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Questions about basic editing

Posted: January 7th, 2021, 5:24 am
by WanderingWalker
Question 1
Why would you zoom sound?

Question 2
How do you zoom sound

Question 3
Is a highlighted section the bit to be deleted when editing? If so, how do you put in a new bit of recording? The instructions for this are not clear.

Question 4
Is there a volume monitor anywhere in the program? If not, how do you keep a constant level of sound?

Question 5
Does compression affect the whole recording or are you supposed to select sections for this?

Reply 1
1) try to magnify the soundwave and see if you can cut out a portion of it producing a smooth sentence (e.g., if you said "two and two makes five er four", you could fix this by cutting out "five er")
2) If you can't clean up some of these through editing alone, just record a new version of the sentence or part of it in a new window, select the new sound wave fragment, copy it, select the old sound wave fragment to be replaced, delete it, and paste the new one in its place.
Question 5 re reply 1 How can I go about following above advice? How do you magnify the soundwave?
Question 6 re reply 1 How do you select the new sound wave fragment, copy it, select the old sound wave fragment to be replaced, delete it, and paste the new one in its place?

Question 7 How can I amplify my volume?

Question 8
The instructions links contain instructions for Windows 7/XP or Vista only. I have Windows 10 and the instructions do not correspond. What can I do about this?

Question 9
How do you add 3 seconds on to the end of the recording without losing anything already recorded?

So far any help I have received assumes familiarity with all aspects of the programme. The links I've been sent forward me to other incomprehensible instructions, which assume that you already know what you're being told. Using words like "just" or "simply" do not help.

Re: Questions about basic editing

Posted: January 7th, 2021, 7:14 am
by TriciaG
Welcome! I assume you're talking about Audacity?

1 and 2) What do you mean by "zoom sound"? Do you mean zoom in and out on the recording to see it closer? You do it to, well, see things closer. For example, to remove a small click that is too small to see, or that you might delete something really close by that you want to keep because your scissors are too big when zoomed out. :) How to zoom in? Put your cursor near where you want to be, then click the + magnifying glass as many times as you want.

3) If you highlight something, that is the section you'll be doing any editing to: delete, amplify, compression, etc. Like in a word processing document, only the part you highlight gets bolded, italicized, or underlined.
There are slightly different ways to do a lot of things such as replace audio, just like there are multiple ways of going from Point A to Point B by foot or car. :) What I do:
- Put my cursor near the spot where the mistake is
- Hold down the Shift key while clicking Record. This starts recording in a new track just below where my cursor is.
- Record the patch, click Stop
- Highlight the new part I want; Ctrl-C or go to Edit/Copy if you're strictly a mouse person
- Go up to my old track and highlight the part I want to replace (this might involve zooming in to make my start and end points as accurate as I can)
- Ctrl-V or Edit/Paste the new part in
- Delete the second track I don't need anymore by clicking the X on the left side of it

4) There's no real good volume monitor in Audacity. There is one of those monitor things like on a sound board that jumps up and back, but you might as well just look at the wave form and see how they average visually, IMHO. To keep a constant level of sound, stay a uniform distance to the mic and don't blast out sounds when reading. (e.g. When a character yells, don't actually yell that loud, but be more intense than loud.) Keep an eye on the look of the wave forms and make sure you don't clip (hit the top or bottom of the recording window with your wave form). Visually, we aim for the recording to peak around the 0.5 marks in the Audacity window.

5) Compression: generally you do it on the whole recording, but you don't have to. Here's a video on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fKYYj6HMZU

6) This video might help some: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9NuSuWYaWg (in this version of Audacity, clicking Record automatically starts the recording in a new track. They changed that in later versions; now, hold down the Shift key when clicking Record to get a new track.)

7) Highlight what you want amplified, go to Effect/Amplify, and type in the number of how many dB you want to raise the volume. DO NOT click the "allow clipping" box. If you can't get a high enough number it's because you have a wave form that would go over maximum. Then you'll need to shrink that spike to get enough volume - see Compression. :)

8) Most of the instructions should work for Win10. Please specify a page/link/instruction that doesn't and we'll take a look.

9) Go to the end of the recording. If there's already some silence there, highlight the silence, copy, and paste as many times as you need. Then cut off (delete) any extra. Or you can go to the end of the recording and click Record. Don't say anything, just let the mic run. Stop it when you have enough silence.

Hope this helps!

Re: Questions about basic editing

Posted: January 11th, 2021, 8:39 pm
by TommyP
The first part of my recording about (2 minutes) is noticeably louder than the rest of the recording (about 20 minutes). I am in Audacity. I would like to even the levels but the LibriVox beginner's guide says not to put any processing on your track except "amplify." Any suggestions besides doing it over?


Tom

Re: Questions about basic editing

Posted: January 11th, 2021, 8:46 pm
by knotyouraveragejo
Select just the section that is louder and deamplify until it matches the rest by applying a negative amplification, i.e. -2 dB. You can then select the whole track to further adjust the volume as needed.

Re: Questions about basic editing

Posted: January 12th, 2021, 8:36 pm
by TommyP
Thank you notyouraveragejoe!