easy last-minute podfic tutorial!
Jun. 1st, 2008 02:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabWe've got like forty-eight hours -- less, actually -- before the close of ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
amplificathon. So in the interest of blitzkrieg, here's a quick tutorial so those of you who want to get one in under the wire can podfic.
Step 1. Download Audacity. Free for Mac and PC platforms, up to Vista and OSX. And, duh, install.
Step 2. Find the story you wanna podfic; check the pairings/fandoms/points list over atamplificathon to get an idea of your points value -- though, this being the last day, if you're new to podficking I wouldn't worry about points. But while you're over there, read the FAQ.
Step 3. Open your fic in a window (or print it out if you find that easier). Practice reading it aloud a little. If you're ambitious, practice the voices and accents. Drink some water. Make sure there are no loud jets flying overhead, no construction next door, and no loud Mexican cumpleanos across the street.
Step 4. Launch Audacity. Now, there are lots of things that are confusing about Audacity, unless you just straight-up ignore them.
Step 5. Hit the red record button. Freak out a little. Read the title, fandom, author and reader, and then hit stop, back up, and go listen to yourself. You should have a little thing that sounds a lot like, "Unreal Mockery. A Slings & Arrows podfic, written and read by Sabine." I find this is the best way to test, and also the best way to familiarize yourself with Audacity's tracking formats.
Step 6. Go read the first line of your fic. Read it a lot. Read it aloud. Go back to Audacity and hit record, then record all you can until you stumble over a word, talk too fast, get your pronouns wrong, or get attacked by the cat. Go back to Audacity and hit stop. (Not pause, pause fucks your shit up. Use stop and start and record.)
Step 7. You will notice that every time you stop recording and restart, Audacity starts a NEW TRACK aligned with the end of the last track. That of course means that if you start and stop a lot, you'll have a zillion parallel tracks by the end. Don't worry about it.
Step 8. Rerecording a screwed-up part. So you record a paragraph, but in there somewhere you have Bones stumble and say "Ange-Andr-Rrnngela?" and you continue reading till the end of the line. Finish, go back to Audacity and hit stop. Then move your vertical line cursor back on the track till you think you've backed up past where you screwed up, and relisten. You should be able to find the chunk of track where you fucked up. Now, there are lots of ways to deal with this, including cutting that section out of the track, recording a new section, and putting it back in at the appropriate timecode. I find that that, especially if you have a zillion tracks, and especially especially if you go back at the end and find something early you screwed up...it gets overcomplicated and you end up fucking with your timing and accidentally layering tracks.
So what I do is, I go find that, like, three-second chunk where I stumbled over Angela's name. I highlight it with the vertical cursor, go to Effects, and Generate Silence. It'll effectively overwrite that section of recording with silence. THEN I go back, align my cursor with the beginning of the silence, and rerecord the crappy chunk. If your voice has a relatively consistent pace, the timing should work pretty well. I usually back up to the track that leads IN to the new chunk, and listen through to make sure it doesn't sound abrupt. If it does, I rerecord, or drag the section to realign it with the tracks around it. (Note: The horizontal cursor in the upper left toolbox is for sliding tracks in time. It's a useful tool but easy to screw up. Mostly, fuck around with it. Or just ignore it and use "generate silence" and manually cut and delete sections of your fic, using the horizontal cursor simply to align tracks.) There is also an align tracks function in the... Effects? menu, but it only aligns the SELECTED track with the one before it, so you have to go manually forward and drag each track to meet it up with the one before. Just. Be careful.
Step 9 and finishing: Go back a lot and listen to the chunks you've just recorded. While on the one hand it's lyrical and performative to read long chapters of the fic in one go, there will always be bits you screw up or stumble on, and it's much much easier to fix them at the moment than to go back and do all that... dragging I talked about in Step 8.
When you're done, depending on the length of the fic and the number of stops, you should have a whole stack of horizontal tracks. Don't worry about it. You have two options here. If you think you're going to go back and reedit the track before posting, do "Save As" and save it as an .aup file that only Audacity can open. This will save your tracks individually and you'll be able to reopen and it'll look just like it is now. However, if you're satisfied and ready to post, do "Export as MP3" instead. It'll export as an .mp3, and then you can go ahead and use your favorite upload site to upload it. Then it's just about posting a post toamplificathon so people can enjoy your bounty!
