1 Utilizing Advanced Features of Multimedia SoftwareCopyright © Cannady ACOS. All rights reserved.

2 OBJECTIVE The objective of this lesson is for each student to utilize advanced features of multimedia software, including image, video, and audio editing. Sample(s) of Behavior (SOBs): Manipulate MS Paint to edit Image file Manipulate MS Movie Maker to edit Video file Manipulate MS Movie Maker to edit Audio file Manipulate MS Movie Maker to create 2 – 5 minute movie

3 IMAGE EDITING Using PaintPaint is a program used to draw, color, and edit pictures. You can use Paint like a digital sketchpad to make simple pictures and creative projects or to add text and designs to other pictures, such as those taken with your digital camera. The parts of Paint: To open Paint, click the Start button, click All Programs, click Accessories, and then click Paint. When you start Paint, you see a window that is mostly blank, with just a few tools for drawing and painting. The following illustration shows the different parts of the Paint window:

4 IMAGE EDITING ContinuedThe Paint window Working with tools Paint includes a handy collection of drawing tools in the toolbox. You can use these tools to create freehand drawings and add a variety of shapes to your pictures. This section describes some common tasks. For information on how to use each tool in the Paint toolbox, see Paint tools. Draw a line Some tools, like the pencil, brush, line, and curve, let you make a variety of straight, curved, and wiggly lines. What you draw is determined by how you move the mouse as you draw. You can use the line tool to draw a straight line, for example. In the toolbox, click the Line  tool . In the Color box, click the color you want to use. To draw, drag the pointer across the drawing area.

5 IMAGE EDITING Continued    Draw a squiggly line Your drawings don't have to be composed of just straight lines. You can use the Curve tool to create smooth curves, for example. The Pencil and Brush can be used to make completely random, free-form shapes. In the toolbox, click the Pencil tool. In the Color box, click the color you want to use. To draw, drag the pointer across the drawing area. Tip If you want to make a wider line, use the Brush instead. The Brush can be customized with a variety of thicknesses.

6 IMAGE EDITING ContinuedDraw a shape Some tools, like the Rectangle and ellipse, let you add shapes to your drawing. The technique is the same regardless of which shape you choose. For example, you can use the Polygon tool to draw a polygon, which is a shape that can have any number of sides. In the toolbox, click the Polygon tool. In the Options box, click a fill style: Outline. Your shape will be just an outline, with a transparent interior. Outline with fill. Your shape will be filled with the current background color. (To set a background color, in the Color box, right-click a color.) Solid. Your shape will be filled with the current background color, but it will not have any outline.To add a polygon, drag the pointer across the drawing area, and then click to end the first side.Drag the pointer to create the next side, and then click to end the side. Repeat this as needed for additional sides.To create the final side and close the polygon, double-click. Fill Options

7 IMAGE EDITING ContinuedTo add a polygon, drag the pointer across the drawing area, and then click to end the first side. Drag the pointer to create the next side, and then click to end the side. Repeat this as needed for additional sides. To create the final side and close the polygon, double-click. Erase part of your picture If you make a mistake or simply need to change part of a picture, use the eraser. By default, the eraser changes any area you erase to white, but you can change the eraser color. For example, if you set the eraser color to yellow, anything you erase turns to yellow. In the toolbox, click the Eraser tool. In the Color box, right-click the color that you want to erase with. If you want to erase with white, you don't have to select a color. Drag the pointer over the area you want to erase.

8 IMAGE EDITING ContinuedChanging the effect of the drawing tools The Options box, located below the toolbox, is where you can change how a tool draws. You can set the thickness of the tool's brush (which affects the weight of what you draw on the screen) and whether the shapes you draw are outlined or solid. Change the brush stroke of the Brush In the toolbox, click the Brush tool. In the Options box, click the brush shape you want to paint with. To paint, drag the pointer across the drawing area. Picture of brush options

9 IMAGE EDITING ContinuedSaving a picture Save your picture frequently to ensure that you don't accidentally lose your work. To do that, on the File menu, click Save. This saves all of the changes you made to the picture since the last time you saved. The very first time that you save a new picture, however, you will need to give your picture a file name. Follow these steps: On the File menu, click Save. In the Save as type box, select the file format you want. In the File name box, type a name. Click Save.

