There are a ton of YouTube videos about how to use Audacity and most of them are junk. I just looked at a dozen of them and these are the problems I found:
The speaker has a terrible voice. Poor enunciation, speaks too fast, repetition of meaningless phrases (ya know? right on! etc.) poor voice quality (breathy). Most of the speakers have not written down and edited their text. They think they can improvise and they wander all over the place and repeat the same statements many, many times. A number of them had such strong British accents that I simply couldn’t understand them. I watch a lot of British movies and TV shows without problems, but these guys are incomprehensible to me. My problem, I realize.
All the videos I watched had screenshots that were so fuzzy that it gave me eyestrain to try and read them. It was also hard to see where the cursor was. I would pay money for a professional video tutorial on Audacity, with a good speaker, well-organized lessons and clear screen shots. I appreciate all the volunteers posting their videos for free but I’m tired of amateur hour. I just need to get up to speed on mastering spoken word, so I don’t need advanced level training. Noise removal, normalization, EQ and compression would be sufficient.
No.
But you missed one. A well-paced, clear, polished, easy to understand, video for a feature that no longer exists.
And that’s the main reason we don’t do them. New version of Audacity!! Time to set up the studio and microphones and spend the next several weeks revising the videos.
I did consider doing very basic videos on things that tend not to change, like drag-selecting a portion of a blue wave and zooming. I write that out each time and go: “Wouldn’t it be nice to just point to a good video?”
Noise removal, normalization, EQ and compression would be sufficient.
Ding! Ding! Ding! It’s not Noise Removal any more. It’s Noise Reduction and it has a completely different look and feel.
Isn’t this fun?
I’m completely ignoring the video format, of course. Do you have a Flash License? Neither do I. How about HTML5-Video? I don’t think all the browsers are on-board yet. I favor QuickTime, but that’s because I’m on a Mac. I can’t play Windows Media without an add-on.
Etc.
We’ll stick with basic instructions and the forum, but you can make videos if you like. Do submit a rough script before you do. Don’t do what another poster did and complete extensive production only to find out the content was wrong.
Koz
I’m with Koz here
I just spent half an hour combing YouTube to see if I could find a decent one - most of them are well over a year old and many much more than that. So as Koz says they are well out of date regarding the User Interface and the features and functionality available. What you will note is that none of these posters ever take the trouble to go back and update their out-of-date videos - nor do they bother to delete them.
The Audacity documentation team did discuss a while back the possibility of producing video tutorials but for all the reasons that Koz states we realized that this was simply not something we could manage with the limited (volunteer) resources that we have.
So instead we focus a lot of effort on making the Audacity Manual the best it can be.
For instance, take a look at this section of the front page of the Audacity Manual: http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/#reference
Note that when you hover over elements of that image you will get hover-text appearing telling you about that particular functionality - and if you click there with your mouse you will be taken directly to the relevant page in the Manual.
The "Using Audacity section will be useful to you: http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/#using
And it’s worth looking at the Tutorials as they cover most of the common uses of Audacity: http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/tutorials.html
WC
Many thanks to Koz and WC. I never thought about making my own videos and didn’t expect that the Audacity team would do it. I was just hoping that there might be a useful one somewhere on YouTube that I missed. I’ll follow your suggestions. Thanks for all the good work. Audacity is a fantastic resource.
This guy is probably the best I’ve seen on Youtube regarding Audacity use:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCI2eVYoI4UdX9YHfXXzvldQ
and these ones are mostly fairly recent.
You may, or may not, like his style - but he certainly injects some pizzazz and enthusiasm
WC
I’ve just added a bookmark for him on the Audacity Wiki talk page so that I can find him again more easily: http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Category_talk:Tutorial
Some have entertainment value. My favorites are the three-handed people who can’t edit.
I’m going to hold the camera during this demo and illustrate the subject with my other two hands. Oh, wait. I don’t have two other hands…
Then I’m going to stop the monolog for a second to set up the next illustration and leave you looking at a sideways picture of the cat sniffing the camera.
[cringe]
Koz
I’ve made a number of Audacity tutorials, mainly connected to my AV projects with Pictures to Exe, this is the link to my channel, you’ll have to scroll through 100 odd to get to the Audacity items. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCYJnSnQ8V_CqJGDt8nQPzA
Stearman65