MODULE VI DIGITAL EDITING.

Transcription

1 MODULE VI DIGITAL EDITING Co-authors: Grainne O'Malley, Anna Alonso Guilera Illustration: Núria Sordé Co-ordinated by: Anna Alonso Guilera and Fiona Steinert Produced by: AMARC Europe Women's Network 2001 AMARC-Europe - World Association of Community Radios 15 Paternoster Row Sheffield S1 2BX UK europe@amarc.org Supported by the European Commission

2 INDEX Introduction...4 Objectives...4 Requirements...5 Sound Card...5 Connecting to your sound card...5 The Cool Edit Pro package...6 Installing Cool Edit Pro...6 Hard Disk Space...7 How much free space in your hard disk do you need to be able to edit sound with your computer?...7 Check the available Hard Disk Space in your computer...7 Dedicated Folder...8 Recording...8 Sound card Control...8 Recording settings...10 Sample Rate...10 Channels...11 Resolution...11 Volume levels...11 Suggested Recording Levels...12 Wave shapes...12 Listening to a wave...13 The wave forms...14 Recording from the CD unit...15 Basic Editing...16 The Undo option...16 Making selections, cutting and pasting...16 Using zoom and timer...17 The timer...18 Transforming waves

3 Mixing waves using multitrack...19 Inserting waves...20 Track controls...21 Editing in multitrack...21 Selecting and moving waveforms...21 Cut and Splice...22 Fading and playing with volume...22 Finishing...23 Session and wave files...23 Mixing down...23 Copying back to a Minidisk or cassette...23 Compressing.wav files...23 SUGGESTIONS AND ADVICE...24 Activities Module VI

4 Introduction If you work or plan to work in a radio station, you will be introduced to editing. Editing is the preparation of a programme by rearranging, selecting or removing previously recorded material. It allows you to make recorded pieces such as programmes, jingles and promos or whatever you want. The most common editing tools are reel-to-reel which has been the standard method in the past, tape to tape in some radio stations, minidisk editing which is available since five to six years, digital editing which is also available for some years now. If you are used to work with computers, digital editing will hold no mystery for you. For those of you who may not be familiar with computers you will surprise both yourselves and your radio mates with your new skill when you have completed this module. It is not necessary to have a lot of previous knowledge of computers to follow this module. Objectives In this module we will go through the basics of digital editing and you will learn how to do the following: - Copy sound into a computer and be ready to modify it. - Record onto the computer using a microphone, the computer's CD player and a cassette player or minidisk or whatever format you normally use. - Basic editing. You will be able to manipulate audio pieces by cutting and pasting. - Transform, eliminate some noise and create sound effects like echo or amplification of a wave. - Mixing different audio pieces like a music background and a voice and convert this into one only sound track, e.g. to produce a promo for your radio station. - Convert this mix into a smaller audio document ready to be included in your web site or to be sent through the Internet. 4

5 Requirements Digital editing requires a lot of patience and an ability to be creative and inventive. You will also need time to experiment with all the different options available in the digital editing package you use. Apart from these personal requirements there are some technical requirements. You will need: a PC (personal computer) with a sound card. Most PCs built after 1995 will be able to handle any of the tasks we are about to undertake. a digital editing package. In this module we will use the package Cool Edit Pro. You will need Cool Edit Pro to follow this module. Enough space in your hard disk unless you have another dedicated storage space. a dedicated folder on your desktop for storing your audio files. Sound Card To use Cool Edit Pro or any digital editing package you need a sound card in your computer. The sound card is what converts your audio from analogue to digital. It also allows you to listen to any sound source from the computer such as audio from the Internet or from the CD player of your computer. You will understand better how a sound card works later in the module. To start you need to check if your computer has a sound card. If it has a sound card there will be a yellow icon that looks like a loudspeaker in the bottom right hand corner of your screen. Although the most common icon shown is the yellow loud speaker it can also be shown by other icons. Double click on it and you will see the volume control appearing. If you do not have a sound card you need to install one on your computer. You can buy them, they are not very expensive. Connecting to your sound card Look carefully at the back of your computer, not the monitor. Somewhere you will find a series of small holes or ports for your sound equipment, as small as your small leads for a Minidisk recorder or the headphones of a portable device. Some of the computers have 2 o 3, other have 4 or even 5 ports for sound sources. These ports should be clearly marked by Line in and Line out or the following signs instead: 5

