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- Herausgeber: Packt Publishing
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Sprache: Englisch
Using the Audacity software as the starting off point, we discuss what the software is, what it can do, how you can use it, and where you go to get started installing it. All of this information is grounded in some basic audio editing terminology and background for those that aren't so technology inclined.Then we'll start digging into a sample project! You'll learn about how to set up a project, create a voice track, record an interview with Skype, and basic audio editing techniques. All of this done in an easy to follow, task based approach with lots of examples. Here, we plan to go a step further, we teach how to wrap all of these steps together and create a podcast that can be posted on your own website or blog.There's always more you can do with Audacity! The last portion of the book is dedicated to just that - discussing more advanced editing and mixing techniques, using affects, adding music, adding additional plug-ins to the software. All still incorporating examples and easy to follow tasks you can try on your own audio projects.
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Seitenzahl: 207
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010
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Table of Contents
Getting started with Audacity 1.3
Bethany Hiitola
Getting started with Audacity 1.3
Copyright © 2010 Packt Publishing
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.
Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.
Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.
First published: March 2010
Production Reference: 1240210
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
32 Lincoln Road
Olton
Birmingham, B27 6PA, UK.
ISBN 978-1-847197-64-1
www.packtpub.com
Cover Image by Vinayak Chittar (<[email protected]>)
Credits
Author
Bethany Hiitola
Reviewers
Arturo 'Buanzo' Busleiman
Adriano Varoli Piazza
Acquisition Editor
Sarah Cullington
Development Editor
Dhiraj Chandiramani
Technical Editor
Aaron Rosario
Indexer
Monica Ajmera Mehta
Editorial Team Leader
Akshara Aware
Project Team Leader
Priya Mukherji
Project Coordinator
Zainab Bagasrawala
Proofreader
Dirk Manuel
Production Coordinator
Adline Swetha Jesuthas
Cover Work
Adline Swetha Jesuthas
About the Author
Bethany Hiitola is a working writer. She's worked as a technical writer and multimedia developer for over 12 years, and spends the rest of her time as a wife, mother, caretaker to pets, and Master of the household. She's written more user manuals than she can count, essays, short stories, academic papers, press releases, and feature articles. And all between the day job, nap times and diaper changes. More details are available at her website: www.bethanyhiitola.com.
Without you, Matt, this book wouldn't have been possible. Thanks for watching the kids for endless hours, late nights, and into the wee mornings.
About the Reviewers
Arturo Busleiman, most commonly known as Buanzo, is a young (born in 1982) security expert (or maniac, as you prefer) who has dedicated his life to security and, as such, has been learning and working non-stop since his first line of BASIC, at the early age of eight. Today, with a lovely wife and a wonderful son, Buanzo works with new technologies, and contributes to state-of-the-art of IT security as an independent security consultant, by talking at security conferences, dictating seminars, and developing new technologies, such as Enigform and mod_openpgp (see http://wiki.buanzo.org for more information).
As an independent IT consultant, Buanzo has no employees, but a large set of people he likes working with, from all over the world, who he prefers to call friends and associates. His main partner and best friend, Bryan Slatner, is an extremely talented programmer and analyst based in North Carolina, USA. Together, there's nothing they can't achieve. Feel free to visit http://www.buanzo.com.ar/pro/eng.html for more details.
Buanzo was lucky enough to have reviewed some great books,such as "Nmap", by Gordon Fyodor Lyon, (ISBN-10: 0979958717) and "Computer Security: Principles and Practice" by William Stallings, (ISBN 0136004245). Additionally, he has contributed to OISSG's Information System Security Assessment Framework (Unix security), SANS TOP-20 (2003-2008), and has written many articles for Linux and security publications, such as Sys Admin Magazine (USA), SoloLinux (Spain), Linux Users (Argentina) and 2600 (USA, using a pseudonym). He's a Project Leader of the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP).
As a member of the Audacity Team, he is in charge of system administration and security, occasionally commenting on development issues. Of course, he uses Audacity to record in his home studio. You can download some of his Audacity-recorded and mastered songs at http://blogs.buanzo.com.ar/futurabanda.
