[ardour-dev] Sanity check: is this possible?

[Jim Osborn]

I've got some DVDs whose sound I'd like to clean up, and I'd like to
ask this esteemed group whether what I'd like to do is even possible,
and if it is, to get a sense of what kinds of processing are easy and
what's not so easy.

Here's what I'd like to do:

1: Cancel an annoying hum that exists throughout most of the DVD,
   possibly caused by the camcorder itself.  Cancel other steady
   noises like fans, wind, etc.

2: Cancel various episodic noises like ringing telephones, airplanes
   flying by, trucks beeping as they back up, etc.

3: Separate different human voices into individual channels so they
   can be controlled separately.

4: Separate background music into a separate channel, as with the voices
   mentioned in #3.

#1 seems like the easiest job, doing something like those Bose headphones.
   Not that what Bose does is trivial, but they operate on real-time
   sound where this is previously-recorded sound, which should be easier.

#2 seems possible, given a certain amount of operator supervision.

#3 and 4 seem really hard, so I'm hoping someone can tell me otherwise. :)

Is Ardour an environment where some of this might be possible, given
a lot of work on some plugins?  It sounds like a fun project.  I've
got a background in signal processing, in the distant past, so I can
imagine some plans of attack, but I don't know the state of the
current art. 

Jim