6 In )) Line in, often also shown as an arrow pointing to the centre of a circle or semicircle, is where you will connect your minidisk or cassette to record on your computer. Out )) Line out, also shown as an arrow pointing out of a circle or semicircle, is where you will connect your leads to record from the sound card in your computer to a minidisk or cassette. Mic or a symbol for a microphone is where you connect your microphone to record onto the sound card. Spkr out or a symbol for speakers is where you will connect your speakers or headphones to hear your sounds. If you only have two ports one will be for Line out and Speakers and the other will be Line in and Microphone at the same time. All of these ports are your connection to and from your sound card. The Cool Edit Pro package The Cool Edit Pro package is available on CD-ROM and can also be downloaded from the Internet. You need to buy it if you want a complete version. You can also download a shareware version from the Internet which works for a limited period of time and with only some of the functions. Currently the shareware version does not allow to use the multitrack option. You can download Cool Edit from the Internet at Cool Edit Pro is similar to many other digital editing packages. We have chosen it because is one of the easiest to start learning and at the same time one of the cheapest. Once you are familiar with its functions and possibilities it will be easy for you to learn to use other sound editing software. You can find other sound packages on the Internet at or When you get to the web sites, look for Multimedia Tools and then for Audio Applications and click on Download. Installing Cool Edit Pro As we said we are using the Cool Edit Pro programme in this module to learn the basics of digital sound editing. To install Cool Edit Pro insert your CD-ROM into the compact disc drive. Your computer may start Setup automatically; if not double click on the My Computer icon on your desktop, double click on the CD drive icon and double click on Set-up. You will be asked to enter a serial number, which you can find on the back of the CD jewel case. Follow the instructions given on screen. 6

7 You now have Cool Edit Pro installed on your computer. There is a tutorial on the Cool Edit Pro CD in English. It is a good idea for you to take the time to go through the tutorial at some stage, as it contains a lot of hints, shortcuts and advice. It will take you through each of the functions on the screen. We will not cover most of them in this session as this is an introduction designed to give you just enough help to get you recording and mixing. We will go through the basics and then it is up to you to be inventive, creative and to take the time to play with the package and see what it can do. Hard Disk Space How much free space in your hard disk do you need to be able to edit sound with your computer? 800 MB (Megabytes) of free hard disk space on your PC or a dedicated separate hard disk would be ideal if you intend to edit for instance documentary style programmes of 30 minutes duration or more. Note that one minute of sound in stereo will use approximately 10MB of memory at CD quality. Mono recording will take half the space of stereo recording. This means that a three-minute song in stereo will use up 30MB, and in mono 15MB. To have an idea about how big the.wav files are compare the 30MB of a 3 minutes song with the capacity of a floppy disk which is only 1.4 MB. Another consideration is the speed of your work when you are dealing with big files. The more memory you use the slower your computer will work. It is always advisable to have at least three times the size of your file available in unused hard disk space, for example if you are going to edit a 30MB file you should have 90MB in unused space. Check the available Hard Disk Space in your computer When you work with big files it is useful to learn how to check the free space you have still available in your hard disk. To find out how much free hard disk space you have, double click on the My Computer icon on the desktop of your computer. Click once on the disk you want to use, for this example we will use the hard disk, C:. A pie chart will appear showing the used space and how much is still free. If it does not appear by clicking you just have to choose Properties with the right hand button of the mouse. You will need to check your hard disk space frequently, especially if you are working on large audio files. 7

8 Dedicated Folder Before you open Cool Edit Pro you need to create a new folder to store all of your sound files. To create a New Folder double click on My Computer select which drive you wish to store your audio on. We will use the hard disk drive (C:). Double click on C:, click once on File, scroll to New and click on Folder. Your new folder will now appear with a temporary name. Type in the name you wish to call your folder and then hit the enter button on your keyboard. Remember to save all your sound files in this folder while going through this module. Recording First thing we need to do to be able to work with audio on the computer, is to record the piece of sound we want to edit into the computer. You have different options as to where you can access audio on your computer: your Compact Disc player, the Internet, your own sound source such as minidisk, cassette, or a microphone. We will start recording our own voice using the microphone. You need to connec your microphone to the sound card (the hard disk) finding the port with Mic written on it, or a symbol for a microphone or Line in if you cannot find any specific Mic port. Sound card Control Cool Edit Pro does not control the recording levels or playback levels, this is done by you setting up your sound card and pre-setting the levels. As mentioned before in the bottom right corner of your desktop you should have a symbol for a speaker. Double click on this icon and the mixing panel which belongs to your sound card will be displayed on your screen. 8

