Newborn til audio editing and have general question.
As I dont know what the function I am searching for is called I am not able to google it.
Hope somebody here is willing to aid.
I am making instruction videos for the application we develop here at my work.
I have recorded audio separately with Audacity, and I had great use of the tutorials so far.
The problem is I recorded several pieces of audio I need to edit together. My voice sounds different in the different cuts, the wave profiles are different, the resonance is different etc. etc.
Are there some easy hacks to make my voice sound more even, and not so obvious that I cut several pieces together?
No need to be perfect, just less embarrassing. I am not able to identify what exactly the differences is between the cuts, so I dont know what functions to use either.
I really got a thing for this now, btw, its great fun, and my colegues are very impressed with my skills, but I want to get better!
Oh, while I’m at it, what is the -1 to 1, and 1 to -1 vertical scale called?
Oh, while I’m at it, what is the -1 to 1, and 1 to -1 vertical scale called?
It’s in percent. 50%, 100% etc. I believe future versions will convert to dB as many other apps use. As it is now, you just have to know that 50% is -6dB, 100% is 0dB and the timeline runs out of poop at around -24dB. So it only tells you what’s going on in the loudest (usually most significant) part of the show.
The flashing sound meter is in dB and will measure much more of the range, but not the important sound.
My voice sounds different in the different cuts
You don’t. This is why people record in studios with the same microphone each time. We can help with some minor timber and pitch problems, but reverb and echoes are right out of our tool kit. Once you record in a barn or echoy room, that’s the end of the world.
There are tricks to this. Build the sound change into the show. As the show changes, then you can change the character of your voice. Walking inside and outside or changing rooms.
Did you try to correct a fluff or mistake by recording the correction later somewhere else? Even the grownups have trouble doing that.
I don’t know of any shortcuts. There’s the silly Hollywood trick of looping. Watch the video while you record clean audio in a quiet room. Try to match the voice and lips in your video editor. Throw away the bad sound.
There’s another bad option. Make everything as bad as the worst sound. Add Effect > Reverb or Effect > Echo to the clean sound until it sounds like the bad sound.
Or you could record it again paying attention to the sound.
Watch “All The Stations” videos. The sound is almost universally crappy, but they build it into the show. “It’s very windy here at Barnstable train station, north of London.” There was one show where it was so windy the sound track was all wind trash and no voice. The woman performer’s hair was standing straight out. They built those clips into the show as comedy points.
There was one Glove and Boots episode where they were begging for subscriptions to keep the show alive.
“Contribute to our Patreon Page or someone is going to come and take our microphon… __________________________________________________________________”
If you personally never appear on camera, you can record the whole show dialog track in one place and piece it together in post production in the video editor. All the matching, quality and cutting problems vanish
That’s one reason you see so many animated videos on YouTube. That’s much easier to piece together than trying to jump back and forth between live performance and background sound.
I have no idea what your skill level is, but one of the producers in our shop routinely came back with really clear, clean, pleasant voice sound. I asked him how he did it.
“I recorded most of it in the back of my car…”
I’m also assuming you’re using a nice video editor. Audacity will not edit video.
