.srt/.vtt to text converter

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Okay so here's the situation: you 
have two different audio recordings,  

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one for each person who is part of an interview. 
So those are two separate audio files that we're  

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going to combine but we also want to add some 
background music and some other audio. So we're  

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going to look at where we can find some background 
music. My favorite spot is Free Music Archive.  

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There's a lot of different features in Free Music 
Archive that make it pretty easy to navigate.  

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One thing is they have the genres so 
you can look at just instrumental music  

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(for background music it's a good option). 
You can listen to any of the songs...

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It is a little bit difficult to search through- 
you have to listen a lot. You can't really go  

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off the titles or the genres necessarily to 
find things that you like. So it is kind of a  

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time-consuming process. I already found a 
song that I'm going to use. I like this one...

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For a little bit of intro music. You can 
download it straight from here but one  

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thing that's important to keep in mind is 
you will want to find out what the usage  

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rights are. And so not everything in Free Music 
Archive is going to be completely usable by you.  

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And I'll have more details about that in the 
comments, but in this case the license is a BY so  

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I have to give them attribution -- I have to say 
who this is by. And then NC so non-commercial and  

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since I'm not making any money off of this video, 
I don't, I'm okay I can use this as long as I give  

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Blue Dot Sessions attribution. And so what I'm 
going to do is go ahead and download this. And  

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so if I click on the download on a mac I will 
also have to right click and then save audio as.

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(Wait for my slow computer)

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I'm gonna go ahead and close that. I'm going back 
to the Creating Audio: Software page. So there's  

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Free Music Archive is a great spot for audio. 
There's other spots too: YouTube Audio Library  

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is a good one, searching Bandcamp, vide- Videvo, 
or I'm not sure you pronounce that -- they have  

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a few options you've got to make sure that you're 
restricting it to just free clips though. If you  

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want other kind of sounds like nature sounds -- 
I want to have some kind of ambient sounds. My  

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favorite is Sound Bible. Videvo also has some good 
clips but I'm going to show you about Sound Bible.  

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Sound Bible has things broken down by subjects 
so I can just click on this to see a bunch of  

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different animal sound options. Some of the 
more popular more recent ones are going to  

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show up on the sidebar here. There's new ones 
down here at the bottom. But I can just search,  

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and so what I want to do is I'm going to 
look... I want to look for something...  

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some sounds of someone going on a hike. And so 
again I can see license information right here.  

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Public domain means I don't have to give any 
attribution. I can do whatever I want with the  

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recording. I can make money off of it, I can 
change it, do whatever I want. So that's...  

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I always like to find public domain. 
I can listen to it right here:

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And that seems pretty close to what I want. And so 
to download it. I just click on the title of it.  

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There's a .wav file that I can download 
or an .mp3. .wav is generally a more...  

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it's a format that's going to be usable 
in more different types of programs,  

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but generally speaking .wav and .mp3 
should both be pretty good. I'm going to  

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grab the .wav file. So I've downloaded my hiking 
trail sound. I've downloaded my background music.  

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I already have the recordings 
of my audio. And so...  

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for the interview. So what I'm going to do next 
is I'm going to go ahead and open up Audacity.  

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It's free and open source so it's one that I 
recommend to folks. Audacity is pretty easy to use  

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there's a lot of features that we're not going 
to cover but for the things that we're going  

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to cover today... you can do mostly... you can 
learn how to do most of those pretty quickly.  

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Hopefully by the end of this video you'll have 
a good idea of how to do some of these things.  

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It might take a little bit of trying to get 
it down. But first, what we're going to do  

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is we're going to want to import our tracks -- 
our different audio tracks -- into our project.  

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And so we can do this just by opening the folder 
where they're located and then clicking on them  

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and dragging them into the Audacity workspace. You 
can see now they're all loaded. There's a separate  

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track for each different sound clip. So you can 
see each one is a different length. Each track is  

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also a stereo track in this case, so you can see 
there's a left and a right channel for each track.  

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So it looks like there's eight separate tracks. 
Depending upon the audio that you import you  

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might have stereo or you might have mono. Both 
are fine. Stereo simply means that there might  

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be a little bit different sound in the left 
hand channel than in the right hand channel.  

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And so sometimes that's beneficial, but if you 
just see one, um, one channel for each track,  

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that's fine -- no need to panic. And so we can 
play through and listen to it by hitting the  

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play button here: [audio playback with various 
elements playing at once, including narration:  

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"Hello everyone and welcome to my 
podcast. Today I have a really..."]  

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Right now we're hearing everything all together 
and it's kind of annoying. There's a lot of things  

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going on at the same time and so one thing I'm 
going to do is I'm going to start organizing.  