9 The mixing desk on the screen has faders similar to that on a real sound desk. On some mixing panels playback and recording levels will be displayed at the same time. The panel you can see in the image controls only your play levels. You can select the source of what you want to hear on your speakers or headphones and what you will playback onto your recording device such as a minidisk or a cassette. When you open the sound card you do not always see all the channels of the Volume Control such as CD Audio, Wave, Microphone, etc. If you do not see them you have to choose Options and Properties and there you can select all the lines you would like to have included in the mixing desk of your sound card. To see the panel for recording control, you need to click on Options, then on Properties and select Recording. A panel with the recording control will show on your screen. Next you select the audio source you want to use, for example Line in or Mic. Look carefully at each setting. You can select the source you want to record from and also move the faders up and down, for more or less volume. 9

10 In recording control panel click on the Select box of the Microphone channel and slide the volume up. If any of the other channels are selected, cancel them by clicking on the box. You now have selected the source from which your audio will come, the microphone in this case. Recording settings Now you open a new file in Cool Edit Pro. To do this click on File and select New. A new screen appears. Within this screen you are asked what settings to give to your recording, or in other words, what quality and size your new audio piece will be. What to select? For instance, if you choose stereo recording it will use twice the hard disk space as mono recording. As with all the options you can select in this panel - sample rate and resolution - the higher you select the more space you will use. But despite of the size of your files it is better to work in higher quality. You can always cut the quality down to make a smaller file depending on what you are going to use it for. Here is some information to help you making the right choice. Sample Rate The sample rate indicates how many times a sample of sound is taken over a specific time. For CD quality the sound card will take 44,100 samples per second. The most common and acceptable for FM radio are 22,050 or 32,000. 8,000 Hz Telephone Quality 11,025 Hz Poor AM Radio Quality 16,000 Hz Reasonable compromise between 11 KHz and 22 KHz 22,050 Hz Near FM Radio Quality 32,075 Hz Better than FM Radio Quality (Some boards support 32,000 instead) 44,100 Hz CD Quality 48,000 Hz DAT Quality 10

11 Channels Mono wave forms support one channel of information. Stereo files take twice the space because there are two channels of information represented the left and the right one. Resolution This describes the number of bits to use for each sample on each channel. As an example compact disc players have a 16-bit resolution. If you do not know much about sound it is very hard to decide which to select, so we suggest you the following: If you are recording voice then select at least 32,075 Mono 16-bit If you are recording music from a CD then select 44,110 Stereo 16-bit Recording at the suggested settings will help reduce loss or deterioration in sound when transferring it back onto your cassette or minidisk. For our example of recording your own voice from a microphone choose the following settings in the new file you have opened: Sample Rate: 32,075 Channels: Mono Resolution: 16-bit When you have selected these options, click OK and you are ready to record. Volume levels As you would do with any piece of equipment you use to record - minidisk or cassette - you need to check first your recording levels to make sure that your audio is loud enough but not too loud and therefore distorted. There is nothing worse than having recorded a really good interview and when you go to play it back it is either too low or is distorted from being too loud. This is a good habit you will have to learn. Most recording equipment will have different ways of monitoring and controlling the sound. You should check your recording levels each time you want to record something onto your minidisk or onto Cool Edit Pro. To monitor the volume of your sound you need to see it. Click on Options and then on Monitor Record Level. It will activate the VU meter which is a unit that visually shows the level of the volume. If you continually talk into your microphone you can see the levels on the VU meter moving. 11

