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!
//
