Bad audio is the number one reason people skip or swipe away from a video. Audio is 100x more important than video, and unless you’re recording a UFO or Bigfoot, people won’t stick around for poor audio quality. These days, though, having bad audio is a choice, since decent microphones are cheap and most editing software has great built-in tools for cleaning up background noise and distortions. So follow along as we show you how to remove background noise in DaVinci Resolve.

Takeaways:

  1. Is there an easy way to remove background noise from videos in DaVinci Resolve?
  2. What’s the best way to clean up audio in DaVinci Resolve?

How to Remove Background Noise in DaVinci Resolve

For quite a while now, DaVinci Resolve Studio has had an AI-powered Voice Isolation tool that makes it easy to reduce or remove background noise without relying on third-party plugins. It's really good at dealing with wind, traffic, machinery, or computer fan noise. Other noises are a little more complicated, but the tool still does a pretty good job with them as well.

Note: Voice Isolation is only available in DaVinci Resolve Studio. If you're using the free version, this feature will not appear in the Inspector.

How to Enable Voice Isolation

Voice Isolation can be applied to a single clip or to an entire audio track. Applying it to a track is often the better choice when multiple clips share the same recording conditions, while clip-level adjustments provide more control over individual recordings.

  • Select the video clip on the Edit page.
  • Open the Inspector.
  • Switch to the Audio tab.
  • Enable AI Voice Isolation.
  • Adjust the Amount slider until the dialogue sounds clear while maintaining a natural tone.

The tool works in real time, making it easy to preview different settings and stop once you've reached the right balance.

Apply Voice Isolation to an Entire Track (Best Method)

If every clip on a track has similar background noise, applying Voice Isolation to the entire track saves time.

  • Select the audio track, switch the Inspector from clip mode to track mode, then enable Voice Isolation.
  • From there, adjust the slider until the background noise is reduced without negatively affecting the voice.

If you are trying to clean up minor background noise while doing a voice-over on your PC, this is the best method to use, as the track will already be pretty stable, so things like PC fan noise are easily removed.

Finding the Right Amount (Less is More)

The most common mistake that people make while using this tool is cranking it to max and hoping for the best results. Pushing Voice Isolation to 100 percent quite often ruins the voice element of your track as well as removing noises. While maximum settings may remove more noise, they can also make dialogue sound artificial or distorted and quite often robotic.

So start with a low value and gradually increase it while listening carefully. Use only as much processing as necessary to improve speech clarity. In many situations, a setting around 20 to 40 percent usually gives great results. If your microphone has wind noise reduction options and a dead cat, make sure that you are using those in the future as well they make a huge difference.