12 It is the red line (one if you are recording in mono and two if you do it in stereo) from the left to the right following the changes of your voice: the further right it goes the louder you are recording. VU meter The red lines represent your levels. Here you are recording at 12 db. Suggested Recording Levels Cool Edit Pro suggests you should record as loud as possible without clipping. Clipping is when you record too loud. It shows up in red on your VU meter on the right hand side of the 0db. If you record too loud your sound will be distorted. The maximum level that you can record to before distortion is 0db. The best would be recording to a maximum level of 4 or preferably -6. At this level you allow yourself room to go slightly over but still not to peak and cause distortion. You cannot control the recording level from the Cool Edit programme. You need to go to the Recording Control mixing desk of your sound card and slide the fader up or down to adjust the recording volume. Wave shapes Now everything is ready to record. Just one hint before pressing the red recording button: if you wish to see how your audio appears in the form of a wave in the screen while it is being recorded, you have to click Options, Settings and then select Live update during record. When you begin to record you can see the wave appearing on the Cool Edit Pro screen. Use the control buttons in the left hand side at the bottom of the screen. They work as in any other sound device. Just click on the Record button and speak. We suggest to record your voice reading a list of numbers. We will use the sound file with the list of numbers to do the first steps of sound editing later in this module. Read the following numbers using the microphone

13 When you have finished click on the Stop button. Your voice is now represented on the screen by a wave form like this one: The next job is to save. It is very important to save as frequently as possible when using Cool Edit Pro or any digital editing package. To save your recording click on File, scroll to and click on Save As... You could name this file Numbers for example, and save it in your dedicated folder. You have just completed the first recording exercise! Listening to a wave You probably want to listen to what you have recorded. Obviously you need speakers or headphones to have connected to the Speakers port in the back of your computer (or to the Line out if you do not have a specific Speakers port). You also need to set up your sound card to be able to listen to your recorded piece. Open your sound card and change from Recording Control to Volume Control. Here you choose the source that you want to listen from. If you want to hear what you have recorded you need to slide up the fader of the Wave channel. To control the volume of your speakers or headphones slide up the channel called Volume Control. If you fade down or mute the rest of the channels you will be able to hear the sound coming from the Wave channel even better. 13

14 Now click on Play in the control buttons of Cool Edit Pro and enjoy your own voice ;). The wave forms By listening and looking at your wave carefully you will learn a lot about how the sound is represented in the screen. Have a look at these other following examples of waves. The first thing to notice is that mono waves consist of only one wave and stereo waves have two bands with a double wave. Note also that when the recording is too loud and therefore distorted the top and bottom edges are unnaturally flat, as if they were cut with scissors. Both following images are examples of what you should NOT do. Wide waveform: distorted Mono Narrow waveform: too quiet Stereo Before starting a new task we will close the file called Numbers. To close your file click on File scroll to and click on Close. 14

15 Recording from the CD unit To record a piece of song or whatever audio piece from the CD unit of your PC in Cool Edit you need to follow the same steps you did to record your voice, but you have to change the source of the sound in your sound card control. This time we will select and record approximately 35 seconds of music, so we can use it later as a background music to learn the basics of mixing with the multitrack function. Insert the music CD into the CD-ROM drive of your computer. Once in Cool Edit Pro click on View, scroll down and select Show CD Player. You will see the CD control panel just under the VU meter. It has the same functions as any CD player Play, Stop, Forward, Eject etc. Select the CD track you want by clicking on the forward button or selecting the number of the track. As in a normal CD you may pause at the exact point where you want to start recording. Now, as we have done to record from the microphone, recall the sound card panel and choose Recording Control, select the CD channel and mute all others. Open a new file in Cool Edit Pro and select the settings of the sound quality. This time we want to record in CD quality, therefore we choose: 44110, Stereo, 16-bit. Check your recording levels. This time you will see two red lines because you are recording in Stereo. One for the left channel and one for the right channel. Click on Record in Cool Edit Pro and click on Play on the CD control panel. You can listen to what you are recording if you have the line Wave activated in the Volume Control of the sound card. Click on Stop when you have played your selected piece of music. Save this as you did with the numbers and call it Music Bed, for example. To listen to your piece of music, adjust your Volume Control to hear the Wave channel. You can now close your file. 15