10 VIDEO EDITING Traditionally, the platform of choice for video editing has been the Macintosh. The Mac is still the favored editing system for many professionals, in part because of the popularity of the high-end program Final Cut Pro. In addition, most new Macintosh computers come bundled with the excellent iMOVIE program, making the Mac a good platform for video novices as well. But where does that leave us Windows users? Until recently, video editing on a Windows PC has been a little confusing. While there are several professional-grade editors available (Adobe Premiere and Vegas Video) none of the free or inexpensive editors have really gained any notoriety. This lack of leadership within the beginner software arena is the result of two factors: the programs cost money (usually under 100 dollars) and are all difficult to use. In an attempt to simplify the editing process, these programs utilize colorful graphic interfaces that are supposed to make them seem more “user friendly.” Unfortunately, the software producers have gone too far, and have created programs that look foreign and don’t operate like other Windows software. The further you go from the standard “Windows Layout,” the harder it is for Windows-savvy people to learn it. Sony’s MovieShaker program is a good example of this design hubris. The program looks gorgeous, but the cryptic “Sony-fied” interface makes it tougher to use.

11 VIDEO EDITING ContinuedWindows Movie Maker – first contact: To alleviate the video-editing gap between Mac and PC, Microsoft created the free Windows Movie Maker (WMM) editing program. This program debuted back in 2000 as a bundled app within the Windows Me operating system. Movie Maker 1.0 allowed users to take imported video clips, line them up into a kind of “video slideshow,” and export them as a movie. The program was easy to use, but had many shortcomings with limited effects and transitions. The biggest drawback was the inability to import/export into common formats (i.e. from a digital camcorder). Another detriment was the ME operating system itself and the resulting difficulties in transferring digital video off a camcorder and onto a computer’s hard drive. The next round … The Windows XP platform was a complete revamp of Microsoft’s operating system. While the upgrade to XP created some concern because of software compatibility problems, one of the benefits to upgrading was better video capability. XP has built-in support for photo and video capture. XP also bundles an updated version of Movie Maker (version 1.1) that finally allows the capture and export of uncompressed DV-AVI from digital camcorders. Still, when compared to iMovie, Movie Maker 1.1 was a loser. It didn’t have as many transitions or video effects, and simple tasks like adding title’s as a real chore. Movie Maker was a difficult program to recommend … until now.

12 VIDEO EDITING ContinuedMovie Maker 2.0 … the Wrath of Kahn! In early 2003, Microsoft released an entirely new version of WMM, Movie Maker 2.0. This version, available as a free download, only works under Window’s XP. At first glance, the program looks similar to previous versions … however, looks can be deceiving. Version 2.0 is a completely new program, and addresses every problem and limitation that plagued earlier versions … including better DV-AVI import/export from camcorders, multiple transitions and video effects, and advanced titling features. And it does these things very well.WMM2 is by far the easiest video editor available today. The editing environment is laid out logically, and follows the standard “Window’s way of doing things.” In fact, after downloading and installing the program, most Windows users should be able to figure out the entire editing environment in less than 30 minutes. The program works in both the standard timeline view, or in a simplified storyboard format … and you can switch back and forth between these views according to the amount of control you need in your project. While some of the features, like the new title maker, take some getting used to, they are still much easier to implement than any competing products. Part of the program’s ease of use it due to the new Task menu. Like many XP programs, WMM2 comes with a Task pane that contains quick links to various tasks you’ll perform while making your video. These tasks are laid out in logical order and work kind of like a checklist … progressing from movie capture, to editing, to exporting. It just doesn’t get much easier than this! Did I mention this program is free? Amazing!

