Tag Archives: tutorial

Making a Podcast with Audacity

This tutorial was written by Sarah DeLorme, Associate Digital Scholarship Librarian.

The Digital Studio gets a lot of queries from our patrons regarding audio editing. There are so many great programs to choose from, it can be sometimes be overwhelming to know where to start. Audacity is a professional quality open source audio editor. It is intuitive to use and can easily be used to put together a great podcast.

Setting up

Before you even open the Audacity software, it is important to set yourself up for success in your recording. Audacity will let you connect to an external microphone, or the built in microphone at your workstation. Whichever recording device you choose, be sure to record in a quiet indoor space where you will not be interrupted. (A great place to record is the Sound Room in the Digital Studio. You can even reserve it online!) It also helps to work from a script, so that you can practice and pace yourself as you go along.

Recording

When you open Audacity, you will see this blank workspace.

Use the dropdown menus to select your recording device and your recording mode (you can choose either mono or stereo- mono is recommended for podcasts).

Click on the top numbered bar to check the input levels of your microphone. Try to keep at least a foot of space between yourself and the microphone, and speak clearly and at a moderate volume. The ideal range is a fully green bar. Avoid orange and red levels- that means you are too close or too loud!

Press the red circle button to begin your recording. (Helpful hint: leave a few seconds of empty noise at the start of the recording to sample during the noise reduction process later.) As you record, a waveform will appear on the track. Try to keep your waveform at a relatively similar level throughout, so that the volume is not fluctuating. Avoid very small waveforms which might be too soft to hear, as well as very large waveforms which might be so loud you get feedback.

Noise Reduction

Using the select tool (⌶) click and drag to highlight an empty noise portion of your recording. If you left a few seconds of silence before you started recording, use that! Otherwise, try to find a pause in the recording.

On the top menu, select effect> Noise Reduction> Get noise profile.

Next, use Command + A (CTRL+A on Windows) to select the entire track. It will look like this:

Navigate back to the noise reduction panel (Effect>Noise Reduction) and select “OK”. You will notice that your waveform will smooth out as the effect erases some of the background noise.

Creating a Second Track

Go to Tracks>Add new> Mono track. Remember, the new track will begin recording wherever the playhead is. Drag the playhead to the end of the first recording to make a seamless transition, like this:

You can move the clip around the track by selecting the “timeshift” tool (which looks like a double-headed arrow), clicking the clip, and dragging it to the desired position. You can also reorder the tracks by clicking and holding in the blank space of the left hand track menu and dragging up or down.

Deleting portions of your recording

Use the select tool to highlight the part of the recording you want to delete. (Helpful hint: use the zoom tool (🔍) to magnify the waveform and zero in on the word or phrase you wish to remove) Press the “Delete” button to remove the selected recording.

Importing and Exporting

Most podcasts have some catchy into music, and Audacity makes it easy to import a music file. Go to File>import>audio and select the desired track. This will import the entire song. Trim the track to desired length by highlighting the extra music and pressing the delete button. To fade out, highlight the clip and go to Effects>Fade out. You will see the waveform change into a cone shape as the music tapers off.

NOTE: If you are using music in your podcast, it is very important to make sure you are not infringing on the artist’s copyright. If you are unsure about whether or not you can use a clip, ask a librarian- they can help!

To export your project as a final sound file, navigate to File>export> and select your preferred file type.

NOTE: To export an .mp3, Audacity will require you to download an additional file from their website. This is an mp3 encoding library. The prompt will provide you with a link to the download, as well as instructions. (This site is also full of tips and tutorials if you need further assistance with Audacity.)

Once your project is exported, you can open it in any program that plays audio files. However, it will be compressed, so you cannot go back and edit it. To preserve the tracks so that you can go back and edit them, you will need to save your project.

Saving your Project

Select File> Save Project. This will save your project as an .aup file, preserving your track information so that you can open it up again later to edit it. You will only be able to open an .aup file in Audacity. This can be edited from any computer, as long as Audacity is installed.

NOTE:When you save your project, it will generate a project file (yourtitle.AUP) and a project folder (yourtitle_data).

Be sure to save both of these to your Google Drive, flash drive, or wherever you are saving your project. The folder contains your assets, and the .aup file contains the blueprint for your project. You will need both to reopen your project successfully!

If you need further assistance with your podcast, you can always contact the Digital Studio staff at digitalstudio@bc.edu

The Basics of Garageband

This tutorial was written by Digital Studio Student Assistant, Jung Kim. Learn more about Jung and our other student assistants here.

Welcome to GarageBand tutorial!