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You can see we have the titles of the tracks 
here on the side: and so here we have Tim  

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speaking. That's Tim's speaking part. And so I 
can move this up because that's the first thing  

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I'm going to really focus on. So I can move it 
up along the queue by clicking on that little  

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down arrow and moving it all the way to the 
top. And then you can see here I have Jim's  

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speaking part. And in the beginning he doesn't 
really say anything until he gets introduced  

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a little ways into the segment. And so 
him... I can kind of ignore that for now  

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and so I'm going to mute his track so I'm not 
going to be able to hear it as we play through.  

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So that's going to make things a little bit easier 
to focus on. But you can see here I have the  

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clap at the beginning that makes it so that we 
can sync it up later and we'll get into that a  

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little bit later. And so one thing that I want to 
talk about is being able to focus on the pieces  

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that you want to. And there's a couple different 
features in Audacity for you to control that. And  

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so if I want to just focus on these first two 
bits: the interviewer and the background music,  

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I can go ahead and mute the other tracks. So I've 
already muted the interviewee I can also mute that  

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outdoor sound, that ambient noise. There's 
another feature that also kind of enables  

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you to isolate one track at a time and 
so instead of muting individual tracks  

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I can choose the solo button. So now I have 
everything selected so I can hear it but when  

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I hit the solo button, I can only hear the 
one that I click the solo button on. And so  

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that really lets you focus on just that one 
track. It's kind of the opposite of the mute,  

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um but it's a very handy quick way to just 
isolate one track that you want to listen to

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So another useful tool when you're dealing with 
the playback is being able to skip around on  

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different parts of the track. And so you can 
see if you just click on the timeline at the  

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top it'll move the playhead. But also you can use 
the spacebar to stop or play the track so if you  

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ever want to stop it, just hit the spacebar. And 
if you want to skip ahead, just go ahead and click  

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anywhere on the timeline. There are also a few 
different tools at your disposal. So right now,  

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I'm on the selection tool that's what's 
highlighted at the top there. And so when I  

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click and drag, I can select areas of the audio 
track. if I double click, I can select the entire  

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track. When I select anything and I hit the delete 
key it just automatically deletes that. If I hit  

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ctrl+z, it'll undo that. So I just delete and then 
ctrl+z. Another useful tool for controlling the  

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volume really precisely is the envelope tool. 
And so here I'm going to click a couple dots  

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and those are just points where I'm going to 
change the levels. And so here you can see I  

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have two different points at the beginning. It 
starts at full volume and then it tapers down to  

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be a little bit quieter. And I can just control 
that by clicking and dragging the mouse. And so  

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this is this will be nice, the music will start in 
loud in the podcast and then as the person starts  

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talking it'll get a little bit quieter. And so 
I can kind of shift the placement of where the  

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person starts talking to match up with 
this fade out -- or fade down, rather.  

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The next tool we're going to look at is the time 
shift tool. This little double arrow here. And so  

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this will allow us to place the speaker so that 
right when they start talking right at the point  

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where the volume of the music starts going down. 
And so here we can just visually line those up and  

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then listen: [audio playback of the background 
music and narrator: "Hello everyone and welcome  

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to my podcast. Today I have a really exciting 
interview with one of my close friends..."] And  

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really this is a process of listening and kind of 
just being able to tell by ear whether or not the  

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levels are going to be sufficient. So is the music 
quiet enough so that I can hear the speaker? Do I  

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want to tweak it a little bit? And in this case 
I do I want to. I want it a little bit quieter  

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and depending upon your setup and your track 
sometimes getting it down to get really low can  

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be tricky. And so you're going to want to change 
the size of how the tracks are displayed. So you  

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can just drag the bottom part of the track 
itself and then it gives you a little more  

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granular precision: [audio playback of background 
music and narrator: "a really exciting interview  

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with one of my close friends. You know, last 
week..."] And then it's really just a matter of  

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making little micro adjustments. [audio playback 
of background music and narrator: "really exciting  

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interview with one of my close friends..."] To 
try to see what you do or don't like, you know,  

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what is acceptable. Is this loud enough? Is it 
too loud? Can I hear the music at all anymore?  

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You don't want the music so quiet that it's 
inaudible or that it's distracting because  

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people are trying to figure out what's going 
on but you don't want it to be drowning out  

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the narration. So now we're just going to 
listen to the entire beginning sequence:

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[audio playback of background music and narrator:  

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"Hello everyone and welcome to my 
pod...] I'm pretty happy with that!  

