Removing background voices from MP4 clips

[Berzelius]

I have VideoStudo X10 running under Windows 10.

I'm fairly certain that this is not doable, but one can but hope . . . I've a number of MP4 clips of speeches from a wedding reception. Unfortunately there are occurrences of children's voices in the background which make parts of the speeches difficult to understand. Is there any way of of lessening the children's voices?

[Terfyn]

You cannot remove what is already there but try Audacity to edit your audio clips. VS has a limited set of audio tools and filters.

Maybe next time mic up closer to the speakers. A decent radio mic may help.

[Berzelius]

Thanks for the reply even if it's more or less what I feared. I've got Audacity so I can go and investigate. Do you have any tips on using it for this purpose? Assuming it's possible, I was wondering if filtering out higher frequencies might have an effect on children's voices and screams.

As for moving nearer the speechifiers, I'm afraid that you sit where you're put at weddings and I doubt if they'd have appreciated it if I wandered up and stuck a mic at them.

[Ken Berry]

If you can find a clear childish scream which is *not* over audio you wish to preserve, then Audacity will allow you to select that and use it to filter out other similar screams throughout the whole project. Mind you, filtering out some of the frequencies will undoubtedly also affect the audio you wish to preserve, but it would be up to you to decide whether it is acceptable or not.