13 VIDEO EDITING ContinuedThe video editing process is easy: Let’s examine the movie making process. Like all editors, video creation occurs in three steps, though Movie Maker has simplified and streamlined each of these: Import your video: Importing video into MovieMaker 2 is quite easy, mostly because the XP operating system already supports digital camcorder capture. Simply connect your camcorder via a firewire cable, turn it on, and Windows XP will automatically detect it and bring up the capture window. Then, it’s just a matter of choosing your capture format. For high-quality video editing, this means either uncompressed DV-AVI or the new WMP9 compression. This WMP9 compression is excellent, and yields video that is almost as good as DV-AVI, but at a tiny fraction of hard drive space. You can capture manually, or have MovieMaker rewind and capture your entire tape. If you like, the program will automatically split your video into individual scene clips. Edit your video: This is usually the step that scares people away from computer video. However, editing within MovieMaker 2 couldn’t be simpler. Simply drag your captured video clips down onto the storyboard, add some transitions, and your movie is done! If you want more control, you can switch to the timeline view, and change your clip’s in and out points, insert music, and even add a narration over the video. WMM2 comes with useful video effects that allow you to improve your video’s quality, such as changing brightness levels. You can also add groovy special effects like “aged film” or “slow motion.”

14 VIDEO EDITING ContinuedThe editing environment: WMM2 is the easiest I’ve ever used, and adding effects is much easier to do than in competing products. Plus, MovieMaker allows you preview your effects in real time. This just isn’t possible with most other programs, which force you to render your movie first. Export the video: WMM2 adds many new exporting options. You can export into conventional uncompressed DV- AVI (either to your camcorder or hard drive). You can also export into several WMV formats, including the new WMP9 format. This latest compression wmv codec is killer, and produces DVD-quality video at tiny file-sizes. However, you may not be able to view it on other computers, because not everyone has yet installed the Media Player 9 codec. On the other hand, it’s a great storage format for your computer’s hard drive because of the tiny file sizes, and allows you to create video collections on your computer … just like your audio mp3 collections. Still room for improvement ... While generally, the program worked flawlessly, MovieMaker 2 has a few small problems. One of these is the lack my favorite video effect -- reverse video. You see, I like to make fake Kung-Fu movies with my young nephews and several of my favorite “kung-fu special effects” are accomplished by filming a scene backwards. A bigger (and more relevant) problem is the limited export options … you can only export your final video into DV-AVI or Windows Media Video. Other software packages let you export into Apple QuickTime and MPEG1/MPEG2 (for creating DVDs). Fortunately, there are workarounds for all of these format limitations … most DVD creation software will accept raw DV-AVI video, and there are free encoders available online for converting DV-AVI to other video formats.

15 VIDEO EDITING ContinuedConclusion Overall, MovieMaker 2.0 is a great video editor, and a significant advancement over previous versions. If you run Windows XP, and have ANY inkling to start editing video on your computer, I recommend downloading the 2.0 upgrade. The program is free, handles basic and advanced editing, and is incredibly easy to use. The Movie Maker program has finally matured to the point that it can now do anything a home-movie creator could ever want.

16 Audio Editing Digital AudioWhat is sound? Sounds are pressure waves of air. If there wasn't any air, we wouldn't be able to hear sounds. There's no sound in space. We hear sounds because our ears are sensitive to these pressure waves. Perhaps the easiest type of sound wave to understand is a short, sudden event like a clap. When you clap your hands, the air that was between your hands is pushed aside. This increases the air pressure in the space near your hands, because more air molecules are temporarily compressed into less space. The high pressure pushes the air molecules outwards in all directions at the speed of sound, which is about 340 meters per second. When the pressure wave reaches your ear, it pushes on your eardrum slightly, causing you to hear the clap. A hand clap is a short event that causes a single pressure wave that quickly dies out. The image above shows the waveform for a typical hand clap. In the waveform, the horizontal axis represents time, and the vertical axis is for pressure. The initial high pressure is followed by low pressure, but the oscillation quickly dies out. Click

17 Audio Editing ContinuedThe other common type of sound wave is a periodic wave. When you ring a bell, after the initial strike (which is a little like a hand clap), the sound comes from the vibration of the bell. While the bell is still ringing, it vibrates at a particular frequency, depending on the size and shape of the bell, and this causes the nearby air to vibrate with the same frequency. This causes pressure waves of air to travel outwards from the bell, again at the speed of sound. Pressure waves from continuous vibration look more like this:

18 Audio Editing ContinuedHow is sound recorded? A microphone consists of a small membrane that is free to vibrate, along with a mechanism that translates movements of the membrane into electrical signals. (The exact electrical mechanism varies depending on the type of microphone.) So acoustical waves are translated into electrical waves by the microphone. Typically, higher pressure corresponds to higher voltage, and vice versa. A tape recorder translates the waveform yet again - this time from an electrical signal on a wire, to a magnetic signal on a tape. When you play a tape, the process gets performed in reverse, with the magnetic signal transforming into an electrical signal, and the electrical signal causing a speaker to vibrate, usually using an electromagnet.

