Showing posts with label Windows 7. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Mac: Enhance your Recorded Interviews

Image by heath_bar via Flickr

3 Audacity Tips To Enhance Your Recorded Interviews

Concepts:
interview, audio, recording, voice, Audacity, noise, sound, amplify, Windows, sound card, audio file, podcast, Guide, MakeUseOf, background noise

Summary:

As a blogger and a researcher, I have to conduct a lot of interviews.

Some months I've conducted two or three interviews a week, and many of those are recorded interviews, because many people don't have time to answer questions via email.

One of the nice things about recorded interviews is that they work well as an audio podcast either available for download from your own blog, or distributed as a podcast at any podcast directory.

Regardless what you intend to do with the interview, one thing that's for certain is that you want to develop a reputation as a professional interviewer that produces high-quality, interesting conversations with fascinating people.

Only part of the recipe for this is developing interesting and thoughtful questions for your interviewee to answer, but the other significant part of the equation is how well you've edited the audio interview into a high-quality, professional show.

Many avid audio enthusiasts may find some of the edits below somewhat simple, but for the blogger or podcaster with little audio editing experience, these tips are critical to know.

I use the Audacity audio recording software to record and edit all of my interviews.

My recording setup is about as simple as it gets an Olympic earpiece that doubles as both a microphone and an earphone, so that I can hear the person on the phone while the microphone feeds the conversation into the laptop and Audacity.

This works well, and produces high quality conversations, but like anything, there are flaws in the setup that produce less than optimum conditions.

The beauty of Audacity is that you have the capability to "fix" those flaws.

The three most common problems that I'm going to touch on in this post are removing background noise, amplifying voices, and integrating quality introduction with music.

Before we start doctoring the audio file with the Audacity audio recording software, let me first introduce the patient.

Above is a snippet of an hour-long audio interview that I conducted last month.

The two most common flaws are background noise, shown in the center of this clip, and low voice volume (my voice) as shown on the right.

You can see that the amplitude when I was talking is about half of that of the voice on the phone which is to be expected when recording with such an earpiece.

The first tweak for the common interview issue of quiet voices is also the easiest.

The volume of the voice is equivalent to "amplitude," so all you have to do is use Audacity's Amplify tool to increase the quiet voice just a little bit.

To perform this task, just highlight the section of audio track with the quiet voice, and then select "Amplify" from the Effect menu option.

In the amplify tool, you'll need to select an amplification that is just enough to increase the voice volume to a level that's equivalent to the other person speaking.

It may take some trial and error the first time, so just undo the change and try a new value until you get it right.

In my case, I found that an increase of 5 dB did the trick.

Once you know the right value, the only tedious part of this fix is that you'll need to find every place in the track where the quiet voice shows up, and do the highlight/amplify routine to fix it.

The second most common flaw in an interview audio file is background noise.

Maybe you left a fan on in the other room, or there are cars going by just outside the open window, and you realize once you listen to the audio that the sound is terribly annoying and distracting.

The first step in this technique is to identify an area in your file that features nothing but the background noise alone.

When you find such an area, highlight that section of the audio track, and then go into the "Noise Removal" tool in the Effects menu option.

Once you're there, click on "Get Noise Profile".

Doing this captures a snapshot of the background noise itself.

The software uses this to "erase" that sound profile from a section (or all) of the audio file.

The next step is just to highlight the area where you want to remove the noise (most of the time you'll just select the entire track), and then go back into this window and select "Remove Noise".

As you can see, Audacity does an amazing job at cleaning up the noise.

There is one caveat, and it is this carefully gauge the amount of noise that you want to remove.

Removing too little won't do much good, and removing too much will make the audio sound over-digitized or artificially quiet.

One thing I noticed is that the middle to lower middle setting is usually ideal.

Have you ever heard those cool podcasts with a great musical introduction?

Well, believe it or not, you can do the same exact thing in Audacity in just a few simple steps.

The first step, obviously, is importing the music file that you would like to use (make sure you don't infringe on any licensing issues).

The next step is just highlight the block of music you'd like to use as your introduction (select the correct number of seconds) and then do a simple Copy.

Then place the cursor at the start of your audio file, and select Paste.

The copied music clip will get inserted into your track, pushing the entire interview to the right.

While this is cool, it'll sound weird because at the end of the clip, your music will just end abruptly.

Instead, you want to taper off the music as you enter into the interview itself.

You'll see the amplitude of the music clip taper off as it approaches the end of the clip, and in effect producing a very nice fade into the interview itself.

By using these three simple tips, you've just equalized voice volume, removed background noise, and embedded a professional music introduction into your audio interview.

With just these few simple changes, you'll transform amateur sounding interviews into well produced, professional sounding conversations.

Do you have any editing tips or tricks of your own?

Share your own insights in the comments section below.