16 Basic Editing Now that we have some audio files or waves stored on our computer we can start learning the basics of digital sound editing. The main functions you will use for most of your editing are Cut, Copy and Paste. You will find these by clicking on Edit and scrolling down to the one you want and clicking on it. You can also do it more directly with the buttons of the tool bar at the top of the screen. To start editing we use the wave you recorded with your voice reading the list of numbers. So, first of all open your file called Numbers or whatever other name you gave it. Click on File, scroll down to the Open option and look for your file. The Undo option Before you start editing it is very important that you have activated the option Undo. It means that every time you edit something, if you are not happy with the result you have the option of deleting your last action. So you can feel more relaxed about cutting parts of your wave if you know that you can still change your mind and recover the wave like it was before your last step or cut. You can go back undoing the actions you have made up to 80 times. To make sure this option is activated go to the Edit menu and select Enable Undo. Every time you want to undo your last move you go to Undo in the Edit menu or to the corresponding icon in the tool bar. Making selections, cutting and pasting While listening to a wave you must have noticed the yellow line that moves across your screen. If not, play your wave again and look carefully at the screen. This line is very important; it will mark your editing points. You have recorded this list of numbers: It is obvious by the shape of the wave where each number begins and ends. Play the wave a few times to become more familiar with the shapes and how they represent the sounds. As a first step you can erase the number that is repeated, number 4. Play the wave and pause just at the beginning of the number you are going to delete. Click on the point of the wave where you want your selection to begin. Hold down the left button of the mouse dragging the mouse to the right until you reach the end of the number you are selecting - just as you do it in any other Windows application. When you release the button, the area you have selected is highlighted. This is the number 4 you want to erase. To listen and check your selection, click on Play. It will only play the selected part of the wave. 16

17 If you want to make the same selection bigger or smaller to be more precise, you can do it by rightclicking the mouse. If you click the left button you lose the selection and make a new mark. You can modify the selection with the right button and play it as many times as you want until you are sure the whole number and only the number is included in the selection. To erase the number click on Edit, scroll to and click on Delete Selection. The number 4 has now been erased. Click on Play to hear. If you are not satisfied with the result remember you can always use Undo. Undo is the first option in the Edit menu! You have just completed an edit. Congratulations! The next step will be moving a number to its correct place. Find the number 8. We will cut it from where it is and paste it in the right place. Select number 8 the way you have done it before with number 4. When you are satisfied with your selection choose Cut in the Edit menu. The number has now gone from your recording but is stored to the clipboard in the computer waiting for you to paste it somewhere else. You need to find the exact point of the wave where you want to insert it. If you have chosen number 8 it has to be located between 7 and 9. Once you are sure you have found the point where number 8 belongs to, select Paste in the Edit menu. The shape of number 8 now appears again on the screen but in its new place. Listen to the result and decide if you are happy with it. Practice how to cut and paste by finishing the list of numbers. When you have finished and are happy with the list, don't forget to save it. You can save it as a new file renaming it or just in the place of the Numbers file. Using zoom and timer As you may have seen the waves stretch and shrink to fit in the screen. It is not the same to have a few seconds or a 30 minutes wave on the screen. In the 30 minutes one the wave is tight in a small space. Like this it is difficult to make precise selections. however, we can change the view of the wave (bigger and smaller) to recognise the parts we want to select. To do that we use the Zoom options. The most useful ones are the three at the top and the one in the left bottom corner of the Zoom menu. Here is an explanation of how these options work: Zoom to centre: It stretches the wave. However, to show a wave in more detail means that not all of it is shown on the screen, but just a part of it. This button enlarges the whole wave but shows just a part in the centre of the wave. If you want to see a part which is not shown on the screen you can move along the wave using the green bar at the top of the screen just under the toolbar. Zoom out: This option does the opposite. It makes the wave smaller or it shrinks it and therefore shows all or more of it on the screen. 17

