ICT in Collaborative, Project-Based Teaching and Learning Malta, Summer 2013

Podcasting Podcasting is a beautiful addition to your repertoire of tools for collaborative projects. It is full of fun and is sure to capture the enthusiasm of your students. Simply put, podcasting will allow your student to create their own radio station, plan manage and record their programmes and broadcast them through the Internet. The most important tools for your podcasting venture are your microphone, and a good audio editing software. Microphones come in many different shapes and sizes (and prices), however a common PC mic will do. The software which we will use is Audacity, this is available for free download and is released under the GNU.

Creating your audio At this stage you need to ensure that there is no background noise and that you are not likely to be disturbed during your recording. You obviously need to have prepared the script of whatever you are going to record or a set of questions if it is an interview, etc. Also make sure that the microphone you are going to used is correctly connected. Audacity allows you to record voice and music and then mixes them up so that you would be able to export them as MP3. However, the very first time you are using Audacity after installing it on your PC, you have to go through a very simple process. This is done only ONCE the very first time you are using Audacity. If you forget to do this process, Audacity wont allow you to export what you recorded as an MP3 and instead you will get a dialog box as shown on the left.

To be able to export your recording as an MP3 you have to download the LAME MP3 ENCODER which you will find in the course CD. Follow these easy steps: 1. Take the lameenc.dll file and copy it to the folder where you installed Audacity. This is
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probably C:\Program Files\Audacity. 2. Open Audacity and go to File ~ Preferences 3. Go to the File Formats tab. 4. In the bottom of the window there is a section tabled MP3 Export Setup 5. Click on the link tabled Find Library 6. This will ask you if you want to locate the lame encoder. Click Yes 7. In the dialog box, go to the folder where you put the lame-enc.dll file earlier and select it. 8. Click OK 9. You should now be able to export files to the MP3 format. The Audacity interface features a set of large control buttons. The record button is arrowed this is the one we need to use to start recording audio. Recording starts immediately but its OK if you dont start right away we can always delete sections later. Click the Stop button as shown to stop the recording. The wave pattern shown is the visual rendering of your recording. A flat line represents silence and waves represent sounds.

You can play all or any part of the recording you have just made. To play the entire recording, position the cursor at the beginning by clicking there and then click the play control button. You may play part of the audio by making a selection (click and drag to select a part of the audio) When clicking play, only the selected part will be played. This feature is useful for selecting areas of your recording that you want to listen to closely. Using the same selection procedure, you can delete parts of your recording. Simply select, and then press the delete button on the keyboard.

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Each time you click record and record new audio, you will notice that a new track is created. If you play the recording now you will hear all of them superimposed which is very confusing! We therefore need to rearrange the tracks so that they do not overlap.

For this we need to use the Time Shift Tool found at the top left corner. Simply click and drag to move tracks about as shown. The screenshot below shows the rearranged tracks. Notice that you can use the zoom controls to control the spread of the tracks on your screen. The Fit in Window button is particularly useful.

We will often need to include a background musical track to enhance our recording. We need to be very careful about copyright issues here a good source of copyright free music is www.archive.org registration is free. This is the procedure to import an audio track into the background. Select Import Audio from the Project Menu

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Browse to locate the particular music file that you would like to use. This doesnt necessarily have to be music. You can, for instance import a conversation that you have recorded onto your mp3 player and transferred to your computer (the procedure is identical). Click on the filename and then on the Open button.

Audacity will now import the file this might take a little time. The screenshot below shows our project with three short recordings arranged to follow one another and at the bottom, you can also see the music track that we have just imported. This track is available in the course CD.

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As you can see from the above screenshot, the music track is much longer than the rest of the recording. We can solve this by deleting the extra length at the end. Select this by clicking and dragging and delete using either the delete button or the Delete option in the Edit menu.

At this stage, since the music will play at the same time as the rest of the recording, we need to ensure that the levels allow for easy listening. The background music cannot be too high. Levels can easily be adjusted using the Envelope Tool. Select the Envelope Tool. On the Music track use the tool to lower the general volume and to create trapezoidal shapes that allow you to control the volume. The screenshot shows a fading out of the volume towards the end of the recording.

It is important to save your work often to avoid nasty surprises! To save the project and continue to work on it at a later stage, select the Save Project option in the File menu.

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Browse to a location and enter a file name Click Save

When you are completely ready with recording, mixing and editing your audio, you will need to export it as an mp3 (the most popular format for podcasts) Go to the File menu and select the Export As MP3 option. Click OK

Identify a location to which you would like to save your file and a file name. That is it! The audio file for your podcast is ready.

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Audacity - Bars and Buttons and Icons

Audio Control
Pause Play Shift + Play Record Skip to Start Skip to End Stop Stops the project at cursor position temporarily until the Pause button is clicked again. Plays the project from the Start or the cursor position. Plays the project in a loop. Records a new track at the Start or at the position of the cursor if the other tracks are muted. Returns directly to start of first track in the project. NOT the start of currently selected track. Proceeds directly to end of the last track in the project. NOT the end of currently selected track. Stops recording or playback of project and returns the cursor to the start of the track (sound wave form).

