Beyond Alaska Photo
Multimedia journalism in the Last Frontier

A few random links I ran across in my audio research. They’re getting a little old now, but consider them notebook items:

Setting up a small recording studio (from January 2006?)

:: I’ll probably be setting up something like this in the near future, either at home or at the office.

Discussion with Ira Glass (of This American Life) (from June of 2006.)

:: Long, three-part piece with a lively discussion at the end.

Radio: An Illustrated Guide by Jessica Abel and Ira Glass

:: A 32-page comic book covers how to make a radio story, $5. It’s the last item on the page.

Just a little tidbit that didn’t quite fit in the audio tutorial I’m writing for the Anchorage Daily News newsroom. This covers converting to MP3 but it also works to AAC, AIFF, Apple Lossless, or WAV.

To convert to an mp3:

•Import your file into iTunes.

•Highlight the file with a click, then go to Advanced > Convert Selection to MP3.

If it wants to convert you track to another format, you’ll need to edit the iTune’s preferences:

•Go to File > Preferences. Select the “Advanced” icon (looks like a gear).

•Select the “Importing” button. Under the “Import Using” drop down menu choose MP3 Encoder. Hit OK.

As part of our newsroom training effort at the Daily News I’ve created a handout on FCE for reporters and photographers. It’s a very surface treatment of a very complicated program but here are what I consider the highlights:

Inexperienced FCE users will often rewind their tape completely, which prevents the program from finding the camera in capture mode. Move forward on the tape 5 or 10 seconds so the timecode appears on the camera’s display and try launching the capture window again.

If you choose to use cross fades, make sure you have enough of the shot to blend. The program will make use of what it has — if there’s not enough material the cross fade will be short or one-sided.

You can control the length of the cross fade by double clicking on the cross fade icon. 1 = 1 second, 15 = 15 frames or .5 second.

If you’re importing audio into your project, FCE prefers .aif files. Double click on the audio track to bring it up in the editing window.

Learn the quick keys! They will save you time.

Apple has a very good series of video tutorials for FCE and the Knight Digital Media Center at the UC Berkeley has a great FC Pro tutorial.

My more superficial document (1.4 meg download) is available here: adnvideo.

A multimedia project this week finally had me digging through the G9’s menu screens to get a better handle on audio recording (it’s only taken six months).

First up: mic location. You’ll find it on top of the camera, right next to the mode dial. The big thing on the left side of the camera is the speaker.

There are two recording modes with the G9:

Sound memo

This is the quickest way. Shoot a picture, switch to playback mode and hit the microphone button. This will allow you to record up to a minute of audio per picture. To record more you need to switch to a different image. I ran into trouble as I tried to capture multiple tracks of ambient sound — once I reached my minute the camera only gave me the option to play the selected sound memo, not record.

The record button is on the camera back, in the upper right corner. The screen shows the microphone settings. I’ve been using auto levels exclusively — I find there’s too much going on for me to set the levels manually. And auto seems to work pretty well.

Sound Recorder

Getting to this feature requires slightly more button pushing. In playback mode, hit menu then scroll to ‘Sound Recorder.’

The controls are about the same as they are for the sound memo, and you don’t have to worry about a time limit.

Be careful about bumping the sample rate when you’re on this screen!
I suspect I’ll continue to use the sound memo function when collecting ambient sound simply because it’s (slightly!) easier to use but will transition over to the sound recorder for voice overs.

from multimediashooter.