18 Zoom out full: This option goes back to the original size showing the whole wave fitting in the screen. Zoom to selection: It shows the whole of a selection fitting in the screen. The bar at the top of the screen just under the tool bar shows the part you are viewing in the screen in proportion to the whole wave. The green part is the part you are viewing. If the whole bar is in green it means that you are seeing the whole wave. You can move along the wave when it is zoomed. If you point your cursor on the green bar it becomes a hand. If you hold the left button of the mouse and drag it you can move through the wave right and left. Now try to click the right button of your mouse when your cursor is on the green bar. Dragging it you can make the area of the wave that you are viewing bigger or smaller to your wish. The timer This is another useful tool to help you editing. The timer is a clock that shows the length of your audio works. By default it shows the time in decimal format - minutes, seconds and milliseconds (mm:ss.dd). You can choose what format you like at Display Time Format in the View menu. The time which appears at the left shows the lenght of the track until the particular point of the yellow line in the wave. The table at the right side shows the beginning, end and total length of the selection (the upper file) and of the whole wave (bottom file). You can use the timer as a control to adjust your selection or your piece to a particular length of time or to be very precise when choosing the point where you start cutting, pasting or whatever editing you want to do. Transforming waves Cool Edit Pro allows to transform the wave in different ways, reducing noise, amplifying of creating effects with the voice or music you have previously recorded. This can be very useful, e.g. when you have recorded an interview too low in volume. It also allows you to create imaginative effects and echoes for your programmes and jingles. This manual will not go very deeply into the possibilities of these options. There will be just two examples as to give you an idea what the possibilities are. You can experiment and learn about it yourself. To transform we first need to open a wave. Choose one with a voice. It could be your file with the numbers. Go to the menu Transform and choose Amplitude. You will see different options. We are just using the Amplify option. 18

19 If you click on Amplify you will see a window where you can choose two ways of setting the level of amplification: - Manually, sliding the fader right and left to the percentage you wish. - Using the presets which appear in the right hand of the screen. You can choose Boost or Cut, and in what level. The best way to learn about the effects is trying them. If you press Preview you can pre-hear the result without actually modifying the wave. You can also press OK and see how the wave transforms graphically. Remember that you can always Undo the amplification if you don't like the result. The Amplify option is used to adjust the sound of your waves to a certain level (lower or higher than your original recording). This tool is quite useful if you want to make sure that different waves you have recorded all have the same volume. Now try the effects. There are a lot of different effects to modify the sound in Cool Edit Pro. Let s have a look. Open Delay Effects in the Transform menu and a list is displayed: Chorus, Delay, Echo, Flanger, Reverb etc. Choose one of them, for instance Chorus. As with the Amplify option you can work manually or with the pre-sets. As we are just starting to use these options it is easier to play around with the pre-sets to become more familiar with the effects and what can be done with them. The great thing here is that you can select any option and preview to hear what it sounds like. If you do not like it, try another one. You will have great fun with any of these options and they will make a significant difference to any jingles or promos you make. Each of the Delay Effects options has a list of pre-sets. Experiment with them and you will see :-) Mixing waves using multitrack Multitrack is a facility of the digital audio editing packages that allows you to mix different pieces of music or tracks to create a final unique wave. An example of the use of multitrack would be to create a promo jingle for your radio station mixing your voice and a background music. The following is an example of a multitrack with different waves of different instruments that create together a piece of music. 19

20 In the left corner of the screen, just at the left end of the tools bar you can find the symbol for the multitrack. This is the gateway to the multitrack facility and once you are there back to the wave option. You can also go to the View menu and choose Multitrack View, the first option. In multitrack you can choose the option Edit Wave View in the same View menu to go back. Try it and a new window now appears on your screen. It shows four different sections, each of these is a different track. You can work with up to 64 different tracks in this window. However, most of the time all you will use is either two, three or four tracks. One may contain a voice, another a music bed for a jingle or promo and another a sound effect. For the following exercise we will use two tracks. Again, when you become more familiar with this package you will be able to experiment with more options. Inserting waves There are different ways to insert the wave files you want to mix into the tracks in the multitrack window: You can first open the waves you are going to use, change to the multitrack option and go to menu Insert. There you will find a list of your open files. You just have to click on them. You can also choose in the same menu Insert the option Waveforms list. A window with the list of the open waves will appear. From there you can choose what you want and press Insert in the same window. You can also select the wave you want to insert and drag it to the track where you want it to be. This allows you to place it exactly where you want along the tracks. 20

