I got asked to do some editing on a video for a showreel for a friend of mine. The interview I was working with was recorded by a TV company but I was shocked at the poor quality of the audio.
The audio was clipped and sounded terrible at those points. Also it had been recorded in an awful location and while the interviewer could be heard ok the interviewee wasn’t so easy to hear as her audio was lost in the background noise.
There was so much background noise and no room to capture a noise print from. Adaptive noise reduction just couldn’t do enough and de-noise (which I don’t rate) did remove the background noise to a degree but left the audio sounding phased and wishy washy.
Lesson to be learned, even if audio is your strongest point and you’re a creative working with video don’t ruin your creation by letting the audio stand out as horrendous. Perform a sound check before you start recording and constantly monitor what’s being recorded. You’ll only get one chance to record a live happening so don’t waste it.