Stripe hiss.
A magnetic stripe hisses like tape. A steady floor within 26 dB of the voice is cleaned: “A steady noise floor was found, so it is removed.”
SOLIPSIUM Super resolution audio engine
Super 8 and 8 mm film
Clean up the sound of a Super 8 film transfer.
Drop the transfer's video or sound file here. Solipsium checks its hiss, hum and projector noise before it changes anything.
Drop a film transfer here
Solipsium checks it in your browser for clipping, hum and noise, without uploading it. It can then repair the first 20 seconds for you to hear, with no account.
MP4, MOV, MKV, WebM, WAV, MP3 and more, up to five minutes for the check.
Your first 20 seconds
After signing up, drop the same file into the editor to repair all of it.
What Solipsium hears
Make a free account to repair the whole recording
Then drop the same file into the editor. Scans and short repairs are free.
The film
Not every home movie has sound.
Most 8 mm and Super 8 home movies are silent. Sound Super 8 carries a thin magnetic stripe beside the picture, played back by a sound projector.
Check the reel.
A sound film has a brown stripe along one edge. A silent film needs no repair of its sound, because it has none.
Ask the transfer for the stripe.
A transfer company copies the stripe when asked. Some deliver the sound in the video file, some as a separate WAV.
Keep the transfer as delivered.
Work on a copy, and keep the company's file as your master.
Fault by fault
What a projector and a stripe bring.
The check reads the transfer's sound in your browser. The try repairs the first 20 seconds on Solipsium's server.
The projector.
A transfer made by playing the film can carry the projector's motor and fan. Mains hum from the motor is notched out: “Mains hum was found, so it is notched out before any cleanup.”
Gaps at splices.
A splice can leave a dip in the sound. A dip still has sound in it, so the gap filler leaves it. Only holes of exact digital silence, up to 100 ms with sudden edges, are filled: “Short holes of lost audio were found, so they are filled from nearby sound.”
Left as they are.
Wow and flutter from an uneven film speed are not repaired.
Questions
About film sound.
Can the picture be improved too?
The old home video page doubles the width and height of a transfer on your graphics chip, in your browser, and keeps its sound.
The sound is out of step with the picture.
The repair does not move sound in time. Ask the transfer company, or line it up in a video editor.
Will the picture change?
No. With a free account, a video export keeps the original picture with the repaired sound track.
Music on the stripe?
Solipsium's free try is built for speech. Its cleanup may remove music along with the noise.
Is my recording uploaded?
Not for the check, which runs in your browser. Pressing Repair the first 20 seconds sends those 20 seconds; when your browser could not open the file, or it runs over five minutes, the file itself goes to Solipsium's server, so the try is offered for it only up to 25 MB. Solipsium keeps only the first 20 seconds and deletes them within an hour. If you are signed in, a file you drop or choose is uploaded to your account and opens in the editor instead. The privacy notice has the rest.
Free audio tools
Related free tools.
For the picture and the sound.
- Enhance an old home video
Double a transfer's width and height in your browser.
- Remove hiss and static
How steady hiss is measured and lowered.
- Extract audio from video
Save a transfer's sound as an MP3 or WAV.
- Clean up a reel-to-reel tape
Capture an open reel at the right speed.
- All free audio tools
Every free tool on one page.
The whole reel.
Make a free account and drop the transfer into the editor to repair its sound, with the picture kept as it is.
Repair the whole reel
Free account, no card.