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2. Re: Sonograms of long recordings [was nature recordists group]

Subject: 2. Re: Sonograms of long recordings [was nature recordists group]
From: "Peter Shute" pshute2
Date: Thu Jan 26, 2012 5:09 pm ((PST))
Incidentally, the recording in the Youtube samples are a good example of why I 
was asking about compression. The recording is mainly of some small birds about 
5m away, with the occasional screech from some cockatoos about 30m away making 
it impossible to increase the levels any more than I have.

Peter Shute

From:  
 On Behalf Of Peter Shute
Sent: Friday, 27 January 2012 8:23 AM
To: 
Subject: Re: [Nature Recordists] Sonograms of long recordings [was nature 
recordists group]



I installed Acousmographe yesterday, and I think it's a great program. I was 
able to work most of it out because at least the program itself has everything 
labelled in English. I can't work out how to move the cursor to play at any 
position, so I've been having to use the play direction and speed controls to 
get to the spot.

I tried making a short movie and uploading it to Youtube, but unfortunately it 
didn't like the Flash file produced (swf, not flv), and when played, the audio 
is normal but the video runs straight through to the end and sits there till 
the audio finished. I guess I need to convert the swf file to mpg or something 
first. Can anyone recommend any software for that - I Googled for some, but 
they all sound like scams to me.

Then I tried outputting it as a series of stills, and put it together by hand 
with MS Movie Maker. That works fine on Youtube, but I didn't have any way to 
add the moving cursor, so you can't tell which part of the sonogram is playing.

Attempt 1 is at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cThSV-oYlw
Attempt 2 is at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIAjhg7L88g

Both have the wrong aspect ratio for Youtube, so there are black bars down the 
sides, but that's my fault for not checking first, not the program.

There doesn't seem to be a way of producing a movie with a fixed cursor and 
scrolling sonogram, despite the program being able to do that live. Either I'm 
missing something, or they've done that to reduce the size of the movies 
produced, and the time taken to produce them. I've seen samples on the web that 
do it, but it looks like they've used a screen capture program to record the 
program running live, and they're a bit jerky.

I also confirmed with Soundcloud that one can't replace the waveform graphics 
with one's own, so David's method of placing the graphics under the original 
graphics embedded on one's owe site seems to be the easiest way to deal with 
that.

They also confirmed that they have no intention of supporting sonograms, even 
if Freesound do. They said it "could lead to a confusing user experience".

Peter Shute
From: 
<naturerecordists%40yahoogroups.com> 
<naturerecordists%40yahoogroups.com>]
 On Behalf Of Marc Myers
Sent: Wednesday, 25 January 2012 12:32 AM
To: <naturerecordists%40yahoogroups.com>
Subject: Re: [Nature Recordists] Nature recordists group

I know I've mentioned it before, but Acousmographe is free and creates great 
sonograms and waveforms. These can be annotated or illustrated and exported as 
either a series of still images or Flash video (FLV) files. Really a great 
program for nothing. Only limitation is for those of us whose language skills 
are poor. The documentation is chiefly in French, a subject I failed for four 
years plus summer school. Google Translate has been my friend in using this 
powerful application.



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