Video Processing: How to Edit Out Background Wind Noise from GoPro Video

Posted by Candice Liu to Video Editor, GoPro Wind Noise Reduction | Updated on Dec 7, 2018

When you climb to the American highest Whitney peak, you can't help capturing the supernatural beauty using your GoPro action camera. When you go stimulating mountain biking in Ithaca, you would also utilize your GoPro Hero6 Black to record the amazing scenery of Finger Lakes Wine Country. The same applies to capture the exciting moments when you're driving a speedboat at a secluded beach in Mexico.

Yet, when you play your recorded outdoor GoPro 4K videos, you would find that most of them are interrupted by the annoying wind noise. The background wind noise even destroys your voice and original video soundtracks. In such circumstances, the effective solution is to remove wind noise from GoPro 4K video. Well, which software can accomplish the GoPro wind noise reduction task with greatest of ease? Below we single out top 3 nominees for you to choose from.

1. Remove GoPro Video Wind Noise with MVCP

VideoProc, an all-inclusive video processing software, is well-crafted to help you handle all the video needs related to GoPro, 4K action cameras, DJI Drone and surveillance equipment. To be specific, it can:

1. Remove background wind noise from GoPro video (4K 60FPS), as well as 4K action cam recorded video, DJI video, surveillance video and any other videos.
2. Stabilize shaky GoPro 4K video, fix GoPro fish-eye lens distortion and convert GoPro video to GIF animation format at 1 simple click.

3. Add special effects to GoPro video (Grayscale, Mirror, Negate, Painting, etc.), rotate/flip/mirror/merge/split video, trim/crop video, add subtitles to GoPro, etc.
4. Transcode GoPro 4K video from HEVC x265 codec to H264, MP4, FLV for YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo, Vevo, Myspace, etc. SNS platform uploading & sharing.

5. Convert GoPro 4K video to iPhone X/8/7/6s/Plus, iPad, Android, etc. 410+ latest device at Intel QSV, AMD and Nvidia HW accelerated No.1 fast speed.

Secure Download

Prior to downloading this GoPro noise removal software, you're suggested to resort to a high-end Mac computer, which would enable GoPro noise removal process and GoPro 4K video editing process to be accelerated up to 5X faster speed if it supports one of the GPU hardware acceleration techs: Intel Quick Sync Video, Nvidia NVENC or AMD APP. Afterwards, free download VideoProc on your macOS and launch it.

Step 1: Tap "Video" icon at the home screen after you fire up this video processing tool. Followed by a click on "+ Video" option at the top banner of the pop-up interface to load your GoPro video files. This GoPro video editor supports batch handling GoPro video wind noise reduction task. You can also choose "Video Folder" to import a fold of video files at one stroke.

Note: as you can see from the main screen, there are another 3 options available: DVD, Download and Record. It means that you can also take advantage of this all-round app to rip and backup DVD movies to MP4, MOV, MKV, MPEG-2, iPhone iPad, free download online video music from YouTube, Vimeo, FB, etc. 300+ sites and record on-screen/iPhone screen video.

Step 2: Choose "GoPro Denoise" from the Toolbox category at the bottom of the interface. Double clicks on this profile and the detailed Denoise window will pop up, from which you can see the detailed parameter settings: Low pass 2000 and High pass 500. The default settings are the most suitable ones for your GoPro video denoise. You have no need to adjust them if you're strange at this stuff.

From the following screenshot, you can see you're also able to freely set up your video length via the moving slidebars or the Start/End time to shorten your GoPro video length and just save the highlight clips you wanna upload to SNS platforms.

Additional illustrations: A high-pass filter (HPF) attenuates content below a cutoff frequency, allowing higher frequencies to pass through the filter. A low-pass filter (LPF) attenuates content above a cutoff frequency, allowing lower frequencies to pass through the filter. - from theproaudiofiles.com

Option 1: Stabilization and Fish-eye correction options under Toolbox are also available if your GoPro 4K 60FPS video is shaky and ruined by lens distortion. The only drawback is that you are allowed to use only one effect in the Toolbox at a time. After the first effect is finished, you can then go to the second one.

Option 2: To upload GoPro 4K video to YouTube, FB, Dailymotion, etc. for sharing, you can choose "Edit" feature to customize your GoPro video, including cut off the unwanted clips from GoPro video, merge several videos into one, split GoPro video into numerous clips, rotate GoPro video 90/180/270 degree, add external subtitles to GoPro 4K UHD video, export video subtitles, add cool special effects to video, etc.

Option 3: If you're not satisfied with GoPro video parameter settings, tap "Settings" option, from which you can tweak GoPro video bit rate, downscale 4K to 1080p, adjust GoPro video aspect ratio from 4:3 to 16:9 or 1:1, change GoPro video frame rate 60FPS to 30FPS, etc. to further tailor your GoPro video.

Step 3: Tap "RUN" button and this GoPro video processing program begins to remove background wind noise from your GoPro video. The whole process will be accomplished at 250-320FPS, 5X faster speed than any other competitors due to the advanced Intel/Nvidia/AMD GPU HW acceleration tech.

