Podcast editing

[smrki]

Hi,
I would like to hear from more experienced users here any advices on my problem. I am editing a podcast which is made by recording a free conference call. I use Gizmo to dial in and record the podcast. There are more people who participate from different sides, using different phones, cellphones, software clients, etc. This tends to produce cacophony of sounds. I would like to make the best of it, I know the best solution would be to record it in higher quality, but that is unfortunately not an option. Here is a screenshoot of a part of the podcast, there are three persons you can hear in this part. You can see the different wave forms.

How could I improve this podcast? I presume it would be better to edit manually the parts where different people speak as opposed to editing whole podcast in batch with some filter.
And also what filter should I use? Any advice would be appreciated.

Thank you.

[Irish]

How could I improve this podcast?

It depends on what's wrong with it.
What we can see from the screenshot is that different speakers are at different volume levels. You could fix this manually by using the Amplify effect on the sections with lower levels, or you could use a Compressor, which will amplify the fainter sounds automatically.

The Compressor in Audacity's Effects menu is quite good, but a better one is
Chris's Compressor http://pdf23ds.net/software/dynamic-compressor/

Click on the "Plugin source" link, download the compress.ny file and put it in Audacity's Plug-ins directory. It will appear as "Compress Dynamics" in Audacity's Effects menu when you re-start Audacity.
If you use the default settings, you will generally get good results.

If there is anything else wrong with the podcast, you will have to tell us, because we can't hear it!

PO'L

[smrki]

Hi Irish and all,

I have downloaded the plug in moved it to the plugin directory but it does not appear in my effects menu? I have restarted audacity. There is only the standard compressor available. And after appluing it I didn't notice any important change (increased quality).

[smrki]

I don't have net framework 3.5 that seems to be the problem. Is this effect a part of the newer release of audacity?

[waxcylinder]

I don't have net framework 3.5 that seems to be the problem. Is this effect a part of the newer release of audacity?

IIRC it was required for one of the 1.3 releases for a while - but I thought that the developers had removed the need for taht in the latest releases.

WC

[billw58]

I don't have net framework 3.5 that seems to be the problem. Is this effect a part of the newer release of audacity?

You may have downloaded the wrong link. Read the instructions on the web page carefully. The one you want is "compress.ny". You have to right-click on the link to download it, otherwise you will just get a browser window showing the Nyquist source code. Once "compress.ny" (a tiny file containing the Nyquist code) is in your plug-ins folder it should appear automatically in the Effect menu as "Compress Dynamics" below the line.

You only need the .NET framework if you are going to compile the standalone version of the effect.

-- Bill

[smrki]

Thanks, Bill but I have downloaded the file correctly and it is in my plug in folder. I was using 1.3.7 version of audacity.
Anyway i have manually sorted out the problem, have used high pass filter on parts which are of higher volume. it sounds better now. Thank you.

By the way I have downloaded the audacity 1.3.10 and it is a marvelous improvement.

I am dancing the happy dance. You guys rock, Audacity rocks, open source software rules.

Need to find some way to give back to the community.
i think you all guys, developers and people helping newbies here should be rich like oil sheiks.

Keep up the good work!

[billw58]

high pass filter on parts which are of higher volume. it sounds better now.

Hmmmm ... that will just take out the low frequencies (passes the high frequencies, thus the name). But if it works for you, all is good.

-- Bill