19 Audio Editing ContinuedHow is sound recorded digitally ? Recording onto a tape is an example of analog recording. Audacity deals with digital recordings - recordings that have been sampled so that they can be used by a digital computer, like the one you're using now. Digital recording has a lot of benefits over analog recording. Digital files can be copied as many times as you want, with no loss in quality, and they can be burned to an audio CD or shared via the Internet. Digital audio files can also be edited much more easily than analog tapes. The main device used in digital recording is a Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC). The ADC captures a snapshot of the electric voltage on an audio line and represents it as a digital number that can be sent to a computer. By capturing the voltage thousands of times per second, you can get a very good approximation to the original audio signal: Each dot in the figure above represents one audio sample. There are two factors that determine the quality of a digital recording: Sample rate: The rate at which the samples are captured or played back, measured in Hertz (Hz), or samples per second. An audio CD has a sample rate of 44,100 Hz, often written as 44 KHz for short. This is also the default sample rate that Audacity uses, because audio CDs are so prevalent. Sample format or sample size: Essentially this is the number of digits in the digital representation of each sample. Think of the sample rate as the horizontal precision of the digital waveform, and the sample format as the vertical precision. An audio CD has a precision of 16 bits, which corresponds to about 5 decimal digits.

20 Audio Editing ContinuedHigher sampling rates allow a digital recording to accurately record higher frequencies of sound. The sampling rate should be at least twice the highest frequency you want to represent. Humans can't hear frequencies above about 20,000 Hz, so 44,100 Hz was chosen as the rate for audio CDs to just include all human frequencies. Sample rates of 96 and 192 KHz are starting to become more common, particularly in DVD-Audio, but many people honestly can't hear the difference. Higher sample sizes allow for more dynamic range - louder louds and softer softs. If you are familiar with the decibel (dB) scale, the dynamic range on an audio CD is theoretically about 90 dB, but realistically signals that are -24 dB or more in volume are greatly reduced in quality. Audacity supports two additional sample sizes: 24-bit, which is commonly used in digital recording, and 32-bit float, which has almost infinite dynamic range, and only takes up twice as much storage as 16-bit samples. Playback of digital audio uses a Digital-to-Analog Converter (DAC). This takes the sample and sets a certain voltage on the analog outputs to recreate the signal, that the Analog-to-Digital Converter originally took to create the sample. The DAC does this as faithfully as possible and the first CD players did only that, which didn't sound good at all. Nowadays DACs use Oversampling to smooth out the audio signal. The quality of the filters in the DAC also contribute to the quality of the recreated analog audio signal. The filter is part of a multitude of stages that make up a DAC.

21 Audio Editing ContinuedHow does audio get digitized on your computer? Your computer has a soundcard - it could be a separate card, like a SoundBlaster, or it could be built-in to your computer. Either way, your soundcard comes with an Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC) for recording, and a Digital-to-Analog Converter (DAC) for playing audio. Your operating system (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, etc.) talks to the sound card to actually handle the recording and playback, and Audacity talks to your operating system so that you can capture sounds to a file, edit them, and mix multiple tracks while playing. Standard file formats for PCM audio There are two main types of audio files on a computer: PCM stands for Pulse Code Modulation. This is just a fancy name for the technique described above, where each number in the digital audio file represents exactly one sample in the waveform. Common examples of PCM files are WAV files, AIFF files, and Sound Designer II files. Audacity supports WAV, AIFF, and many other PCM files. The other type is compressed files. Earlier formats used logarithmic encodings to squeeze more dynamic range out of fewer bits for each sample, like the u-law or a-law encoding in the Sun AU format. Modern compressed audio files use sophisticated psychoacoustics algorithms to represent the essential frequencies of the audio signal in far less space. Examples include MP3 (MPEG I, layer 3), Ogg Vorbis, and WMA (Windows Media Audio). Audacity supports MP3 and Ogg Vorbis, but not the proprietary WMA format or the MPEG4 format (AAC) used by Apple's iTunes. For details on the audio formats Audacity can import from and export to, please check out the Fileformats page of this documentation. Please remember that MP3 does not store uncompressed PCM audio data. When you create an MP3 file, you are deliberately losing some quality in order to use less disk space.

