Category: Audio

Mechanical Turk for transcribing audio recordings and captioning

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I sometimes record lectures or meetings for later reference, and have found Mechanical Turk to be an efficient and affordable method for transcribing them. It can be quite confusing to get started using MTurk though, and the available blogs on the subject don’t really help you navigate the current MTurk interface, so here is the step-by-step process I use to have a lecture transcribed:

Cut your audio into 5 or 10 minute clips

Download Audacity – a free audio editing tool that works on both Windows and Mac.

Import your voice-recording file. (File > Import >Audio)

If you see a warning about FFMpeg being missing, just ignore it.

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Use inexpensive Korg Controllers to control Logic Pro interfaces

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Logic Pro is a popular digital audio workstation/ Midi sequencer for the Mac. It contains many virtual models of mixers, effects, synths, drum machines and sequencers. Since the typical audio gear requires simultaneous fine-grained control of multiple parameters, the typical adjustment method is with a knob or slider control.

ultrabeat

A standard mouse is not the best way to control such a UI. Many companies sell USB-Midi control surfaces with knobs and faders that allow real-time control of the sound using Logic’s virtual mixers and effects. However these can be very expensive. For those who are on a budget it can be a high price to pay to get started.

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Import long narration files into Presenter

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Adobe Presenter is an add-on to Powerpoint that produces Articulate-like Flash presentations from your Powerpoint slides. At around $500.00 list price it’s out of reach for a lot of content developers, but with an academic discount the price drops considerably, to about $150, and it starts to be a viable option for SME’s to purchase for Rapid Elearning development.

But even with the lower price, it may not be convenient for everyone involved in producing a course to have Presenter installed, so it is useful to know how to import and sync narration created outside Presenter. This way, a narrator can take their own laptop and a USB microphone off into a completely quiet room, which often makes more difference in the quality of the audio than almost anything else.

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Clarke’s law # 3 in action – Shazam, an amazing iPhone app!

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Shazam
Shazam Listening to a tune

I just got my mind blown by “Shazam”, a new FREE application for the iPhone. Shazam uses the iPhones microphone to listen to songs or music happening anywhere in earshot. It will then tell you what song you are listening to.

Just click “Tag it” and point the mic end of the phone in the general direction of the sound. It twirls for a while, then reports back, usually extremely accurately what song you were listening to.

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Shazam sending song info to the web for processing.

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Using the Nord Electro updater and Nord Electro Tool

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The new piano sounds available for the Nord Electro B3 clone keyboard only work with Nord operating system v. 3.0 or greater. So you may find that even if you haven’t updated before, you will want to do so now.

The updater is pretty easy to use: simply download it from Update Nord Electro OS v3.00 (OS X) or

Update Nord Electro OS v3.00 (Windows)

You will need a midi interface, the Nord, and your computer. You may also need drivers for the midi interface, possibly even if you are using a Mac.

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