Audacity for podcasting.

I'm not an expert at editing audio by any means. I've played around with audio editing in conjunction with video before, but usually this has been in Premier, or lately, in Cyberdirector.

Over the last few months I've been working on podcasts for a grant. We have been using a Microtrack II for recording and the generated WAV files have been brought in from the CF card to my computer.

I have to confess that I did not have high expectations of Audacity. After all, if it didn't clean out my wallet, how good could it be? Well the answer is: Pretty close to perfect for my needs. I'm not trying to do anything particularly elaborate. Here were my needs:

1. Add a standard intro and outro to each podcast.
2. Fade in and fade out the intro and outro.
3. Match the volume between the podcast and the intro and outro.
   
4. Edit out pauses and portions that were not needed or were mis-spoken.
5. Increase and decrease the volume of some sections within the podcast.
6. In one case I had to eliminate two words in the middle of a sentence.
   
7. Create a background noise track of nature sounds for the podcast and repeat it for the length of the podcast.
8. Reduce background noise in some of the segments.
9. Add quotes from other people in the middle of the original narration.
10. Create an enhanced podcast with video slide show capability.
11. Create a stereo effect from a mono recording.

I'm sure there are other things that I am forgetting, but this is the basic list.

Things I learned while doing this:

• Always export to WAV if you want to use the file over again in another podcast. The file size is much larger than MP3, but the result is higher quality.
• Keep all your files in the same place. Audacity creates temporary files and links to any files you use in your podcast. If you create a directory/folder to keep all your podcast files in, audacity will always be able to find them.
• Save often if you use the beta. This should go without saying, but the beta has some great new features and can unstable. After all, that's why they call it a beta. :-)
• The Noise Removal effect is your friend in small doses. You can fix just about any constant noise in the background using this effect. However, like anything good, it is not helpful in large doses. It is a good way to introduce some real distortion into your audio if you use it on the same section of a track more than once.
  
• Nothing will remove an echo. Try as I might, there is no way to remove an echo from an audio track. Make sure you don't have this in your recording.
• Nothing will remove wind noise. I recorded a huge amount of useless audio at Tomo Kahni and Fort Tejon because of ambient wind noise. Since it isn't constant it is impossible to remove. In my case, 2 hours of audio on a windy hillside boiled down to probably a half dozen minutes of usable audio.
  
• Fade in and Fade out just work. Select the duration on the timeline using the selection tool, click the effect, and you have an excellent transition.
• If you are working with a background sound track, allow it overlap into your intro and outro. If you make the background overlap, it adds a nice effect. In my case, the birds start to be heard before the voice. It is nice effect.
• Generate Silence can be your friend!!! If you have someone speaking in the background during a pause in the narration, you don't have to cut it out and lose the cadence, just select the pause and use generate silence.

That's all I can think of for now. This is an excellent program with a bit of a learning curve, but nothing that most people will have trouble with. More later....