Removing Click Sounds

Adobe Audition 1.5

When editing messages, especially for use in a video, it is necessary to remove lip smacks and other loud clicks WITHOUT CHANGING THE TOTAL TIME OF THE MESSAGE.  This can be a very time consuming and difficult problem at best.

Now if you do not care if the time is shortened, then you simply highlight the offending sound and press the delete key.  But even if shortening the time is NOT a problem, still sometimes these annoying clicks like from a cell phone or infrared signals from some remote controllers will be right in the middle of a word!  Well, this tool can be used to remove the click without making very much if any discernable change to the word being spoken by the speaker!

Here is how it works.

First lets help you locate the button.  In the following screen shot the button is just under the “Fa” in “Favorites” on the menu line.  There are two click removal buttons, the one we will use is the one to the right, directly to the left of the “Restore clipped audio” button that I use rather frequently.

            Notice I have highlighted a loud click, and also a small one next to it.  The best results are obtained when there is a fair amount of noiseless background on both sides of the highlighted click AND one both sides of the highlight.  Highlights can be as long as about 0.500 seconds!  In the old Cool Edit the max was approximately 0.001 seconds!

            So, highlight the click as shown below:

            Now push the remove click button and get this dialogue box:

            If the dialogue box does not look like this, you have pushed the wrong button.  Try the button just to the right of the one you tried and it will probably be the one that makes this dialogue box.

            Notice the button that says, “Fill Single Click Now.”  That is the button you press.  The process takes a second or so and you will watch this progress box:

AFTER it is done the screen will look like this:

            PERFECT, click removed and no time lost or gained in the message.

            Also remember you can assign a key to complete this action WITHOUT the dialogue box.  If you have scores of these to remove, as I do, I have assigned “z” on my keyboard to be the hot key that does this.  So by using “Z” and the space bar with my left hand and the mouse for highlighting in my right hand I am now able to remove hundreds of these clicks in a message without loosing or gaining ANY time in a video in about 1/10^th the time it used to take me!!!!

            Now for some very tricky cleanup.  During the word “outwardly” there is a clicking sound in the word. 

Here is a link to hear BEFORE and then a link to hear AFTER the click is removed.

You may need headphones to hear the difference.  But since some may be listening on headphones, even noise cancelling headphones on an airplane, it seems appropriate to remove these possibly distracting clicks.

Here is the screen shot of the entire word before any removal of the click:

            The offending click is two small spikes in the smaller set of waves on the right.  Here is a blowup of that section with the offending area highlighted:

Now here is the same section AFTER the single click removal tool is used.  Notice it removes more than a single click, it will do multiple clicks like the two clicks in this section.  In this case they are not completely removed, but enough is removed so that the sound of the click in the word is gone!

This would be nearly impossible to remove any other way, especially without changing the total time of the message like we were able to do here!  A powerful tool indeed!