This isn't music, but it is audio
Posted: Tue Oct 18, 2016 12:13 pm
Every few years I do a reading of the Chess article on Wikipedia. It's kind of fun even if it is a lot of work. If you're interested, go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess, dcroll down to the bottom, asnd there's a gadget on the page to play or download the audio file of the article.
Did the original article in 2007. Took 1/2 hour to read. Did a re=read in 2011, took just ovedr an hour. The latest re-read, which I just uploaded today, took 1 hour and 13 minutes.
The most time consuming part of doing any media, whether it's a video, or in this case, an OGG audio file (a non-patent encumbered alternative to MP3) the problem isn't the making of the content, it's the editing in post-production.
I don't care how good a speaker you are, I suspect if you're not normally doing readings on a regular basis, you'll make misteakes. Misreed a word that isn't there, drop a word that is, choke on a pronunciation. So what I do is when I catch it, I stop, back up about a sentence, and restart. This gives me enough "target surface" in post to find a point in the audio before where I made a mistake, mark this point, find the place just past the same point in the correction, e.g. the next word, then cut the erroneous and duplicate pieces out.
Cutting digital audio with a tool like the free and open source Audacity program makes it very easy to do the work, and if you do it right, often the result is absolutely seamless, the listener will never know you cut anything.
It amazes me to think about the fact that as recently as the 1980s, to edit audio required using a reel-to-reel tape, a razor and splicing tape to do this. And where I missed a word and can take a copy of the word from elsewhere and paste it in, would require making another copy of the tape or the segment, cut the piece from the copy, then splice that in.
If you do this a lot hopefully you'd have a splicing bench, a work area with a combination tape rest device - to endure splices lined up - and a cutting arm to make precise cuts. The fictional character Tyler Durden supposedly uses a device like this - probably a Movieola - for editing 35mm film in Fight Club so he can insert one or more pornographic stills into a film showing in a theater.
With these kinds of digital tools and some patience, cuts can be perfect. Unlike, say, Nixon and the 18 1/2 minute gap that his secretary "accidentally erased.' Yeah, right, more like 'accidentally on purpose erased.' My personal opinion of that excuse was that it was total [expletive deleted].
But anyway, video editing takes about 60:1 or one minute of post for each one second of video. It seems like audio is much faster, coming in at 6:1, so the one and 1/4 hour audo file took about 7 hours to edit it.
Did the original article in 2007. Took 1/2 hour to read. Did a re=read in 2011, took just ovedr an hour. The latest re-read, which I just uploaded today, took 1 hour and 13 minutes.
The most time consuming part of doing any media, whether it's a video, or in this case, an OGG audio file (a non-patent encumbered alternative to MP3) the problem isn't the making of the content, it's the editing in post-production.
I don't care how good a speaker you are, I suspect if you're not normally doing readings on a regular basis, you'll make misteakes. Misreed a word that isn't there, drop a word that is, choke on a pronunciation. So what I do is when I catch it, I stop, back up about a sentence, and restart. This gives me enough "target surface" in post to find a point in the audio before where I made a mistake, mark this point, find the place just past the same point in the correction, e.g. the next word, then cut the erroneous and duplicate pieces out.
Cutting digital audio with a tool like the free and open source Audacity program makes it very easy to do the work, and if you do it right, often the result is absolutely seamless, the listener will never know you cut anything.
It amazes me to think about the fact that as recently as the 1980s, to edit audio required using a reel-to-reel tape, a razor and splicing tape to do this. And where I missed a word and can take a copy of the word from elsewhere and paste it in, would require making another copy of the tape or the segment, cut the piece from the copy, then splice that in.
If you do this a lot hopefully you'd have a splicing bench, a work area with a combination tape rest device - to endure splices lined up - and a cutting arm to make precise cuts. The fictional character Tyler Durden supposedly uses a device like this - probably a Movieola - for editing 35mm film in Fight Club so he can insert one or more pornographic stills into a film showing in a theater.
With these kinds of digital tools and some patience, cuts can be perfect. Unlike, say, Nixon and the 18 1/2 minute gap that his secretary "accidentally erased.' Yeah, right, more like 'accidentally on purpose erased.' My personal opinion of that excuse was that it was total [expletive deleted].
But anyway, video editing takes about 60:1 or one minute of post for each one second of video. It seems like audio is much faster, coming in at 6:1, so the one and 1/4 hour audo file took about 7 hours to edit it.