Editing Tools
Selection Envelope Draw Zoom Time-Shift Multi-Tool Selects the range of the track for editing or monitoring (listening) using the

(I-beam) cursor.

Alters the volume over time of a specific section of the track. Ideal for manually adjusting interviews, radio plays, etc This allows you to draw on the sound wave form when you are in a high zoom Zooms in and out with the mouse buttons. Left zooms in. Right zooms out. Select and drag will magnify that selection only. Shifts an entire track left and right in the time line. It is a faster version of Cut and Paste for multi-track editing. Enables multiple tools to be selected and used depending on the cursor position and the Hot Keys in use at the time.
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Edit Toolbar
Cut Paste Copy Trim outside selection Silence Select Removes the selected area from the wave form (track) and places it in the computers memory (clipboard). Places the content of the last Cut or Copied wave form (track) from the memory clipboard to the cursor position of the current tract. Duplicates the selected area of the wave form (track) and places it in the computers memory (clipboard). Removes the entire audio outside the selected area. The length of the track remains intact. The trimmed area is silent. Silences (blanks) the selected area. The length of the track remains intact. Ideal for killing dead microphone chatter. Reinstates the previous edit/alteration. It can also reinstate several edits/alterations in reverse consecutive order. Reverses the Undo command. It can also reverse several Undo commands in reverse consecutive order. Enlarges the appearance of the project wave (track) with the left mouse button and reduces it with right mouse button. Reduces the appearance of the project wave (track) with the left mouse button and enlarges it with right mouse button Zooms in until the selected area fits in the window Zooms out until entire project fits in the window

Undo

Redo Zoom In Zoom Out Fit Selection In Window Fit Project In Window

Input Mixer
Output Volume Input Volume This lets you set the volume to automatically change during playing This sets how loud you want anything to be when you play it back This sets how loud you want your input device to be

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This indicates what device is set as the input device (MIcrophone, Line In, CDROM) 2. Windows Input Level Meter Red bars indicate the tracks recording level. Green bars indicate the tracks playback amplitude level Left channel sound wave. Top position in window. Track Control on the left Right channel sound wave. Bottom position in window. This is where the cursor is and is where the computer is reading the project Time line linked to cursor and scrolling wave form This displays the quality of the recording and whether the recording is in mono or stereo, there is also mute and solo buttons that enable you to mute and solo the track Deletes track but can be undone during session. Click here to name current track Mono / Stereo Choice of sample rates

Output Level Meter

Left Speaker Sound Wave Right Speaker Sound Wave Position

Time Line Track Info

Track Remove Track Name Format Sample Rate

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Bit rate Mute Solo Gain Pan

Choice of Bit rates Silence the track Play track on its own This adjusts the volume of the track
Adjust the left and right balance of the track.

3. Audacity Glossary
Term Bit rate

Explanation
Digital sound quality is measured by the bit rate of the sound wave. Audacity records at 16 and 32 bit. The higher the bit rate, the better the recording quality. It occurs when the input source is too high. The user is warned visually when the Input Level Meter peaks and the scrolling wave form hits the outer limits. The peaks are clipped to a flat even appearance. Audacity clips the offending peaks automatically which usually results in a distorted sound recording. See Normalise and Distortion below Distortion is caused by clipping, incorrect volume settings (too high) or badly earthed or incompatible sound equipment. The distortion may appear as a constant thick line on the scrolling wave form and/or high level readings on the Input Level Meter. Upon playback the recording can sound low, muffled, intermittent or contain a constant high or low pitched sound. Dithering is an effect involving the addition of noise to a high quality bit rate recording thereby changing it into a smaller bit rate with subsequent quality reduction. It is used to soften recordings. LAME (Lame Aint an MP3 Encoder) is a high quality MPEG Audio Layer III (MP3) encoder licensed under the LGPL. Audacity cannot encode mp3 files because the mp3 algorithm is commercially patented. Audacity recognises LAME and uses it to export in MP3 format. A single sound wave (either left or right channel) but can be processed to evenly distribute the same single sound wave through both channels (left and right). The track plays but in silent mode

Clipping

Distortion

Dithering

LAME

Mono

Mute

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Normalize

Panning Project

This effect corrects the vertical displacement of the track to amplify / reduce the track volume to a fixed maximum amplitude of -3 dB. Makes the volume as loud as possible without causing clipping. Its good practice to normalise tracks before making the final mix prior exporting to the desired format. (MP3 with LAME ) The balancing of a track coming through both left and right channels (sides/speakers). Useful if one channel is weak. Audacity maintains several component parts for each recording project. They remain intact even during the rendering process (final file) leading to the Export or Save as stage. Edited projects lose the discarded components. Two separate sound waves simultaneously recorded of the same subject. Playback through stereophonic equipment producing a fuller, balanced and distributed left and right channelled sound.

Stereo

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