ABOUT ME

I live in a camper van with a West Highland Terrier for company.
My passion is creating images but it is a work in progress.
I am always willing to share what knowledge I have and can be contacted through the comments on this post or e-mail ADRIAN
ALL IMAGES WILL ENLARGE WITH A LEFT CLICK

Friday 11 March 2016

NOT SO EASY. (11/03/16)

 Today I have made a short video clip and slide show. DOUGLAS asked about the sound on the tractor video and it set me thinking that I'd never done much with sound apart from trim it, fade it and mix a track or two. As you will hear it is perhaps better I leave things much as they are. Audacity is another powerful bit of free software with one minor irritation. It accepts and saves sound in lots of codecs but not MP3 which is the one I guess 90% of folk use. There is a plug-in by Lame that works fine but you will have to install it. I ran this sound on about four stereo tracks with some of the voice over recorded on the computer microphone. It's rubbish the rest was recorded on the ZOOM H1, it isn't much better but the ZOOM is not to blame. 
I did have a dead cat for this or probably a dead kitten. It did cut wind noise dramatically whereas the foam ones do nothing much at all. I was given it and have mislaid it.
This video is a bit of a mess all round as I was playing around in Blender's VSE. It did what I wanted but it did it a bit too fast. You can pause the video should you want a look at the stills, it is full HD. After much messing I did manage to get a bit of middling bird tweeting. Next time I will put Low Cut to on as It must be easier than trying to do it in the equaliser. Birds don't tweet low frequencies......I hope.
Adobe do a sound editor but when I last looked it seemed much the same as Audacity.
Have a good weekend.

12 comments:

  1. Well the deep braething and squelching of your feet was funny. The birds were very loud. I think what Dougls and I had meant was the natural noise of the tractor ploughing would have been better than the music Adrian.

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    1. Margaret, it was Trevor who wanted more tractor sound. Douglas was delighted with the quality.

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  2. Adrian, I did my first video today, downloaded to youtube, a combination of brook and birds sounds. It is a huge step for me as I am not at all technologically inclined. I don't ever expect to do what you can do but doing what I did was a BIG deal for me. Thank you for the inspiration. Marie

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    1. Marie, if I can do it anyone can and 90% of folk could do it much better.

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  3. I just fired up Audacity, and it does MP-3's just fine. Maybe there's another reason for the difficulty. Anyway, I think you're learning quickly. By the way, after more than 50 years in the radio biz (mostly retired) the folks around the radio station call me the Earl of Edit. I've never attempted video stuff, so my hat is off to you.

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    1. Bill, mine does but when I first got it a few years ago I remember having to plug in the LAME encoder. I remember as it took me ages to find where I'd put it.
      I got totally lost with this and it was getting worse. I'll keep trying. I have been sampling bits of bird song to try and make a tune. A tiny bit of the crow makes a good rhythm beat. The hens are cooperative but don't say much. I'll get comfortable with it given time.

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    2. PS--- Yes, a Barrow's Goldeneye. I added that to the post.

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  4. It's definately a clever piece of kit. Weirdly I swear I heard Siskin in the sound clip though it could quite easily been a Greenfinch. I really did enjoy the quality of the tractor sound especially when he was at the top of the field just about to start the ploughing, I was convinced you'd placed a microphone on the tractor

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    1. Douglas, it is excellent close to things but not very good at anything over a few metres. It has an input socket for a microphone so were I doing a lot of sound I'd look at getting a self powered shotgun Mic.

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  5. I find identifying birds (other than the 'usual' suspects) very difficult. A 'Shazam' of bird sounds perhaps matching them automatically with all the various recordings available instead of having to take a guess and then look them up on the computer would be a wonderful app to have. The title 'Audacity' amused me.

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    1. Graham Audacity has been around for years and is all I will ever need. I just wish I knew what all the filters did without going through and finding out by trial and error.
      It was the name that first attracted me.

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