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Okay so now I have my levels pretty much 
how I want them. I still have this kind of  

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annoying clap in the very beginning which we're 
gonna... we're still gonna use to sync up later,  

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so I'm not gonna get rid of that yet. 
But something to keep in mind is, um,  

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just kind of making sure that you tweak everything 
so that it's set up to start playing exactly when  

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you want it to. And speaking of that, I have 
this track of somebody hiking. It's just ambient  

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noise of them hiking and in the introduction the 
interviewer talks about hiking so I want to line  

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those up so they happen at the same time. [audio 
playback of background music and narrator: "You  

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know last week I was out on a hike walking..."] 
And so I'm going to play it back until I hear  

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that point where it says "hiking" [audio playback 
of background music and narrator: "walking through  

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the forest.."] I'm going to make a note of where 
that happens on the timeline, right. So I want  

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to [audio playback cuts in and out periodically] 
shift I'm going to use the time shift tool to move  

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that hiking sound right at that same point, about 
15 seconds. Okay so I'm gonna have to switch from  

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the envelope tool to the time shift tool. And 
you can see I have this little "No" icon. So the  

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mouse cursor is a little "No" symbol that 
means that I can't use it on any of these.  

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That's because I didn't have my track stopped. 
I had it paused instead of stopped. Once it's  

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stopped, then I can shift this to where I want it 
to be. And since I have track one way up high and  

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track three pretty far down one thing I can do 
is just make track two a little bit more narrow,  

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or I can move track three all the way up which is 
what I prefer to do. I like to see them side by  

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side. There's no real difference in whether... in 
the order of the tracks. They all will sound the  

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same, so it's really just whatever your workflow 
preference is. [audio playback of background  

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music, narrator, and hiking sound: "...you know 
last week I was out on a hike walking through  

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the forest enjoying the sun..."] Just try to get 
that exactly where I want it to be so it matches  

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up with the narration -- so it goes along with 
what the listener is going to be listening to.  

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And I'm going to go back to the selection 
tool because now I want to select this track.  

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The background noise is a little too 
loud so I'm going to just lower that.  

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And instead of using the envelope tool I'm 
going to use an effect. So there's a whole  

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wide range of effects. There's a few things 
I want to do: maybe fade in, fade out...  

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but just the overall volume, I'm going to play 
with the amplify tool. Amplify will let me either  

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boost or reduce the volume for that track. 
So in this case I'm just going to choose...  

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the amplification: I'm going to go negative 10 
decibels. That's a pretty significant drop in  

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volume: [audio playback of background music, 
narrator, and hiking sound: "...in the air and  

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the birds in the trees feeling the ground beneath 
the soles of my feet..."] So I'm pretty happy here  

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with the volume of the background noise but I 
noticed that the speaker gets quieter a little  

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ways into it. So they started off talking a little 
bit louder and then they got quieter once it went  

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underway: [audio playback of background music, 
narrator, and hiking sound: "...ground beneath  

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the soles of my feet I thought of one..."] And 
so it's really kind of just battling against  

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that background noise. So I don't want to reduce 
the background noise too far because then we won't  

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be able to hear it so instead what I'm going to 
do is I'm going to try to to bring up the level  

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of the narration. And so here we can see there's 
some low lows and some high peaks. And so I'm  

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going to use a tool called the compressor which 
is going to kind of even all those out. So all  

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the peaks will be about the same level. 
I'm just going to go with the presets I'm  

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not going to change anything just click "OK." 
And now you can see those peaks -- those high  

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peaks are all pretty much matched. There's a 
little more uniformity across the middle there  

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as well: [audio playback of background music, 
narrator, and hiking sound: "...feeling the ground  

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beneath the soles of my feet I thought of one 
person who's introduced me to so many wonderful  

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spots..."] And that's quite a bit better. I like 
the levels quite a bit more but I can use the  

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amplify tool to give it just a little bit more 
of a boost so now that it's more uniform: bring  

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those peaks up a little bit more. [audio playback 
of background music, narrator, and hiking sound:  

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"...feet I thought of one person who's 
introduced me to so many wonderful spots..."]  

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And that is pretty close. That sounds really 
good I can still hear the background quite well  

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as well as the narration. But now I want 
to kind of tweak the background so that  

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really matches up to what the narrator is 
saying. So I want it to end right where  

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the narrator ends I want it to fade in so it 
doesn't have a sharp starting point and I want  

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it to fade out so it doesn't have a sharp ending 
point. And so I'm going to use those two tools.  

