Notes (First Podfic)

Posted: 27 Feb 2021.

Some thoughts about how I’m cobbling together a recording and editing process after my first podfic.
 

Set up: Two laptops. Record and edit on Audacity.

I had to use Audacity years ago for a class project, so I’m using that program now. I’m not sure how I messed up my mic permissions on my laptop with Windows 10, but I currently am not recording on that because Audacity can’t access my mic. I’m using that one to have the fic open in a window, and so far I haven’t gotten any neighboring laptop or mouse click noises. I’m recording on a retired laptop that got Linux Lite after Windows 7 stopped being supported. It was bought in 2012, so the cutoff time for recording is “before the fan kicks into its noisy gear” more or less.

Recording

I got the worst recording issues out of the way with an unposted attempt at a different fic - I didn’t check playback volume before recording, so it was super quiet. For this one, I did a re-record because the heating kicked in, but I did remember to turn the fans off. All in all, not half bad.

Changes for the future: I’m not sure how prevalent listing the fandom after the title is in other podfic, but I’ve seen it in some rules for podfic events. I either need to make note of it, or I need to practice including that, so I don’t skip a step I’m not used to. I’m not really sure about ending with “The End”. It didn’t seem like a terrible choice for such a short fic, but I also tripped myself up by almost saying “End of Work”.

Editing

Again, the worst issues happened with the unposted first attempt - Noise Reduction didn’t get the one fan, I accidentally edited out my own voice while trying to do Normalization, and I pretty much had to refamiliarize myself with Audacity. For this one, I got some basic editing done, and I exported as wav files:

• ‘Title (Raw)’: No edits. Just in case I messed up the first round of editing and needed to import the recording again.
• ‘Title (Basic Edits)’: Noise Reduction and Normalization.
• ‘Title (Cuts)’: Cut out silence at the beginning and end. I struggled with de-essing and just skipped including the wonky attempt.
• ‘Title’ (Change Pitch [Amount Changed]): Final step in editing.

I exported ‘Title.mp3′ for Google Drive (64 kpbs), and I exported ‘Title.wav’ for upload to Archive.org.

Changes for the future: I should probably try de-essing again. Final exported files should probably include a byline in the name (for another level of attribution and in case any titles start sounding too close or overlapping).

I may want to look over some other editing tips depending on what’s necessary for the next fic I try. For example, I didn’t have incredibly long sentences where I had to breathe in weird places in this one, so I didn’t try to silence breathing or edit timing.

 

(no subject)

I went ahead and decided to backdate the posts I put into my tumblr sideblog's podfic resources tag, and I must admit that this one may not be entirely useful for cross-posting to Dreamwidth. However, it's a commonly recommended source for those new to editing podfic with Audacity.

~the-dragongirl's How To Podfic: A Highly Biased and Incomplete Tutorial. It dates to January of 2016.