Tag Archives: wind

Wind Noise Reduction on Point and Shoot Cameras

In one of my last vlogs (specifically the PARTNER YOGA CHALLENGE) the captured video suffered quite a bit from ambient wind noise, which is very unfortunate and frustrating. Once the wind cuts out voices and other relevant audio, it’s pretty much lost forever. There are some techniques to reduce noise in the very low and very high ranges, but it’s not good enough to restore the ruined audio.

I started looking around for a solution. At first, I was wondering if I should look into getting external microphones, lapel mics or additional sound recording equipment. But each of these has drawbacks. For starters, my main vlogging camera is my Canon G7 X and it does not have an audio input. This means external microphones and lapel mics aren’t an option. That leaves buying separate sound recording devices; the problem there is that now I have a separate track of data I have to collect, store, synchronize, and edit. This increases the complexity of my vlogging operation.

Before I succumbed to defeat, I thought about how others were attacking this problem. I recall seeing a big fluffy thing on Mark Miller’s camera during several of his vlogs. So I tried looking that up. Not being a videography major, I don’t know about a lot of these little things, so I was quickly educated to the concept of the “muff” or the “dead cat.” Who comes up with these names? Dead cat, really? 😛


So the true dead cats work great when you have an external boom or shotgun mic, like in the picture above, but what about compact point and shoot cameras like my Canon G7 X?

I stumbled upon a product called the “micromuff” sold by a company of the same name. (link) Their skinny version of the product seemed like exactly what I was looking for! After a week or two, the product finally arrived today. I just installed it on my camera and did a quick indoor test where I blew directly on the mic, once with the muff on, and once with the muff off… to compare and contrast. I’m impressed! It does indeed help reduce wind noise. It won’t get rid of it completely, of course, but it definitely helps. And also importantly, it doesn’t reduce the clarity of vocal audio!
In conclusion, if anyone has a similar setup like me and is looking to solve this problem, give the skinny micromuff a try! (Or one of the other sizes, depending on your camera.)