No ShrinkWrap Web2.0 Reviews

I’ve been listening to a lot of podcasts on a wide variety of topics lately, getting ideas for how faculty can integrate podcast creation into their own classes. One thing I’ve noticed is how polished and professional some podcasts sound - since I want our faculty to be able to produce professional-sounding media, I’ve been trying to identify specifically what separates the professional from the amateur. While many things seem to play a part in that professional sound, one consistent feature I can easily teach and replicate is the use of music. Some podcasts use only intro and outro music, others use music to indicate section breaks, and still others play constant, faint background music. However, all professional-sounding podcasts using music share one thing in common - ducking or fading music behind the voice track(s).

We’re promoting Audacity for basic audio recording and editing, so I looked into how to achieve ducking in Audacity. While there are several ways to duck or fade music, the most professional-sounding method involves the use of the envelope tool, which fades the volume of a track to a constant low level, then fades back to the original loud level. It’s pretty easy to use once you’ve gone through the steps; since video is much easier to follow than text-based documentation, I whipped up a screencast demonstrating the envelope tool, which I’ve embedded below. Tell me what you think.

As an aside, I also used this opportunity to play around with some alternative video upload services. Out of all the ones I tried, I liked Revver’s embedded video object the best. It’s interesting to see how some video services use more compression than others when transcoding the .avi I uploaded into .flv. Here’s the services I tried:

• Revver(embedded below)
  
  http://www.revver.com/video/629706/podcasting-howto-using-audacity-to-duck-music-behind-voice/
• YouTube
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8g9vtQ9-D0
• Viddler
  http://www.viddler.com/explore/charshman/videos/2/
• Vimeo
  http://www.vimeo.com/625755
• Teachertube
  http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=a6c607d2fe43b43ba96f
• Sclipo
  http://sclipo.com/video/podcasting-howto-using-audacity-to-duck-music-behind-voice
• Blip.tv
  http://noshrinkwrap.blip.tv/#623953

Do you have a favorite video upload service I didn’t try? Tell me about it - I’d love to test it out.

Related posts:

1. Build and organize a podsafe music library Recently, I’ve been assisting instructors interested in offering podcasts to...
2. Installing Audacity and LAME in one step A friend recently had an interesting problem - he wants...
3. Create sportscaster-style speech critique videos with Camtasia [Tutorial] Sportscasters sometimes make sports interesting to watch with their instant...
4. Use Skype to podcast? Will you use Gmail now? [poll id="3"] We’re close to finishing the podcast studio for...
5. Wordpress Howto - Add unique author comment styles to any theme I love using Wordpress. One of my favorite time-wasters has...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.