22 Audio Editing ContinuedSound Editing in the "real world“ Sound editors clean up dialogue tracks, cut layers of special effects, place sounds at certain times, create ambiance tracks by cutting out unwanted stuff and mixing in interesting or necessary sounds. Music production engineers may cut pieces of vocals away or shift them to a another spot in a song.Editing is about cutting, placing, fading, cross-fading, shifting, duplicating and adjusting the volume (also referred to as level) of audio material. Mixing is a form of editing too of course.Here is an example of what is done in sound editing during the production of a television show or film. In the next part we will run you through a few of those techniques in Audacity. The Path of Sound in Film and TV Postproduction Film and TV crews have at least two people present that take care of recording sound during principal photography of a show. Principal photography is usually shooting the scenes with actual live actors or real backgrounds by the way.

23 Audio Editing ContinuedSound in Principal Photography The first person is the boom pole operator. The boom pole is an extendible stick with a microphone attached to it. This is used to capture dialogue either during filming or not. When not filming, it might be capturing off-scene dialogue or retakes of lines that the actors flunked during actual film takes. The more expensive the show is and the more time there is to do the work, the more people will resort to looping those takes, which is recording those lines in a sound studio environment instead of a film studio or location. The second person is the sound mixer, who usually sits in a place farther off from the shooting and records the sound captured by the boom pole operator, either via cable or wireless devices to tape,optical disks or hard drive. This is the raw sound material of a show. It is called production sound and the only desirable parts it usually contains are dialogue and body sounds. In post production, depending on the complexity, budget size and time, almost everything you hear except for the dialogue and some body sounds, are added later during ... Post Production This is where most of the stuff we'll be describing for Audacity will happen. You've got the recording. Now what ? After the visual part of the show is cut, the first of which usually isn't the final one, it is handed to the sound editor. In TV shows, you'll usually have one or two people for this, for major film productions a whole bunch more, for which tasks will be subdivided on a finer level.

24 Audio Editing ContinuedRaw sound - Cleanup time No shows do without film edits and many have plenty of them. Scenes may be shot with with one or more cameras and mics. Actors might have flunked their lines and picking up shooting prior to the mistake might be chosen or the entire sequence reshot. The film editor may have chosen parts from different takes for the cut of the scene. The action might be moving along at the wrong pace and the film editor shortened or stretched parts of a scene. The sound editor makes sure transitions between cuts are smooth. He or she removes undesired sounds, such as breathers of the same person that overlap from one film edit to the next. Material is cut away that contains unwanted sounds, such as creaking chair legs and sharp impacts of objects on tables and floors. Some of these may require looping of dialogue in the studio, because the noise may have been intolerable. Also, material may sometimes be denoised. The most sophisticated methods remove the whirring of the camera motors from takes. It is used as sparingly as possible though. It's always desirable to get the best possible sound from the start, which is the recording stage.

25 Audio Editing ContinuedAdding stuff - the really big deal After this cleanup is complete, sounds are added. The first is ambiance. Just close your eyes and listen to the sound around you. That's ambiance. Sophistication of ambiances rises with budgets. From premixed to over a dozen tracks, you'll find it all in TV shows and feature films. In any indoor scene with a lot of people in the background, nobody except for the actors being filmed will actually talk. That flurry of conversation is added later on. Next comes foley. These are clothes rustling (body sounds), foot steps and objects being handled. People that have the ultimate edition of Terminator 2 will know that all of Arnold Schwarzenegger's footsteps and rustle of his leather clothing were created by a five foot woman. These people are usually called foley walkers or foley artists. The foley editor then cleans these sounds, chooses the most fitting takes and makes sure they all sync to the picture properly. The foley mixer then does his/her thing. Next come effects. Foley are effects too, but they are a special category and can best be described as live created studio effects. Effects are usually more heavily edited and recorded from all kinds of places. A lot of effects are created by layering sounds on top of each other, changing their pitch and loudness, editing bits out and adding others.

