Information Sells

Although we all love watching video webinars, sometimes you just want to listen to the audio when you are away from your computer – maybe when you are driving or exercising or just relaxing outdoors. You can’t add an FLV file to an MP3 player – but you can extract the audio from a webinar [...]

Tags: audio extractor, mp3, webinar

New videographers often overlook one crucial piece of equipment – the microphone. And no wonder they do. It’s almost impossible to find a decent camcorder for sale for less than $1,000.00 with an external mic jack. Newer camcorders have built-in stereo microphones instead, which promise great sound. But the microphone on your camcorder is probably [...]

Tags: boom, lavalier, microphones, rode videomic, video microphone

Plantronics .Audio 510 USB Ultimate Performance Headset – New in Poly-Bag If you use Skype or Camtasia, you’ve heard that a USB headset is better than an analog headset. You may have even heard side-by-side comparisons of the two. But you’ve put off buying a new headset. Me too. My old Logitech analog headset has [...]

Tags: headset, Plantronics, USB microphone

Betsey Weber and Matt Pierce of TechSmith (the makers of Camtasia) have done an excellent short comparison of several microphones for screencasting, including a lapel mic, freestanding USB mics, a headset, and even a webcam. Matt reads the same short passage from Alice in Wonderland with each microphone. The entire screencast lasts less than two [...]

Tags: microphones, techsmith

Oh boy! I just upgraded Information Sells to WordPress 2.7 So far so good. THE UPGRADE I’ve been upgrading my plug ins conscientiously, as new versions are released. Sadish announced that all his themes are WP 2.7 ready. So, although I’d planned to wait at least a few seconds before upgrading, I jumped right in. [...]

Tags: wordpress

On one of the forums that I read regularly, someone asked if there was a way, using Audacity, to bleep out a swear word in an interview without otherwise editing the interview. This isn’t a situation that comes up every day, but there are certainly times when you’ll want to bleep – rather than cut [...]

Tags: audacity, bleep, edit

If you watch the credits at the end of a movie, you will see several mysterious job titles: Gaffer, Best Boy, Key Grip, Foley Artist… The names give no indication of the function, but you’d never bother watching more than 30 seconds of a film that didn’t employ these people. They are the lighting and [...]

Tags: Audio, foley, sound effects, sound snap

Headset microphones are used by many screencasters. They produce acceptable sound at a reasonable price – particularly USB microphones like the Jabra GN2000 USB Headset – and they leave your hands free for keyboarding. Unfortunately, you can often tell when a screencaster is wearing a headset by the background sounds. Most people’s first instinct is [...]

Tags: headset, jabra, microphone

B&H Photo’s newsletter recently featured an interesting, very detailed article on choosing the right microphone for interviews. As we’ve written before, most consumer camcorders have an onboard microphone, but it should be avoided if sound quality is important. The onboard mic will pick up ambient sound (traffic, wind, dogs barking etc) as well as the [...]

Tags: b&h photo, camcorder, interview, microhone

The Conversations Network has posted a great tutorial on getting top quality audio podcasts using Skype. Take a look: http://www.blogarithms.com/index.php/archives/2007/12/23/skype-for-interviews/ This tutorial will walk you through changes to both Skype and firewall default settings. There is a lot of detail, but it is very easy to follow. The two most important steps to getting good [...]

Tags: Podcasts, skype, tutorial

In last week’s Video webcast, there was a question about how to fade music out while fading voice narration in. The trick is to use multiple audio tracks. The exact steps will vary, of course, depending on your audio software. Many video editing packages – like Sony Vegas Movie Studio – have multiple tracks. But [...]

Here are two identical versions of the same short video. All that changes is the background music. Click to play (don’t worry – there is no poster frame, but the videos start when you click on them.) Get the Flash Player to see this content. var params = { ‘allowfullscreen’: ‘true’, ‘allowscriptaccess’: ‘always’, ‘wmode’: ‘transparent’ [...]

I’ve heard it said that 60% of a good video is audio. When you are creating a video for eBay – don’t forget to add sound! You can add a voice over narration, explaining the benefits of your merchandise. Or you can add a simple musical soundtrack to help create a mood. Whatever you do [...]