Learning audio

Sorry for so long between posts. I started my new job and am settling into a new apartment, which has taken up a lot of my time lately. Anyway, I’m on a mission to try to look at one multimedia aspect per day through Mindy McAdams’s journalism toolkit. I chose audio for today, partly because I knew a little bit about it and partly because of something that happened earlier this week at work.

Last Monday, I went to a press conference on Hurricane Ike at the Emergency Operations Center in Tallahassee, recorder in hand. I sat and recorded the whole thing, but held my recorder with me at my seat instead of plugging it into a mult box (I didn’t bring a cord with me) or putting it up on the podium. The quality of the recording was fine for the reporter who wants to go back and check a quote from Gov. Crist, but not loud enough for the news junkie who wants to casually listen to the presser while reading other articles online or doing whatever else he/she happens to be doing at the moment. Lesson of the day: Make sure the quality is good. The recorders can only do so much.

I’m a fan of Olympus recorders. I have a VN-4100PC, which is the brand I used during the press conference, but my employer also supplied me with a WS-210S.  I have not used the new one yet, but it does have one advantage over the VN-4100PC. The new one can directly connect into a PC or laptop, so if you don’t have a cord with you, don’t worry.

Once you’ve got your audio, it’s on to editing. McAdams, through her journalism toolkit, provides instructions on how to use Audacity, a web-based software that allows you to edit audio. Audacity is easy to use, and best of all, it’s FREE. I’ve only played around with it a few times, but it seems easy enough.