice only track as a base?

[steve]

You “may” be able to make some improvement using the new “Vocal Reduction and Isolation” effect http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/vocal_reduction_and_isolation.html
You will need to know how to split and join stereo tracks: http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/splitting_and_joining_stereo_tracks.html

The idea is that you make a stereo track with “music + voice” in one channel and “voice only” in the other channel.

Initially you would just set the two mono tracks so that one is Left and the other is Right (see “Mono, Left Channel and Right Channel”: http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/audio_track_dropdown_menu.html#Splitting_and_Joining_Channels) but do not join them as a stereo track - keep them as separate Left and Right single channel tracks.
Use the Amplify effect one the track with the louder voice to bring the level of the voice down so that it matches the level of the voice in the other track.
Hint: If you use good headphones and if you are able to match the voices exactly (which may not be possible), it will sound as if the voice is in the middle of your head and the music is over to one side.
Get that as close as you can, then join the two tracks to make a single stereo track and apply the “Vocal Reduction and Isolation” effect.

There are no guarantees that this will work, but it is probably your best shot.

[can]

@steve

You “may” be able to make some improvement using the new “Vocal Reduction and Isolation” effect http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/vocal_reduction_and_isolation.html
You will need to know how to split and join stereo tracks: http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/splitting_and_joining_stereo_tracks.html

The idea is that you make a stereo track with “music + voice” in one channel and “voice only” in the other channel.

Initially you would just set the two mono tracks so that one is Left and the other is Right (see “Mono, Left Channel and Right Channel”: http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/audio_track_dropdown_menu.html#Splitting_and_Joining_Channels) but do not join them as a stereo track - keep them as separate Left and Right single channel tracks.
Use the Amplify effect one the track with the louder voice to bring the level of the voice down so that it matches the level of the voice in the other track.
Hint: If you use good headphones and if you are able to match the voices exactly (which may not be possible), it will sound as if the voice is in the middle of your head and the music is over to one side.
Get that as close as you can, then join the two tracks to make a single stereo track and apply the “Vocal Reduction and Isolation” effect.

There are no guarantees that this will work, but it is probably your best shot.

Don’t worry, I understand that no guarantees, while my work with audio and video might be limited. I know things don’t always go right.

Hang on, hang on, hang on. I am a bit confused, I’ll upload an image of Audacity, sorry I should have done this before.

[steve]

@can

Hang on, hang on, hang on. I am a bit confused, I’ll upload an image of Audacity, sorry I should have done this before.

OK, so using the track numbers from your picture “pm5 1” to “pm5 4” which I shall just call track “1” to “4”.

You could do this all in the original project, but for ease of description I’ll create some new projects for different parts of this process.

So, in tracks 1 and 2 you have music and voice and you wish to remove / reduce the voice.
In track 3 you have voice only.

1. Make a new project containing tracks 1 and 3 only. We now have a music+voice track and a voice-only track.
2. Set the music+voice track to Left channel and the voice-only track to Right channel.
   (next come slightly different / easier steps from my original post)
3. Use the Track Gain slider on the voice-only track so that the voice level in this track matches the voice level in the music+voice track as closely as possible.
4. Select both tracks and then “Tracks menu > Mix and Render”. This will create a stereo track and will apply the Track Gain setting to the “voice-only” part.
5. Fiddle around with the “Vocal Reduction and Isolation” effect and try to reduce the voice as much as possible while retaining the music.

If step 6 fails miserably, give up, otherwise continue.

7. Split the stereo track to two mono tracks. One of the tracks should now contain near silence and can be deleted. Export the other mono track - this is your new “Left music channel”.

8. Repeat steps 1 to 7 with tracks 2 and 3 to make the new “Right music channel”.

9. Import the two new “music channels” into a new project and combine them into a stereo track.