The Hardest Edit Yet

You guys are going to think I rabbit on about the podcast a lot. Well simple truth is that I do. Reason? Well I (we) have a lot invested in it. It is a labour of love admittedly, but when you spend so much time on it; it makes it matter more. This week that is especially true.

This week we did our first interview for the show. It was with Dick Hardt of Sxip Identity, the CEO. Skype was a complete bastard, for what reasons we do not know. In addition to that the audio was less than perfect. As well as that I was learning my way around some new software. All up this meant for me a huge job. It took hours and hours of editing, and re-editing. I had to correct the audio levels and make sense of garbled Skype noise to extract the content. That is an added step that I don’t normally have to worry about.

I edited the interview once and on a listen I thought I could do better. I originally edited the raw data in Audacity then on the second I tried out Sound Forge by Sony. The wave patterns are easier to read in Sound Forge I think. That meant the second edit did not take as long. But a lot of the crackles and peaks were taken out. The software is very, very powerful and that meant that I had to learn a lot of new techniques for doing things. The help files are great and that helped. There are a few things that I could not help or eliminate, like the alternating volumes that can be heard. That was a result of the fact that no compressor on earth could have made up for the level differences between us and Dick. But overall the result is great compared to what I had to work with.

Then came the task of throwing it all together. Sebastian and I recorded our bit last night. That went so well it was smooth as silk. We knew our stuff and Seb was a great asset (as always). At one point my web page would not load. It was my story and once Seb knew I was having trouble he just stepped in and took over, magic. It just worked. Then after we finished I started to edit our bit and exported it as a .wav file. I put all the components together in Acid Music Studio, again Sony. It kicks butt and a serious time saver.

Audacity does multi-track badly. So this was a nice change. Again a powerful program and I was pulling my hair out with some things. Like if you change a track from a one-shot as opposed to a loop it changes the way the audio sounds. If it is supposed to be a one-shot, it sounds like crap as a loop. What I did not know was that it automatically loads some sounds as loops. So I spent about an hour trying to find out what the go was with Sebastian sounding like a Darleck! The other thing that this label of loop or one-shot does is changes the tempo of a track. So I was adding audio and it was either too fast or too slow! Again, pulling my hair out but got the two problems sorted when I realised the difference between a loop and a one-shot. Over all though I would say that software is very intuitive and easy to use. Despite my issues, which were minor. Organising and arranging your work is a snap and the ability to zoom and scale is priceless. I can now fit over ten tracks on the one view, much easier.

In addition to this the two programs work seamlessly with each other. Need to edit a track while working in Acid? No problem just open it with a right click on the file name, edit it and close and keep working on the project in Acid, awesome! The only thing that it won’t do is encode the .mp3, for that I am now using RazorLame.

RazorLame worked wonderfully. The file was encoded at 64kbps with a 44100khz sample rate. Another first for the podcast. I figure that it is a toss up between file size and quality and marketing. I think a smaller file size might mean more listeners. My only criticism of the file was that some kooky shit happened in that there is a bit of an echo in the first half of the podcast but then the rest is fine. Not sure what that was about but I think it might have something to do with modulation. So I have decided that for the next podcast record we will under level the audio, this will give the final product some headroom and take out some of the fluctuating echo. I say this because the audio of the interview which was under-modulated is fine.

And that’s a wrap. It was indeed the trickiest podcast to edit and toped with that was the new software and methods. I am proud of what has been produced. This is why we have a vested interest and maybe you can see why we are passionate about what we are doing. It represents a huge investment of time and energy. The reward is for people to listen to it.

Head on over to The Global Geek Podcast to check out the show!

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Podcast Bitrate Problem Solved

As people that regularly read my blog I mentioned that I was having some major issues in regards to the encoding of the .mp3 file for the Global Geek Podcast. I was unable to encode the file at a bit-rate of 64 and then a sample rate of 44100khz. Audacity refused to allow this combination even though the “project” file was in a sample rate of 44100khz. Rather Audacity encoded the .mp3 at 64bps but then adjusted the sample rate to 24khz. This sample rate as you would be aware is not compatible with web based flash players. So not very useful.

It would appear that the problem that I was having was not an isolated one, other podcasters have come across this problem as well. It would appear that the problem lies not with Audacity but with LAME. LAME is the piece of software that actually does the encoding not Audacity. The limitation lies in that software. I have however sourced a solution with the help of my mate Adam – code monkey and general good guy.

The solution was not to ditch LAME as such. Rather we got hold of some software called RazorLame. RazorLame adds a powerful GUI (Graphical User Interface) to the LAME engine. I am fairly sure that it also includes some other software that meshes with LAME and the result is a top piece of software. It is open source as well which is great. As usual the interface is not that pretty but very functional and who cares about what it looks like as long as it does the job and this does more than that.

RazorLame will not only encode file but can decode files and then re-encode. Not recommended though, as I have said before .mp3 files are a lossy format and the quality deteriorates on repeated writing. But this remains a handy feature, it might get you out of a tight spot if you have lost the original file and you need to encode it again for some reason.

The big feature for me was the fact that you can mix and match bit rates and sample rates however you wish to. Makes for some interesting possibilities. But the feature that I was wanting to take advantage of was that I can now encode a file at a bit-rate of 64kbps, and a sample rate of 44100khz (or 44khz – for short). This is great because this means that we can keep the quality of the show but make the file size a bit smaller. As an estimate this means that our show will average 20MB to 22MB for 45 minutes to 55 minutes in length.

To take advantage of RazorLame you have to export the file from your audio editing software of choice as a .wav, it is this file that you select in RazorLame to encode to an .mp3. Remember to make sure you have enough disk space for this file as an hour show the file will be over 500MB. You can ten select the bit rate and the sample rate and other features that you may want to utilize. Then hit encode, that simple.

This is just another step in your editing process and one that should not be that hard to do. With the big payoff, a small price to pay.

I hope that this helps out all those podcasters out there who have had the same problem. For some reason the answer was hard to find. I dropped the problem here and in The Global Geek Podcast Blog and no-one responded with an answer. When I Googled the problem, I got my own blog entry stating the problem! So I decided to give the answer here as well!