sound edit

 I'm making mp2 files out of supplied  videofootage. One section has two  people conversing whilst music is playing loudly in the background. As it was all recorded together is there any way i can get rid of the music? Most clips I am working with  also have an air conditioner sound in the background ( filming in the tropics!) I can minimise it using noise reductions but only minimially. Hope  someone can help  as  I am pretty new to this.

Because most music and the human voice pretty much occupy the same frequency space you'll probably not find any success pulling up the voices without also increasing the music. And certainly you won't be able to actually separate them. I would think you have very little to no chance to improve that. If you could post a sample mp3 of what you are talking about then we could give you a more conclusive answer.

The air conditioning *can* be a different story, though, but only if you can get an isolated second or so of just the air conditioning ambient sound without the voices. That's the key to using the Noise Reduction.

While the isolated noise sample is the first requirement, the way in which it is utilized, and the way the generated noise profile is applied to the recording, are both quite important vis a vis the final result. People are often dissatisfied, through not knowing how best to proceed, although they have the necessary resources for greater success at hand.

This topic has been discussed at some length a number of times here. It could be summarized again if you can’t find what you need to know.