I'm fairly sure I didn't cover everything, and left out some important parts. I'm happy to answer questions -- I'll be here all day, tip your waiters -- in the interest of LOTS of DIVERSE podfic for posterity. And if I get a vote, I say, MORE NCIS! More Torchwood that's not Jack/Ianto! More Doctor Who, on principle! More small fandoms! More MASH, please! Sitcoms! The Office! Bones!
The deadline is midnight tomorrow, for individual values of "midnight" and "tomorrow." Based on the curvature of the globe, my deadline here in California is 3am, night of the 2nd/morning of the 3rd. There's a sched on the ficathon LJ that explains it, with math!
And then thank![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
anatsuno, chr0me_kitten, and general_jinjur, and while you're at it, go visit the audiofic archive, browse around, and listen to some stuff!
Don't forget to leave feedback, for the author of the fic as well as the reader, if you like what you've heard. It makes the world, such as it is here on the series of tubes, go round!
//
amplificathon. So in the interest of blitzkrieg, here's a quick tutorial so those of you who want to get one in under the wire can podfic.Step 1. Download Audacity. Free for Mac and PC platforms, up to Vista and OSX. And, duh, install.
Step 2. Find the story you wanna podfic; check the pairings/fandoms/points list over at
amplificathon to get an idea of your points value -- though, this being the last day, if you're new to podficking I wouldn't worry about points. But while you're over there, read the FAQ.Step 3. Open your fic in a window (or print it out if you find that easier). Practice reading it aloud a little. If you're ambitious, practice the voices and accents. Drink some water. Make sure there are no loud jets flying overhead, no construction next door, and no loud Mexican cumpleanos across the street.
Step 4. Launch Audacity. Now, there are lots of things that are confusing about Audacity, unless you just straight-up ignore them.
Step 5. Hit the red record button. Freak out a little. Read the title, fandom, author and reader, and then hit stop, back up, and go listen to yourself. You should have a little thing that sounds a lot like, "Unreal Mockery. A Slings & Arrows podfic, written and read by Sabine." I find this is the best way to test, and also the best way to familiarize yourself with Audacity's tracking formats.
Step 6. Go read the first line of your fic. Read it a lot. Read it aloud. Go back to Audacity and hit record, then record all you can until you stumble over a word, talk too fast, get your pronouns wrong, or get attacked by the cat. Go back to Audacity and hit stop. (Not pause, pause fucks your shit up. Use stop and start and record.)
Step 7. You will notice that every time you stop recording and restart, Audacity starts a NEW TRACK aligned with the end of the last track. That of course means that if you start and stop a lot, you'll have a zillion parallel tracks by the end. Don't worry about it.
Step 8. Rerecording a screwed-up part. So you record a paragraph, but in there somewhere you have Bones stumble and say "Ange-Andr-Rrnngela?" and you continue reading till the end of the line. Finish, go back to Audacity and hit stop. Then move your vertical line cursor back on the track till you think you've backed up past where you screwed up, and relisten. You should be able to find the chunk of track where you fucked up. Now, there are lots of ways to deal with this, including cutting that section out of the track, recording a new section, and putting it back in at the appropriate timecode. I find that that, especially if you have a zillion tracks, and especially especially if you go back at the end and find something early you screwed up...it gets overcomplicated and you end up fucking with your timing and accidentally layering tracks.
So what I do is, I go find that, like, three-second chunk where I stumbled over Angela's name. I highlight it with the vertical cursor, go to Effects, and Generate Silence. It'll effectively overwrite that section of recording with silence. THEN I go back, align my cursor with the beginning of the silence, and rerecord the crappy chunk. If your voice has a relatively consistent pace, the timing should work pretty well. I usually back up to the track that leads IN to the new chunk, and listen through to make sure it doesn't sound abrupt. If it does, I rerecord, or drag the section to realign it with the tracks around it. (Note: The horizontal cursor in the upper left toolbox is for sliding tracks in time. It's a useful tool but easy to screw up. Mostly, fuck around with it. Or just ignore it and use "generate silence" and manually cut and delete sections of your fic, using the horizontal cursor simply to align tracks.) There is also an align tracks function in the... Effects? menu, but it only aligns the SELECTED track with the one before it, so you have to go manually forward and drag each track to meet it up with the one before. Just. Be careful.