21 If the waves to be inserted are not open yet you can select the option Wave from file... from the menu Insert and a window will display to help you to find the files on your computer. If you right-click the mouse in any track you also find the menu Insert with the above options. As an example insert the sound files you have created - the numbers and the music bed - in the multitrack: the numbers in the first track and the music in the second just underneath. Click on Play and you will hear both tracks playing together. You will notice that it is difficult to hear the voice as both recordings are at the same volume. The music bed needs to be lower than the voice. This will be your second task. Track controls To the left of each track you will see some boxes and controls: - The green box when selected mutes this track only, which means you hear the other tracks when you play them. - The yellow box when selected plays only this track. - The red box allows only this track to be recorded onto. (However, this is another story to be told another time - this module will not explain how to record in multitrack option.) - To the left of this box you will see a box with the letter V. Here you can adjust the volume of the track. You can either double click or click with the right button or just drag the mouse up or down depending what you want to do with the volume. This will modify the volume in the whole track homogeneously. Later we will see how to fade the music at the end or raise at a particular point of your piece. Editing in multitrack You can also edit while you are working with more than one wave at the same time. The following are some of the most common options you may need for your first steps on editing in multitrack. Selecting and moving waveforms You can select one wave just by clicking on it. You will notice it is selected because it appears highlighted. If you want to select more than one at the same time you can do it clicking while holding Ctrl in your keyboard. All the waves you select are shown highlighted. Any action you do affects only the selected waveforms. To move the waveforms you just have to right-click the mouse and drag the wave right or left. You can also move the wave from one track to another. 21

22 Notice that if you double click on a wave it takes you to the Waveform View so you can edit whatever you want in that particular wave and go back to the multitrack easily and quickly. Cut and Splice But you can also operate without moving from the multitrack, working with one or more waves at the same time. You can: Cut: As we learned in the editing chapter you can make a selection in a wave and choose Cut from the Edit menu. Splice: You can make two out of one wave by splicing it at the point you want. Just put the yellow line at the exact point where you want to separate the wave and select Splice from the Edit menu or the icon with the scissors in the toolbar. You can now move the new separated waves independently. Copying wave blocks: You can repeat one wave in your multitrack as many times as you want with the option Loop duplicate from the Edit menu. When you select the Loop duplicate option Cool Edit asks you how many times you want that wave repeated and if you want any gap in between the repetitions. Fading and playing with volume Imagine you want to fade out the music at the end of your audio piece. To do that you use the Volume Envelope, a line shown at the top of each of your waves which you can move to increase or decrease the volume at a specific point of the wave. You will understand it better doing it. First you choose the following two options from the View menu: Enable Envelope editing and Show Volume Envelopes. You will see a green line at the top of your waves. By clicking on this line you create a mark and a hand appears instead of the cursor. If you drag this point the green line moves as if you were pulling a piece of thread. This is the graphic form of the volume. Listen to the piece and you will hear how the volume goes down and up following the green line. You can create as many marks as you want - they will be shown as white squared dots - and pull the green line, making your volume going up and down according to your wish. This is an example of fading out, at the end of a piece of music for instance. 22

23 Finishing Session and wave files You need to save after any job you do. If you save the multitrack you have created this is called a session. Remember that the multitrack is not a document but just a sort of platform that allows you to mix different documents or sound archives with the extension.wav. Your session is not a.wav document but a.ses file. If you have modified or created new waves when working in a session you need to save them separately and also save the session as a whole. If you want to open a session you need to be in the multitrack view of Cool Edit and then choose Open Session from the File menu. Mixing down If you have finished your session and are sure that you do not want to modify anything else you should convert the session into one single wave. Once stored as a.wav file you can broadcast it, copy it on a minidisk or convert it into a Real Audio or an MP3 file to include it on a web site as we will see in module VII, Radio on the Internet. To convert your session to a single wave you select the option Mix down from the Edit menu or just click the icon. That will mix all the waves of a session to become a new single wave. The programme will ask you if you want to mix all the waves or just a selection of them. Mixing down does not make the session disappear. You can also keep the session to change parts of it later. In case you are not sure your mix down is the final version of the programme you are working on, save the session because you won't be able to make changes in the mixed new wave. Copying back to a Minidisk or cassette Finally when you record your finished work back to your cassette or minidisk you need to connect your sound device to the soundcard properly. You have to plug the jack of your connection cable into Line out of the soundcard, and in Line in on your cassette or minidisc device. Select Line out in the soundcard volume control by clicking on the box provided and adjust the volume levels. When you are satisfied with the levels go to the beginning of your wave, press the Record button on your recording machine and click Play in Cool Edit Pro. Compressing.wav files Cool Edit Pro allows you to save your waves as smaller types of sound files. If you go to Save As... you can choose the type of file you want to save it as. In the 1999 version of Cool edit Pro you can save your waves as RealMedia (.rm) files, in newer versions you can also directly convert them into MP3 files. This way you can compress your rather big.wav files to a smaller size so they take less space and you can store them more easily and use them on the Internet. You will learn more details about how to do this in the next module, Radio in the Internet. 23

