WindRemover AI solves one of the most common problems in video

Review: Wind is an unfortunate reality video and audio professionals deal with when filming outside, such as when shooting weddings, documentaries and more. CrumplePop has a new solution called WindRemover AI, which promises to remove unwanted wind noise quickly and efficiently. We put it to the test.

Windscreens and camera settings can fix most issues during production but wind noise can still work its way in, putting it on the editor’s shoulders to try and remove it. 

WindRemover AI Details

As with many of CrumplePop’s affordable plugins, the WindRemover AI user interface is clean and easy to navigate and use. It will automatically remove the wind sound while preserving voices and offers real-time playback, allowing you to control the strength of the noise removal and make other fine-tune adjustments to the low, mid and high frequencies.

WindRemover AI is available for Mac computers running Final Cut Pro X, Premiere Pro, Audition and DaVinci Resolve. It works with all codecs and resolutions supported by the host software, plus you’ll need an Apple computer running macOS 10.13 or higher, 2GB of RAM or more and at least an Intel Core Duo processor or higher.

Using WindRemover AI

You drop the WindRemover AI plugin onto the clip of audio with the problem and it quickly and intelligently removes the wind noise and preserves voices. Since it’s fixing it in real-time, you can playback and adjust the strength of the removal. For more control, CrumplePop added Low, Mid and High controls, plus a waveform monitor showing the audio before and after it is fixed.

There isn’t a need for hours of work trying to fix the wind noise problem while keeping voices intact. WindRemover AI takes care of it pretty fast. Check out the before and after clip; I was outside on a windy day and did a quick shoot with my iPhone (forgive the video quality). I purposely had no external microphone with a windscreen, just using the iPhone’s built-in mic.

The plugin did a pretty good job, despite using the built-in iPhone mic and while the wind isn’t fully removed, it sounds much, much better.

I’ve used several of CrumplePop’s plugins on various projects in the recent past, including their popular audio plugins, AudioDenoise 2 and EchoRemover 2. They are worth their weight in gold because even in the most controlled environments, there could be a chance a little bit of background noise will creep in, or the location is conducive to echo.

Pricing

The price for WindRemover AI is $129 USD and many of the CrumplePop plugins cost about $99 USD. In most cases, they could be considered ‘one-trick ponies,’ but they do a great job. Using EchoRemover 2 and AudioDenoise 2 really helped out on an indie film project I directed and edited and to me, it’s worth the $99 per plugin price.

If you are doing a lot of filming outside, such as with outdoor weddings or documentaries, and you can’t control the wind 100%, then the price is perfect for WindRemover AI. However, it would be great to see CrumplePop offer a suite of plugins, with a few of their core audio and video plugins, and sell it at a discounted price. Perhaps five to six plugins priced 15 to 20% cheaper than buying each one individually.

Conclusion

CrumplePop’s Windremover AI works very well and is a worthy addition to your Mac-based NLE plugin toolkit if you’re doing plenty of filming outside. It works automatically but has enough manual controls to tweak the wind removal while preserving voices. As I said above, it would be great if the company offered some of its plugins in a bundle at a discounted price. Learn more on the CrumplePop website.