voice click (mouth noise) removal

[wevets]

I'm using Pro Tools Express and recording a lot of narration. Some VO folks have a lot of mouth noise in their voices. Editing these out between words is easy if laborious. But mouth clicks in the middle of words are even harder to deal with.

Are there any free plug in options I can use to eliminate mouth noises? If so, can you supply pointers to them?

If not free, are there any reasonably priced plug-ins available? Pointers, too, if you can.

This will be useful info to anyone doing their own VO work of VO for others.

Thanks.

[joachim]

iZotope RX3 (regular), very very reasonable price. I feel naked without it.

[Sonopolis]

I use the pencil tool (F10). Putting the mic further away and repeatedly asking the talent to drink some water helps a lot.

[chrisdee]

Some people got it much worse than others.

+1 for pencil tool and moving the mic further away.
Maby using a darker mic might help.

[Stig Eliassen]

RX3 is a great tool to have.

PS: I recommend that you don't let the talents drink too much tea or coffee. In my experience the mouth clicks gets much worse if they do.

[J.Hasler]

I agree with RX3, very helpful,declicker tool.
Also a trick is to give the narrators apple juice, that helps also .

[mesaone]

Originally Posted by PT Lover

I recommend that you don't let the talents drink too much tea or coffee. In my experience the mouth clicks gets much worse if they do.

Apple juice seems to be a good alternative, as mentioned above. Seems to reduce excess saliva with many singers.

On the click note, sometimes using a declicker can be dangerous when used on a long piece of material (as opposed to only treating the small chunks that contain the saliva sounds). I've found the best results are a combination of declick and decrackle, using the asymmetrical setting. RX is a thing of beauty.

[crandallwarren]

In addition to RX, I also really like Waves C4 in the "Multi-band Noise Reducer setting". I set the range to between -4 and -6 and set the threshold so that its reducing everything except the dialogue.

[BondAudio]

Keep them away from coffee / with milk / sugar.

Water at room temp. As as you hear a 'click' finish the take then have the talent take a sip.

One VO guy I worked with always had a bottle of saliva substitute handy.

[CygnusX-1Bk2]

I ask the talent to re-read the line. Why make things so hard?

Part of the job as a VO engineer is listening for this kind of thing. I just did a bunch of Kaiser Permanente Medicare commercials with a few hundred phone numbers. The guy reading the numbers had a particular issue with noise in the middle of words, especially when drying out. Always have plenty of water on hand for talent. And I can't stress enough about good mic placement for VO. You can save a lot of time editing and reduce plosives and/or the need for de-essing with good placement.