26 Audio Editing ContinuedMany effects you'll hear are phone and door bells ringing, mobile phone beeps, doors of houses and cars opening and closing, weapon shots, slaps, car skids, machines of any kind, space ships flying around, explosions, to name a few. For example, a friend of mine and I created the sound of a small wooden rowing boat hitting a larger wooden sailing ship and scraping along its side by pitching down a knock on a large wooden door for the impact of the rowing boat and ship, and pitching down the sound of a skateboard rolling and scraping along a halfpipe. The techniques required to properly handle sounds like these are used in all kinds of productions. Audio books, music production, sound effects creation ... you name it. For more on this subject, read the Audio Post FAQ at let's jump in to the fray and look at how you can handle your sounds in Audacity.

27 Audio Editing ContinuedCreate a new project This is very important! Audacity writes all the changed and recorded audio to a directory called Projectname_data, which is located right where you saved the project file itself. Thus, select and choose a location and filename for your project. Please note that when you startup Audacity fresh, only the " Save As..." menu option is available. To save your project later on, you can also use the keyboard shortcut : CTRL+S

28 Audio Editing ContinuedCheck the Preferences Again, this is very important!

29 Audio Editing Continued...then check if the right output is selected: ...set the sample rate of your choice... (44.1 kHz is the default)

30 Audio Editing Continued...and here's a crucial screen : The File Formats settings need discussing at this point. When importing uncompressed audio, there are two ways to do it. "Make a copy of the original before editing" means, that Audacity actually copies the entire audio file that you imported in to its project data directory and in the process sets up the little overview graphics, whose descriptions get stored in the project data directory too. The second way is to use the original imported audio. You may think we're actually editing this file, but no we aren't. In fact, Audacity will now read the imported file once and simply create the graphics overviews for them in the data directory, and subsequently write to disk all the audio data that you change. The original file is only used for playback. All audio that remains unchanged will be played from the original file.

31 Audio Editing ContinuedThe advantage of choosing to make a copy of the original is that you avoid trouble, should anything in the original file change. For example, should you accidentally delete the original file, you're lost. You have to make up your mind before you start a project. Choose to make a copy of all imported files, and you'll use more space on your hard disk(s), but it will be easier to back up the project too, because all files that have anything to do with your project will be in the project data directory. The Uncompressed Export Format can be set to WAV or AIFF for now. Please check the fileformats page for further information on export formats. We'll ignore the Spectrogram settings for now. The Directories setting can be ignored as well for now, because all it sets is the directory to use for recordings, undo data and other stuff, if you haven't yet saved your project. Since we already saved our project, this setting is of no importance to us, though you may want to set it properly later on. Initially this is set to a folder called "audacity_temp_1.2" in the system temporary directory.

32 Audio Editing ContinuedImport an audio file There are three ways to do this: Simply drag and drop the audio file in to the Audacity window. (If you're using Mac OS 9 or X, drag the audio file to the Audacity icon instead...) Select Import Audio ... in the Project menu. Use the keyboard shortcut : CTRL+I Audacity can import WAV, AIFF, AU, IRCAM, MP3 and OGG files. Please refer to the fileformats page for further reference on these audio formats.

33 Audio Editing ContinuedPlayback The imported file should now be displayed in an audio track. The track will look a little like this, depending on what you imported : Trackpanel and Waveform Overview of the imported Track If you're not sure where to find audio material, simply rip some off a CD, or in Windows, check the Media folder in the directory of your Windows installation. Now click on the green Play button at the top and you should hear the file you have just imported.

34 Audio Editing ContinuedRecording with Audacity Create a new project Save an empty project. Or simply use the one from the previous part. Remember, that if you don't save your project before you start recording or importing, that all recordings, edit and other files will be written to the directory set on the Directories tab of the preferences. Check the preferences Make sure your playback and recording device are set. If you're going to record a stereo signal, set the number of channels to record to 2 (Stereo) on the Audio I/O preferences. When picking a device to record from, make sure you've set up all the connections properly, such as plugging a microphone in to the Mic Input, and any other device in to the Line In of your sound card. Then check that the gain level knob(the amount by how much the input should be amplified) of the mixer of your soundcard is set right. Since most soundcards can mix the inputs back in to the outputs, the easiest way to test your microphone is to speak in to it while playing with your sound card mixer. The sound card mixer is a piece of software either provided by the sound card maker, or by the operating system you're using. The Windows mixer is pretty straight forward, though some soundcards bring their own along. The Mac's mixer is controlled via the Sound Control Panel, and the Linux users have a variety of mixer applications at their disposal. Just make sure they work before yelling at your screen that nothing works.