Ryan, an automation engineer on the East Coast (U.S.) who enjoys discussing the latest trends of online writing and freelancing.

Visit his blog at FreeWritingCenter.com to read up on the latest online writing trends and freelance money-making opportunities.

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Audacity allows you to have mutliple tracks.

So rather than adding adding music into the beginning of the interview track it is better to add it as an additional track.

You can then then 'move' the interview along (in its own track) to where the music fades out.

This gives you a lot more flexibility and the ability to overlay the beginning of the interview over the top of the fading our music.

Also makes it much simpler to experiment and to undo something that does not work very well.

If you have theme music that you use for lots of podcasts then you can set this up as a template and just add your interview into it and do whatever other editing is required.

You can also use the amplify function to obtain a consistent volume level without resorting to trial and error.

Highlight a section of the interview with the low volume level and write down the number shown in the amplification (db) window (it is the number 5 in the third screenshot above).

Then highlight an interview selection with the higher volume and write down the amplification (db) number again.

My top tip: unless you have a really good sound card, use a USB microphone.

The entire sound mixer is completely gone from Windows 7 for my SB Audigy card, so there are no disabled devices to reveal.

My need for recording system audio is simply for recording video tutorials for people, so I find it unfortunate that my ability to do so has been hampered by this update.

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Microsoft Backtracks on Browser-less Windows 7 E

Source: sitepoint.com

Microsoft will offer a choice of competing web browsers with European versions of Windows 7 when the new OS is released in October 2009. The company hopes the action will adhere with European Union legislation and fend off further anti-trust fines. Although Windows 7 is selling well, Microsoft revenues are down by almost a fifth and costly court cases will not help.

Microsoft’s original proposal was to remove Internet Explorer from Windows 7 E (European version). Anyone pre-ordering Windows 7 in Europe is currently shown a warning that the OS will not provide a browser. For example, Amazon UK published detailed browser download instructions (although anyone needing these probably shouldn’t attempt an OS installation!) Hardware vendors would have been free to install the web browser of their choice, but IE was likely to remain the most popular choice.

The European Commission did not consider Windows 7 sans-browser to be a viable solution. It was too similar to the failed versions of Windows without a media player — they preferred a ballot screen to restore browser competition. Although full details are yet to be finalized, Microsoft has issued the following proposal:

Microsoft — rather than hardware manufacturers — will control the browser ballot screen.
Windows 7 E will be provided with Internet Explorer.
New installations of Windows 7 in Europe will show a web page offering a choice of five popular web browsers.
European Windows XP and Vista users will see the same ballot screen during a future automatic update (if IE is set as their default browser).
The list of alternative browsers will be based on 6-month usage statistics and will be reviewed twice per year.
Is this the right decision for Microsoft? I suspect so — the EU could have fined the company and ordered far more draconian changes to the OS. At least Microsoft have overall control of the ballot screen and can install IE without fear of legislative reprisals.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Microsoft’s Netbook Problem

Image by Jon Bradley Photography via Flickr

Source: technologizer.com

The persisting popularity of netbooks has been a major drain on Microsoft’s Windows client licensing revenue. The worldwide economic downturn has driven many people to purchase cheaper machines, but I believe that the netbook’s ascension also reflects changing consumer tastes.

Windows client licensing revenue fell $1 billion from last year, and Microsoft’s unearned revenue from multi-year license agreements has flatlined.

Unless Windows 7 proves wildly popular, the company’s prospects for restoring its Windows business to its past luster appear to be grim. I expect that the company will experience a cyclical earnings bump that will crest near where previous Windows releases have in the past, but growth will be less substantial.

That is because there are simply too many alternatives, with the Web acting as the great equalizer. I access Gmail just as quickly on a netbook running Linux as I would on a higher end laptop powered by Windows. And even though netbook hardware is wimpy by current standards, netbooks are as powerful as high-end machines were on the not-too-distant past

Not everyone is a developer or a gamer. I believe that the netbook meets the “good enough’ threshold for most people, and there is a decent assortment to choose from on the market.

Many of those people may have been compelled to purchase a netbook by financial reasons, but it is highly possible that many will be satisfied enough to purchase another netbook in the future. It could mean a permanent change in consumer buying behavior.

Microsoft seems to understand that, because it is downplaying netbooks at every chance it can get, and is attempting to direct customers toward more expensive alternatives. But the industry has failed to create really compelling products that would “wow’ me into paying more–so far.

I am reminded of my late grandmother, who was a child of the Great Depression. She wouldn’t spend money needlessly, and would reuse what she had (including tinfoil). People are experiencing varying degrees of hardship during this recession, and it is not unreasonable to expect that their spending habits will be permanently altered.

Consequently, if Microsoft does not see its market share slide, it will see its revenues fall. It cannot charge as much for a copy of Windows on a $400 machine than it would have traditionally done on more expensive systems. The Windows cash cow is slowly beginning to dry up.

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