LSCI 110:
DIGITAL ORAL RESEARCH PROJECT
Using Audacity to Edit Your
Interview
For
those working at home only:
Download and install the Audacity program & the LAME MP3 encoder library:
Go to: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
Click on: Windows
(under “Download
Audacity..”).
Click on: audacity-win.exe
(Installer program, 2.7 MB).
Save the file on your computer (be sure you know where you
are saving the file).
Click on: LAME MP3 Encoder Library
Click on any download link for: lame-3.96.1
Save the file on your computer (be sure you know where you
are saving the file).
Double click on the: audacity-win.exe
file icon and the
program will be installed.
Right click on the lame-3.96.1.zip file icon and
select “Extract to:…”
Select where you want to save
the extracted files and click Extract (be sure you know where you are saving
the file).
For
those working at home or at school:
Edit
your audio file to create audio segments:
Put the CD with the audio
file in the CD drive
Start the Audacity program.
Click “Open” under the “File”
pull-down menu (or Ctrl-O).
Select the interview file from the
CD drive (it will take a few minutes to load your file).
When it’s loaded, you will see a
waveform display of the audio for the entire interview.
You can click on the green triangle
button to “play” the audio from the beginning and the yellow square is the
“stop” button.
You can select a section (to play or
to cut or copy) by clicking and dragging from the beginning to the end of a
section. (The audio must be stopped to
do this.)
You can get a closer, more precise
view of specific sections of the audio by using the zoom button (magnifying
glass icon);
click back on the selection tool
button (just above the zoom button) to select audio segments
You can adjust the beginning and
ending points of a segment by pointing the cursor at the beginning or end of a
segment
and then use the pointing finger to
shorten or lengthen your segment.
Select the best segments from your
interview and create separate .mp3 files for each segment:
Select (highlight) the audio for a segment you want to
use.
Try to keep segments under about 3
minutes in length and less than about 15-20 minutes total for all
segments.
Under the File menu, click “Export Selection As MP3…”
Enter a file name, with no
spaces and .mp3 as the extension (at the end of the file name), to save the
file.
For those working at school, save the files in your folder
on the class zip disk* for your name.
(*If you have a USB flash drive, you can use that instead.)
If a dialog box is displayed that says: “Audacity
does not export MP3 files directly…. Would you like to locate lame_enc.dll
now?”,
click YES.
Then find the file: lame_enc.dll (if
you are using a zip disk at school, it is in the main folder on the zip disk) and
double-click on the file name.
(Once you tell the program where the lame_enc.dll file is,
you will not be asked again.)
A dialog box to “Edit the ID3 tags”
for the file may be displayed.
In the Title
box, enter a descriptive title for the segment
In the Artist
box, enter the name of the narrator/interviewee
In the Genre
pull-down menu, select “Speech” or “Other”
Click OK
Repeat the above steps for each
segment you want to include in your project.
When you
finish exporting segments, click the X in the upper right corner to Exit
Audacity.
You will be asked if you want to: “Save changes before closing?” Click: NO
last revised: 11-30-05 by Eric Brenner, Skyline College,
San Bruno, CA
These materials may be
used for educational purposes if you inform and credit the author and cite the
source as: LSCI 110: DIGITAL ORAL RESEARCH PROJECT. All commercial
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