GarageBand is a macOS and iOS application that allows users to create music. It is a versatile program that suits your creative needs. All you have to do is to learn how to use it!

Let’s open the GarageBand app first. Click on Songwriting and choose.

Choose the setting you want by adjusting the Tempo, Signature, and Key.

The GarageBand window will open. To record using your computer, click on Window and Keyboard or Musical Typing.

You can change the instruments you want to use by choosing one from the list on the right side of the window. For example, let’s change the Piano to Electric Piano.

You are now ready to record! Click on the instrument you want to use, and click on the Red Recording Button at the bottom of the window. Once you record a segment, your screen will look like this.

These are the basics of GarageBand. Play around with various instruments and have fun making your own songs!

Hosting a site using Github

This tutorial was written by Digital Studio Student Assistant, Victor Truong. Learn more about Victor and our other student assistants here.

In this tutorial, we will be learning how to host a website using GitHub Pages. GitHub Pages offers a free option of hosting your own personal website. This website can be used and customized to your liking. I can be used for a blog or even a professional portfolio. Here’s how to get started.

To begin, we must create a GitHub Account at https://github.com/.

Next, we will click on “new repository” and name the repository “username.github.io” where username is your username.

From here, on your computer, using your favorite text editor, we will need to create and index file.

If you do not have a favorite text editor, recommended editors are Atom or Sublime.

https://atom.io/

https://www.sublimetext.com/

The name of the file will be index.html.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body>
<h1>Hello World</h1>
<p>I’m hosted with GitHub Pages.</p>
</body>
</html>

Enter the above text into your index file for a very basic webpage. Next, you will need to commit the index file to your repository. You can do this one of two ways, you can either enter your repository on github.com to upload and commit the files or your can use GitHub desktop.

https://desktop.github.com/

Once the file has been uploaded and committed, you can view your website at the name of your repository.

The default link to your website will be username.github.io where username is your username.

The uploading and committing process may take a couple minutes. Once complete your website should look similar to this:

Congratulations!!! You now have your own personal website.

It make the website more complete and to your exact preferences you will need to take another step to learn the coding languages html, css and javascript.

These three languages will allow you to create the exact webpage you want.

Helpful sources are:

https://www.codecademy.com/

https://www.w3schools.com/

http://www.learn-js.org/

Getting Started with Adobe Premiere Pro

This tutorial was written by Digital Studio Student Assistant, Remi Joseph. Learn more about Remi and our other student assistants here.

Have you ever wondered how your favorite Youtubers produce the creative and stylish content you watch online? More often than not, the answer is Adobe Premiere Pro. Premiere Pro is an incredibly popular and powerful editing software compatible across multiple platforms and filled with tons of features. This non-linear and file-based program fuels flawless content production for creators across the world, both amateur and pro.

While it may look intimidating, it is quite simple to use. In this tutorial, I will be showing you some basics you need to get started with Premiere Pro: creating a project, importing a clip, and creating a title graphic. Let’s begin!

Creating a New Project & Importing a Clip

Editing on Premiere Pro requires you to have some sort of video file. First, let’s go ahead and open Premiere Pro by double-clicking the program. On the Start Screen you want to click “New Project” to create a new project file. Pick a name for your new project and then click OK.

To import media file, you want to go down to the bottom left corner and click on Media Browser panel. From here, you can search your computer disk and files for clips you can import. To select a video you want to import, select the clips you want to work with and choose Import. Once the media is imported, you can begin editing. For the sake of this tutorial, I have used a stock video found on Youtube.

Once I selected the file I wanted, it should appear on this panel right here. This is an example.

All you need to do now is Drag and Drop the video file you have imported into the bottom right panel. This will basically be a time-line of the video. You now have full liberty to shorten the video, cut the video, and edit it in many different ways!

Adding a Title Graphic

Now that we have the video imported, we can start to edit it. Let’s add a title graphic to introduce the video. Start by selecting WINDOW > WORKSPACES > GRAPHICS at the very top of the screen.

This will show the tools seen in this picture on the very left. These are the essentials you will need to create a title. IT IS VERY IMPORTANT that you start creating the title where you want it displayed in the video. So be sure to use the time-line panel to drag the playhead to where in the video you want the text to appear like so.

The next step is to click the “T” for Type. It is the very last tool on the vertical panel. This will open up a red box into which you can type your text.

The cursor tool allows you to move your typed text to anywhere on the screen. Once you have positioned it where you desire, you can edit the color, fill, size, and font of the text.

And that is it! Congratulations! You have created a title graphic for your video. Stay tuned for special effects in Premiere Pro next.