24 SUGGESTIONS AND ADVICE If you have doubts whether you have a sound card or not you can check it in your computer Device Manager. Click once on Start at the left bottom of your screen. Scroll up to settings and open the Control Panel folder. Double click on the System icon and then on Device manager. Your sound card will appear in the list of devices, represented by an icon called video and audio under the category sound, video and games devices. If there is a sound card in your computer its name has to appear there. Not all sound cards have the same capabilities. However, most sound cards can record and playback CD quality sound which is 44100Hz, Stereo, 16-bit. The details are mentioned in a booklet which is supplied with your computer or with your sound card if it was installed later. To find out what your sound card can do click on Options in Cool Edit Pro, click on Settings and choose Devices. There a table shows you what your sound card is up to. When you are recording remember that it is worse to record too loud than to low. The low one can be amplified but nothing can be done with a distorted wave. When recording with Cool Edit Pro you need your sound card constantly. Leave it open minimised at the bottom of your screen so you can go quickly to it every time you want to change the sources of the sound or the volume. 24

25 Probably you are learning or practising sound editing in the studio of your radio station. That means you will probably be working with a mixing desk connected to the computer through the Line in. In this case you do not need to change anything in the sound card control on your computer but just control the volume with the faders of the mixing desk. When inserting waveforms notice that Cool edit warns you if the characteristics of the wave you are inserting are different from the waves that are already in the multitrack view. The programme also helps you to modify the settings automatically. Before mixing a session make sure you have not selected (highlighted) only one of the tracks because then only this wave will be converted to a.wav. file. However, you might want to just use a certain number of tracks for your mix, then select those before creating the mix down. Remember that you are using a lot of memory with.wav files. You have to record the files you want to keep onto a minidisk or a cassette and delete the unused files from your computer very often. When you store many.wav files on your hard disk not only does it use your memory but it also slows down the computer. The more you use Cool Edit Pro the quicker you can work with it, find shortcuts. Do no be afraid of experimenting with the different options. Particularly as you can always use the Undo option. Use the Cool Edit Pro Help menu. It has great tips and will help solve many problems. See you in the next module!! 25

26 ACTIVITIES MODULE VI Digital Editing 26

27 Module VI Women on Line Activities Activities Module VI Here are few suggestions of different activities and examples for you to practice and learn how to use the basic functions of Cool Edit Pro. This is the software we have used for this module but if you have another editing package you can also try to follow these exercises. 1. Calculate how many minutes of sound you can record and edit into your hard disk as maximum. To do this you need to check the available space in your hard disk taking into account that you need to keep three times the size of your file available in unused hard disk space in order not to slow down the computer too much when using Cool Edit Pro. 2. Record your own voice explaining what this course you are doing is about. When speaking talk without care, coughing, doubting, stuttering and repeating yourself. Once you have this piece recorded proceed to edit it clearing all the sounds you do not like to have in a radio interview, deleting small selections and cutting the coughs and repetitions. Make sure that in the edited final version your speech sounds smooth and fluent as if you had not cut any part. Use the zoom to be very precise in editing. Now you know how to manipulate a speech. :-O Use the skill honestly! 3. Make a short interview with a course mate recording it on a minidisc or cassette recorder and then record the result into Cool Edit Pro. To do this you need to select the correct ports at the back of your computer and the right channels in the volume control of your sound card. Edit the interview a bit deleting parts or changing the order of the questions. When you have finished record the result back on your MD or cassette again. Remember to save in Cool Edit Pro when recording and after editing. 4. Imagine you now want to make a short promo or jingle for your programme. You need first to choose the text and the music background for your jingle. Consider also if you would like to include any sound effect on it as an echo for instance. Decide how long you would like the jingle to be. As first step you record your own voice presenting the programme. Try to adjust your recording to the length you have decided. You can control this with the timer in Cool Edit. Edit what you think is necessary, including the echo effect if you have decided to use it. Then record the piece of background music from a CD or any other external device or use a file already stored on your computer. Insert these two waves into a multitrack session and play with them to create a basic jingle. Use the Volume Envelope and fade down the music as background to the voice and at the end of the jingle. When you are finished mix down the session to create a single wave. 27