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But one thing I haven't done yet is make sure that 
it's the length that I want it to. So I have it  

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starting where I want it to start but I haven't 
checked to see if it's going to end where I want  

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it to end, right? And that's pretty important -- 
we don't want the background noise to be going on  

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when we've shifted to a different 
topic. So let's listen to that  

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again: [audio playback of background music, 
narrator, and hiking sound: "...one person who's  

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introduced me to so many wonderful spots and he's 
here in the studio today to talk to me about..."]  

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Okay and so now when we're talking 
about the person coming into the studio  

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that's where we know we want that background noise 
to end. Now we only want that imagery to be when  

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we're out on hike once we come back to the studio 
we're going to get rid of that background sound so  

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that people understand we're back in the studio. 
So what I'm going to do now is just delete the  

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last part right so I'll find the spot where I want 
to end. Select it all and then just hit the delete  

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key. It's going to get rid of that last bit. And 
so now, though, I've lost my fade out so I'm going  

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to go ahead and select the end of it again and do 
my fade out effect. [audio playback of background  

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music, narrator, and hiking sound: "...and so 
he's here in the studio today to talk to me about  

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how he started his business sharing wonderful 
areas like this and a little insight..."] And  

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that's a pretty perfect ending spot right there 
that I'm pretty happy with where that ends off.  

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However, there's one other thing that I want to 
kind of tweak. So I've got three sounds competing  

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here, I've got: [audio playback of background 
music, narrator, and hiking sound: "...the  

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ground beneath the soles of my feet. I thought 
of one person who's introduced me just..."] I've  

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got the background music, the hiking, and the 
narration. And it's a little bit much. That can,  

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you know, depending on your personal preferences 
that can be fine but me, personally, I want to  

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really just go on this hike I want this hike to 
be the only thing that the listener is thinking  

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about. So I'm going to use my envelope tool again 
on the music and I'm going to totally fade it down  

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all the way so we can't hear it. And again 
you can just kind of tweak, play around,  

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with that envelope tool and move those dots 
around. Get the right amount of fade in,  

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fade out there. [audio playback of background 
music, narrator, and hiking sound: "...and the  

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trees. Feeling the ground beneath the soles of my 
feet, I thought of one person who's introduced me  

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to so many won..."] And now that has quite 
a different feel, right? I really like that:  

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no sound, no music, at all. Nothing other than 
person talking and the hike. And it really kind  

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of takes the listener out of the studio onto the 
trail and that's kind of what I'm hoping for in  

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that moment. But I want to make sure that there's 
no music at all, so I'm going to solo that track  

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and then listen to it again and make 
sure that there's no sound at all.

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Sure enough it's perfectly quiet so I'm pretty 
happy with that. And so now I'm going to listen  

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to it all again together here, let's see: [audio 
playback of background music, narrator, and hiking  

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sound: "...and he's here in the studio today to 
talk to me about how he started his business,  

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sharing wonderful areas like this and a little 
insight into what he does on day to day.  

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Jim, welcome to the podcast!"] And so now we 
have it fading out of the trail back into the  

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music back into the studio. And then we need to 
sync up the interviewee with the interviewer.  

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So I'm going to move the order of my tracks 
again. I got Jim all the way up here at the top,  

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so Jim can be matched up with the interviewer. And 
so you can see here is when he comes in it's...  

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there's a bit of a lag from where it's supposed 
to be. And that's because at the beginning he,  

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uh, started recording a bunch of dead air at the 
beginning, which is totally fine -- that's better  

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than starting halfway in or something. But what 
I'm going to do is I'm going to sync up these  

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claps. And so I'm just going to use the time 
shift tool. Delete the beginning of his track.  

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Line up those two lines there. We can see the 
clap there is that line, that long vertical line,  

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just visually line those up. It can be a little 
bit easier to line those up if I use the zoom in  

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tool. So that's just a little magnifying glass and 
I just click on that spot. And you can see here  

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the claps are still a little bit off so I'm going 
to go ahead and use the time shift tool. Yeah,  

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there we go. And line those up just as perfectly 
as I can and then I'm going to play it back and  

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listen and see how closely those are synced. And 
that's pretty close. That's pretty perfect. You  

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know, you can kind of play around with this 
until you get it exactly how you want it to  

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be but for the most part you know you can be a 
few milliseconds off and it'll sound fine. It's  

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only if you can hear both people through one 
mic that it might cause some sort of problem.  

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But if they're in two different cities or, 
you know, two different rooms entirely,  

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um, being a little bit off isn't going to make 
a huge difference. [audio playback of background  

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music, narrator, and hiking sound: "...welcome 
to the podcast. (second speaker) Well thank  

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you for having me!"] So in this case I'm pretty 
happy with that. You know, you have the person  

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coming in at an appropriate amount of time 
after the interviewer asks them a question.  