35 Audio Editing ContinuedHit Record Click on the red  Record button to begin recording. Click on the blue  Pause button to pause the recording. Press it again to continue. Click on the yellow Stop button to cease recording. The cursor will return to its previous position, before the recording was started. That's it. You can now play around with your recording and explore the editing capabilities of Audacity. Remember that you can use the Undo function almost without limits whilst the project is open. For more on the menu buttons go to the following site:

36 Audio Editing ContinuedCut, Copy and Paste From here on you may encounter funny letter combinations in boxes like this. These are keyboard shortcuts to the functions presented to you in the text. These can be either single keys (e.g. SPACE) or combinations that need to be held down at the same time (e.g.CTRL+C). You can usually create your own. Check out the this page for more details. The most basic editing step is cut and paste. It's what people did with tape and it's easy with data in computers, so take a look at these basic operations, referred to as Cut, Copy and Paste. The next page will handle Silence, Duplicate and Split. You may also want to check out the reference section, so you'll know where to find all the tools and how to resize tracks for example. It is assumed that you have a project open and that at least one track of audio material is present. Let's take a look at this example of an Audacity window:

37 Audio Editing ContinuedThe View As you can see by the graphics, the time shift tool  is selected. It is used to move the entire audio clip around inside its track. The cursor (little blinking line across a track and the timeline) will remain at its position, so effectively you'll be sliding your audio material underneath the cursor. Let's say we want to cut out that bit in the middle then. First we've got to select it. The Audacity Window

38 Audio Editing ContinuedMaking a selection To select the part you wish to cut, copy or paste to, use the selection tool . If it's not activated, do so now by clicking on it in the toolbar. Now press and hold the left mouse button while you drag the mouse to mark an area. This area is darker than the surrounding area of the clip. Note, that even though you can mark an area larger than or extending beyond the actual audio clip in the track, the operations will only work on the actual clip. Playback however will work outside the clip. Press the space bar to listen to the audio in the marked area. To extend or contract your selection, hold down the SHIFT button and click on the area you wish your selection to extend or contract to. If you click at a spot that is on the right hand side from the middle of the current selection, you will set the right hand boundary of your new selection.

39 Audio Editing ContinuedCutting the selection Before the cut After the cut         Cut the selection by selecting "Cut" from the Edit menu ...  or press CTRL+X. To undo this operation, select Undo in the Edit menu or press CTRL+Z Copy will copy the selection to the clipboard. You can then paste that data back in to any track by clicking where you want this audio to be inserted and select Paste in the Edit menu, or press CTRL+V. Thus pasting is the opposite of cutting. You can also copy material, make another selection with the mouse and then paste. This will replace the selected material with the contents of the clipboard, no matter how short or long either of them are.

40 Audio Editing ContinuedDuring all operations of this kind, the bottom row of the screen will display two things, namely the start time and the end time of your selection. The display to the left if that called "Project rate:" and its value, defaulting to 44100, can be changed by clicking on that number and selecting another from the drop-down menu. This sets the sample rate of everything you produce in audacity. All files, no matter which will be played at the project rate, and exported at that rate. Should the sample rate of a track be different from the Project Rate, these tracks will be resampled to the Project Rate as the project is played back or exported. Audacity will not change the sample rate of any imported audio. If you want to change the rate of an imported track for any reason this can be done.