Step 9 and finishing: Go back a lot and listen to the chunks you've just recorded. While on the one hand it's lyrical and performative to read long chapters of the fic in one go, there will always be bits you screw up or stumble on, and it's much much easier to fix them at the moment than to go back and do all that... dragging I talked about in Step 8.
When you're done, depending on the length of the fic and the number of stops, you should have a whole stack of horizontal tracks. Don't worry about it. You have two options here. If you think you're going to go back and reedit the track before posting, do "Save As" and save it as an .aup file that only Audacity can open. This will save your tracks individually and you'll be able to reopen and it'll look just like it is now. However, if you're satisfied and ready to post, do "Export as MP3" instead. It'll export as an .mp3, and then you can go ahead and use your favorite upload site to upload it. Then it's just about posting a post to
amplificathon so people can enjoy your bounty!I'm fairly sure I didn't cover everything, and left out some important parts. I'm happy to answer questions -- I'll be here all day, tip your waiters -- in the interest of LOTS of DIVERSE podfic for posterity. And if I get a vote, I say, MORE NCIS! More Torchwood that's not Jack/Ianto! More Doctor Who, on principle! More small fandoms! More MASH, please! Sitcoms! The Office! Bones!
The deadline is midnight tomorrow, for individual values of "midnight" and "tomorrow." Based on the curvature of the globe, my deadline here in California is 3am, night of the 2nd/morning of the 3rd. There's a sched on the ficathon LJ that explains it, with math!
And then thank
anatsuno, chr0me_kitten, and general_jinjur, and while you're at it, go visit the audiofic archive, browse around, and listen to some stuff!Don't forget to leave feedback, for the author of the fic as well as the reader, if you like what you've heard. It makes the world, such as it is here on the series of tubes, go round!
//
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-06-01 10:36 pm (UTC)i linked it in the archive. <3
no subject
Date: 2008-06-01 10:48 pm (UTC)Link it anywhere you like, if you think it'll make more podfic happen in the next two days! OH YAY for PODFIC.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-01 11:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-01 11:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-01 11:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-01 11:19 pm (UTC)I also like to back up past the "click" when I hit stop and record over it when I come back to record the next section.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-01 11:34 pm (UTC)So many voices! I think I had them differentiated by the end, but I don't have a wide vocal range (mediocrity, thy name is "being stuck between contralto and tenor") it is a Challenge.
(Of course given all the studying I have to do this is the last thing I should be doing, but haha.)
no subject
Date: 2008-06-01 11:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-01 11:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-02 12:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-02 12:32 am (UTC)(there are also two 500 word mash fics - colonel potter, no dialogue, and then young hawkeye, but the writing on that is so weird.)
YOU ARE AWESOME.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-02 01:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-02 01:42 am (UTC)However, there's one thing I do very differently: I record straight through without pausing or stopping. If I mess something up, I just take a deep breath and reread it. Then I fix it all up in the edit phase.
This is also cool when I'm not sure exactly what line reading will work best. I'll do it two or three or four different ways, and then in editing I listen to all of them, pick the one I like best, and delete all of the others. It's been very useful.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-02 01:44 am (UTC)Mem'd. It might come in handy for things beyond podficcing.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-02 01:50 am (UTC)Which stop were you? *g *
no subject
Date: 2008-06-02 01:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-02 02:22 pm (UTC)I used to have a relative who lived in Pine Plains, so we took the Harlem Line all the way up to Wassaic, changing at Brewster North (now, oddly, called Southeast), when visiting her.
Me, I just loved the place-names on that line.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-02 01:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-02 07:34 am (UTC)Funnily enough I do it a little differently. I read the whole story in one go and if I stumble or misspronounce I just repeat that bit and edit out the messed up bit during editing in the end. But I guess that's just a personal preference.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-29 01:03 pm (UTC)http://www.mediafire.com/?vjjivxem0o9
Then about half-way through I saw that someone else had pod-ficced it too, so apparently I continue the tradition of picking stories of yours to remix/read/etc. that others tend to pick too. But by then I was too far into it to just give up, and I really love Scrubs and it was hilarious (there were spots I had to record like four times just because I kept breaking up trying to read them), so I finished it anyway.
Incidentally, there are a few cut-paste parts that show up when I had to add in dialogue that got accidentally cut-out in my editing, or when I had to switch rooms or pick up again after a little while-- is there a way to somehow get the background on those clips to sound more like the bits surrounding them? Mixing, or normalizing or something?