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And so I like that. And one other thing, though, 
to think about is do I want the background music  

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playing throughout? So here I can say "sure, maybe 
I want the background music playing forever."  

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"Maybe I want to lower it a little bit." 
"Maybe I want to totally fade it out."  

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Maybe the background music is just for this kind 
of opening intro and so once I fade, once I get  

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into the interview itself then I want to fade the 
music out so we can just focus on the interview.  

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Again, it's kind of personal preference. I'm 
going to get rid of this. And so one thing I  

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can do is I could select that and I could delete 
it. I could just get rid of it entirely if I'm  

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not going to use it again. There's not really a 
whole... there's not a lot of drawbacks to that.  

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The only possible problem would be that maybe I 
want to come back to the music at the end. And so  

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I'm going to just use the envelope tool to just 
fade it out. And so as this, as Jim is starting  

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to talk I'm going to slowly fade it out. So when 
he says "thank you for having me" or whatever,  

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the music is just slowly fading out. And so then 
their discussion starts and there's no music,  

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there's no trail sounds, there's nothing else 
other than just quiet studio. And again you can  

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kind of tweak this. As you drag the little 
dot forward and backward along the timeline  

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it will change the length of that fade out. 
One thing you want to pay attention to, again,  

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is making sure that you're listening to it so 
that it is dead air. In this case we don't hear  

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anything: [audio playback of background 
music, narrator, and hiking sound: "...to  

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the podcast. (second speaker) 
Well thank you for having me!"

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Totally dead, so that's that's great. And now you 
know, uh, obviously if this was a longer project,  

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a real project, these were just samples -- sample 
files -- um, we'd have a much longer interview.  

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But I'd have my intro nailed at this point and 
assuming that my two speakers... their levels are  

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right overall, which I can tweak with the amplify. 
Maybe for the interviewee, I'd want to compress  

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all of his audio as well. So I could double click 
and compress that and amplify it a little bit.  

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But otherwise, you know, that should remain pretty 
easy. Once their conversation starts I'm not going  

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to be tweaking all these different things so at 
this point I'm pretty close to just being done.  

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And since I just lowered the volume with the 
envelope tool of that background track I can  

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bring up that music again later. Maybe in between 
segments or at the end. Another thing though that  

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I want to cover real quick is how to kind 
of get rid of any mistakes. So let's just  

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pretend this middle section here in the intro is 
something I want to delete out. I can just select  

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it with the select tool, hit the delete key, 
delete it. And I can do the same for part of...  

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part of the segment in the middle or the whole 
ending part. I can also select... and so I'm  

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going to undo that, so I get all the full 
track back. I can also select part of it and  

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cut it out. And then I can move... move it to 
a different area, or move a different segment,  

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00:22:00,480 --> 00:22:04,160
rather than just deleting it. When I delete it, 
it just automatically goes all back together.  

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Instead, with the cut tool -- this little 
scissors here -- I can cut it out and then  

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I have that saved to my clipboard. And then I can 
delete any part or I can move that cut piece to a  

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different section. So I'm going to delete the part 
that was the mistake move my timeline, move my  

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cursor to the point on the timeline where I want 
to then paste it in. And so now I have some dead  

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air in the middle there so in case my timings 
were important you know I didn't want the the  

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piece just to be deleted out with no dead air in 
between I can do that. The other thing, though,  

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I want to do is I want to zoom in to make sure 
there's no noise at all. So in this case there's  

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that little tiny sound wave so there's going to 
be a pop. So by zooming in I can just delete any  

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last little little vestige of it. As long as 
you have a really good flat line there that  

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means it's pretty much all quiet but another 
thing I might do is do a fade in or fade out  

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00:22:56,400 --> 00:23:03,040
just to kind of reduce any pops that might occur 
from cutting something out right in the middle

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And then here I can time shift the 
whole piece, there, so that the  

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interviewer and the interviewee are still 
lined up. So again, you know, you want to  

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think about the timings whenever you're deleting 
out... if you're cutting out a middle piece  

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because you made a mistake or for whatever reason, 
you want to make sure that doesn't throw off the  

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other timings with other people. And so that's 
the basics of Audacity! We looked at some of the  

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tools. We looked at some of the effects. There's 
certainly a lot more that you can do with Audacity  

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but these are some of the basics that can 
get you started in creating a podcast.  

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Check the notes: there's links to a lot of these 
different tools and to other tutorials. And  

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check out the creating audio guide, there's a lot 
more links as well, including one that's a video  

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tutorial on using Audacity in general. And if you 
have any questions don't hesitate to ask! Thanks!