2. Reduce GoPro Video Wind Noise with Camtasia

Camtasia is a 2-in-1 screen recorder and video editor, which claims to empower you to edit out background wind noise from GoPro 4K video and also add other audio effects to your video based on your specific needs. With this noise removal tool, you can also:

1. Add more audio effects to enrich your GoPro video including Pitch, Volume, Leveling, fade in, fade out, etc.
2. Customize GoPro 4K Ultra HD video with visual effects, like Color, Adjustment colorize, device frame, drop shadow, Glow, mask, etc.

3. Make full use of transitions to your video, e.g., Barn Door, blinds, checker board, Flip, Fold, Iris, etc.
4. Record Mac screen video and use FaceTime HD camera to record video, as well.

Note: the video conversion, downloading and DVD backup are absent from this program. Hence, in case you need to transcode GoPro video format and compress GoPro video file size, the above-mentioned VideoProc can lend you a hand with 98% quality reserved (High Quality Engine built-in).

Step 1: Free download Camtasia on your computer. It's compatible with both Windows and macOS operating system. Afterwards, install and run it.

Step 2: Click "Open Project" > choose "Media" > tap "Import Media" to load your GoPro video file.

Step 3: Drag and drop your video file down to the track zone. Followed by a click to "More" to find out "Audio Effects" option.

Step 4: Opt for "Noise Removal", the first one at the 1st row and also drag & drop it to the track zone.

Step 5: Hit "Play" button to preview the output effect without wind noise. Or just tap the "Share" icon at the top right corner of the home screen to save your editted GoPro video to local folder or upload it directly to YouTube, Google Drive or screencast.com.

3. Get Rid of GoPro Video Wind Noise with Handbrake

The above mentioned top two noise removal programs are paid products. They offer you with more than just noise removal feature. If you only need to remove background wind noise from GoPro 4K video, actually the freeware Handbrake is enough for you. Well-known as a free open source to free convert video files, Handbrake also has the ability to denoise your GoPro 4K 2160p video under its filter category. The default setting of denoise is off in Handbrake. To activate and use this feature, please follow the below steps:

Step 1: Free download handbrake on your Windows, macOS or Linux. Fire it up after the download and installation are finished.

Step 2: Select file or folder to load your GoPro video. Or instead, just drag and drop your file/folder into this freeware.

Step 3: Choose the output format: MP4 or MKV. Or shift your attention to the right side to choose a device profile you need. The latest version of handbrake is built in with more profiles with detailed parameter settings for you, e.g., VP9 MKV 2160p 60FPS, H265 MKV 1080p30, Apple 2160p60 4K HEVC Surround, Android 1080p30, Super HQ 720p30 Surround, Very Fast 1080p30, etc. You can also add your own profile into it if you make or download one.

Step 4: Click "Filters" at the home screen and find out "Denoise" option, where you can opt for "hqdn3d" or "NLMeans". Based on its official explanation, hqdn3d is an adaptive low-pass filter, which is faster than NLMeans but at the cost of slightly lower quality. NLMeans is high quality denoise filter that is relatively weaker in speed than hqdn3d. Make your own decision grounded on your specific needs.

Option: this free open source software also allows you to further adjust your video. Tap "Dimensions" to adjust video width and height (resolution), as well as crop GoPro video to remove black bars from video. In filters category, you can also rotate GoPro video 90/180/270 degree or flip your video. Enter "Video" zone to change video frame rate from 120FPS/60FPS to 30FPS and freely improve your output quality via constant quality/Avg Bitrate.

Step 5: Hit "Start Encode" button and Handbrake begins to clean up background wind noise from GoPro video.

How to Prevent Wind Noise When Recording GoPro Video?

The solutions presented above are used after you record GoPro (4K) video. Actually, it's better to nip the wind noise in the bud. Or though you can't completely avoid the background wind noise when recording GoPro video, you can still reduce the noise to be as low as possible if you follow the below suggestions:

1. For users who own a Hero3, Hero3+ or Hero4 Black/Silver, you'd better make full use of the WindSlayer to reduce wind noise when hand-held or mounted in the Frame. If what you have is a Hero5, Hero6 Black or newer model, Wind Noise Suppression can be helpful to minimize wind noise when capturing GoPro video.

2. Some ardent GoPro users share their own secret weapons on forum to stop background wind noise. That is connecting an external microphone and putting it somewhere with no wind, like maybe in your jacket or pocket. You can have a try.

3. If the wind noise is unpreventable, the only way is to record GoPro video with recognizable audio tracks that can be easier to be separated in the post production. The silver bullet shared by net friends is to shoot about 30 seconds of silence before shooting your actual video. That's to say, start recording on your GoPro camera, be silent for 30 seconds, then enter into your subject. This 30s silence offers the separation the noise removal tool needs between the noise you wanna clean up and the real audio track you wanna keep.

4. If the worst case happens (wind noise can't be removed by software), the most time-consuming yet direct solution is to delete audio track from video, recreate a new audio track and add it to your video. That would be laborious but gives the best quality sound. Certainly, it's more suitable for short GoPro video.