Adriano has become what he is now by both teaching himself and by paying others to do so. Although he has taken courses in Software Engineering, most of his experience in programming comes from his own interests. He's not yet a great programmer, but that's the general idea. He also has a grounding in Chemistry that started in a previous life. Adriano enjoys programming on both the LAMP and WAMP stacks, and does so for a living, creating and maintaining web applications. He wonders when will they add the Javascript J to those acronyms.
I would like to thank my lovely wife for the patience and support shown when I added a book review to an already-full schedule, and my friend Buanzo for the opportunity of reviewing for Packt. I also wish my mom was able to see this. You're always with me.
Preface
This book is useful if you're new to Audacity. Using the Audacity software as a starting point, we discuss what the software is, what it can do, how you can use it, and its installation. All of this information is grounded in some basic audio editing terminology and background for those that aren't so technologically inclined.
Then we'll start digging into a sample project! You'll learn how to set up a project, create a voice track, record an interview using Skype, and also learn some basic audio editing techniques. All of this done in an easy-to-follow, task-based approach with lots of examples. Then go one step further, and teach you how to wrap all of these steps together and create a podcast that can be posted on your own website or blog.
There's always more that you can do with Audacity! The last portion of the book is dedicated to just that - discussing more advanced editing and mixing techniques, using effects, adding music, and adding additional plug-ins to the software. All of this is done incorporating examples and easy-to-follow tasks that you can try on your own audio projects. This book also provides a section on advanced editing and mixing techniques that should satisfy even experienced Audacity users. Have fun and let's get into the details so that you can get started!
What this book covers
Chapter 1, Audacity and the World of Audio Editing—From the start, we discuss what Audacity is, who typically uses it, how you can use it, and what computer operating systems it will work on. We also talk a bit about how Audacity is an open source project and what this means to you, and then we jump into learning the basics about the software: it's main screen, the menus, project window and settings for your first project.
Chapter 2, The Basics: Setting up a Project—This chapter focuses on the set up and basics about how to create a project, setting some preliminary preferences, and of course laying the ground work for your first voice track recording for a podcast.
Chapter 3, Ready and Action! Creating a Voice Track and Recording Interviews—With this chapter, it is time to actually record the podcast script, save it, and learn a few tricks about adding more to an already-recorded voice track, record additional tracks, set up a timed recording, label and delete tracks, and learn all of the details of using a third-party Internet telephony software to record telephone interviews. This is a meaty chapter, full of all of the practical instructions you need to get you really using Audacity.
Chapter 4, Making It Sound Better: Editing Your Podcast—We first discuss the basics of what digital voice waves look like, how to move around the timeline, and how to do all the basics: playback, rewinding, fast forwarding, selecting portions of the voice track, and setting up your Audacity screen to see your entire project on the screen.
Then we jump into editing details: how to cut, copy, paste, trim, delete, adjust volume levels, and silence portions of your track.
Chapter 5, Fixing the Glitches and Removing the Noise—In this chapter we get into some more advanced editing options. We see how to use filters, clean up background noises, use the equalizer, change some other sound options such as pitch, speed, and tempo and also how to normalize volumes and even out the sound across the entire audio track.
Chapter 6, Saving Projects and Exporting Podcasts—With this chapter, it is time to learn how to save your project in its final state and export it in different audio types so that you can send it as a final podcast or post it to a website for download. We'll even discuss how to use IDE tags for your podcast (artist, genre, title, and so on), the best tips and tricks for compressing your final projects into a decent file size, and preparing a file for upload to a web hosting service.
Chapter 7, Beyond the Basics: Editing for Even Better Sound—Working with the audio tracks, we can make the sounds appear more seamless, soften sibilants, clip and replace sounds, and even time-shift, all of which are more advanced editing techniques. We take a look at the steps required to use each of these techniques for any future Audacity projects that you might start.
Chapter 8, Importing and Adding Background Music—You can use Audacity to import music, convert audio files from one format to another, bring in multiple files and convert them, and more. In this chapter we will learn how to add background music into your podcast, overdub, and fade in and out. We will also look at some additional information about importing music from CDs, cassette tapes, and vinyl records.
Chapter 9, Giving your Audio some Depth: Applying Effects—Audio effects let you enhance your audio tracks. Audacity has over 20 effects that come as standard with the software. Some we will have seen in previous chapters, like Amplify, Fade In/Out, and Noise Removal, but this chapter will explain how and why you might want to use the rest.