41 Audio Editing ContinuedSilencing unwanted sources This operation flattens the selection. It essentially is a cut operation without deleting the selection completely. After all, if you cut a second away, nothing remains. Using the Silence operation will still leave you with a flatlined area. When silencing parts between vocal lines, please keep in mind that a sudden drop in background ambiance can have an bad effect, so at the very least fade the area around the silenced part, to minimize that effect. Rules to start with are, fade in quickly and fade out slowly. Alternately, use the envelope tool to lower the volume in that area. That way, you can comfortably change it later. Keyboard Shortcut : CTRL+L

42 Audio Editing ContinuedDuplicate The selected area gets copied, a new track is created and the copied material is pasted in to that new track at the same point in the timeline. To illustrate, here's the image from the menu reference:

43 Audio Editing ContinuedThe benefits of a duplicate are many. One of these is experimentation with effects. Some of you may say "I can do that with the original track too". But you can't change the volume of your effect and original audio separately. If you put some Reverb on to your audio, you can only lower that processed audio in volume later on. If you duplicate the audio first and use the reverb on that(with 100% reverb and 0% original signal), you can freely change the volume for both the original and reverb signal. Also, you can do weird and wonderful things to your duplicates to create special effects. You'll have two pieces of the same audio to work with. Silence parts, reverb another, phase a third, filter another and see how that sounds. It is so easy to duplicate a piece of audio and do weird things to it, so try it. Combining sounds produces magic. A special note on performance : The new piece of audio isn't actually copied on the hard disk. Audacity will still play from the original audio file(s) until you change a piece of it. Keyboard Shortcut : CTRL+D

44 Audio Editing ContinuedSplit This performs the same as Duplicate, but it also silences the selected material, after copying it to a new track. Again, here's the illustration from the menu reference: There are plenty of good uses for this function, but I'm not going to tell you about them here. You'll have to go to the next part for the meat of this tutorial. Keyboard Shortcut : CTRL+Y

45 Audio Editing ContinuedMoving bits of an Audio track In all projects you'll be pushing your audio around at some point. Otherwise, what are you doing here ? There are techniques, easily achievable with Audacity, to cover almost any kind shifting you'd want to do. In our example, we have a small sentence of speech, where the speaker made a pause after the first word. We'd like to eliminate that pause. The part after the pause is selected Select

46 Audio Editing ContinuedThen the split function is used to pop the selected audio to a new track Split

47 Audio Editing ContinuedThe Time Shift Tool is selected and the audio on the lower track is moved left. Move Audio and select for fading

48 Audio Editing ContinuedNow, it's a good idea to listen to the two tracks individually for breathing sounds for example. Use the solo button of the tracks for this. Then listen them both in the mix. Again, you can use the solo buttons for this. If you have a lot of other tracks playing at the same time, press the solo buttons on both tracks. There should be no over lapping or cut-off breathing sounds. When you're satisfied, fade out the last two thirds of the overlapping upper part of the track, and fade in the first two thirds of the lower overlapping audio. Two thirds, and not the whole overlapping audio, are chosen to keep the level of audio constant. If the whole overlapping parts were faded, you would get a level drop of 3dB in the middle of those fades. You can check this out by taking a piece of music, duplicating it, and then fading the tracks, one fading out, the second fading in. In the middle of those fades, the level of the mix will drop audibly. Do a fade over last two thirds for the fade out and first two thirds for the fade in, and you probably won't notice any change in level. Two thirds is a guideline, but not the law, so you may have to experiment a little.

49 Audio Editing ContinuedMixing it back together again !!!Remember!!! The final mix is done with the Export as WAV function in the File Menu. Here we'll be looking at creating submixes with the Quick Mix function. You've done a lot of edits and now have dozens of little tracks with little bits and pieces here and there. It might look like this: Bits and Pieces spread all over the screen First four tracks selected for quick mixing

50 Audio Editing ContinuedWe can use the Quick Mix function in the Project menu to bring down the number of tracks. However, you don't need to mix everything in to one new track. Select the tracks you want to mix together by SHIFT+click 'ing on the track panels. In the graphics above, the first four tracks are selected. Then select Quick Mix. In this example I have quick mixed everything down to two tracks : And thus, two submixes were created. Remember though, that we did this for convenience of not having to organize a large number or tracks. If you still want to shift bits around later on, you should make sure that the parts being mixed to a track do not overlap, so you can split it away and edit it again later. Bits and Pieces, quick mixed down to two tracks

51 SUMMARY IMAGE EDITING VIDEO EDITING AUDIO EDITING

52 Sources Root, Timothy. ( ) Windows Movie Maker 2.0 Review ( ) Microsoft Corporation. (2010) Using Paint NWOCA. (2004) Editing a United Streaming Video Using Windows Movie Maker Oetzmann, Anthony. Audacity

53 QUESTIONS????