Chapter 10, Making Audacity Even Better with Plug-ins and Libraries— Plug-ins are extra features that can be added on top of the features of Audacity. Some plug-ins can make special sound effects, or analyze audio content, and others just add to the already long list of effects already available with Audacity. The most common plug-ins for the software include: Nyquist, LADSPA, VST effects, and VAMP. We discuss how to install effects, how to use them, and why you might want to add these to your collection of effects.
Appendix A: Toolbar, Menu, and Keyboard Shortcut Reference
Appendix B: Glossary of Terms.
Who this book is for
If you are new to audio recording and editing, and particularly to the Audacity software, this book is for you. It explains everything from common audio industry terms to software basics. Technical sound engineering details and jargon are omitted, in order to keep the book beginner-friendly and easy to understand.
Conventions
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "clicking the Next button moves you to the next screen".
Note
Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.
Tip
Tips and tricks appear like this.
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Chapter 1. Audacity and the World of Audio Editing
This book is all about Audacity, an open source audio editing software. This means that the software is free to download, and you can use it to create items that are freely distributable. You'll learn all of the basics about creating audiocasts—or podcasts—that can be uploaded to the Web and shared with the world.
To start with, this chapter will discuss what audio editing software is, who typically uses it, how you can use it, and what computer operating systems it will work on. We'll also talk a bit about how Audacity is an open source project and what that means to you and your projects, as well as the differences between Audacity 1.2 and the latest version, in case there are a few readers who want to work with the upgrade.
Note
Don't worry if you're not familiar with audio terms, editing, or even recording your voice on anything other than a tape recorder. We'll go over some common audio editing terms that will get you in the know.
Also covered will be an overview of the Audacity software main screen, the main menu, main window, all of the toolbars, buttons and settings, as well as what a 'project' is in Audacity. We'll also get into some of the basic fundamentals to remember when setting up a project in Audacity. All of this will lay the foundation for your very first Audacity project of recording a podcast!
What is Audacity?
With the evolution of the Internet there has been a huge boom in personal websites, blogs, photo and music sharing sites, and things called podcasts. Podcasts are simple recordings of interviews, personal recollections, or entire skits, including entire entertainment "acts" that include background music and sound effects. What this change in the Internet culture has offered to the everyday person is the ability to jump into the world of audio recording. Audacity was created with this very basic need in mind.
Audacity is a simple audio editor and recorder. It can record live audio, help to convert tapes and records into digital recordings, and edit and mix a number of sound files together. What this means for you, is that you can use it to:
It's also a great tool if you want to e-mail someone a simple audio message. Just plug in your headset, hit record, and start talking. You can have a personalized voice message that can be sent through e-mail!
Throughout this book we'll focus on one key project- creating a podcast. During this discussion there will definitely be pointers for recording events, editing audio files, and even exporting in different audio formats.
Will it work for me?
Audacity was developed by a group of volunteers under the GNU General Public License (GPL), and is open source, or free software. This not only means that it does not cost anything to download, but also that you can use the program, create items with it, and freely distribute these items, modify the program itself, and share your work with others.
You can download Audacity for:
Let's briefly go over how to download and install Audacity.
Windows and Mac OS
The installation process for both of these operating systems is similar:
Note
For Mac computers, a DMG file is downloaded. All you need to do is uncompress that file, and drag-and-drop the Audacity package to the Application folder. For any Windows device, an EXE file is downloaded. Double-click on that file to perform the installation.
GNU/Linux
You can use Audacity with GNU/Linux operating systems (and other similar operating systems), but you should download the correct installation package for it. Currently, there are a number of distributions available for the following types of systems:
You can download the installation packages for these and others from the Audacity Linux or Unix web page, at http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/.
Note
In this book, the screenshots are specific to the Mac OS X software. However, don't be concerned if this is not your computer operating system of choice. The software itself is very similar between operating systems, and any notable differences between the Audacity software screens for different operating systems, are noted, so you know what to look for.
In the interest of saving you some time, there are some things that Audacity can't do in comparison to more specialized audio editing software. Audacity:
