Audio Recording and Editing

Audio Recording and Editing

We see lots of videos on Youtube and the internet in general that talk about a lot of information. Sometimes, in order to make their video more appealing, they add music in the background while they speak. How do they do this? By editing the audio they have recorded.

Adding music to audio is a simple task to do, if you have the right tools. Using programs such as the famous Apple product Garage Band, or programs like trakAxPC (which I used for this assignment), can make this pretty simple. I had a lot of fun recording myself and trying to make a good 2 minute long sound clip, and no matter how many times I recorded myself, I just didn't feel like I did a proper job. There was always something that I tried to fix in order to make it sound "better", but in the end, I just decided that maybe my voice isn't cut out to be on the radio.

That didn't stop me from having fun though. My report was on Star Wars, and the way that I portray the story. I tried giving the information based off of my own knowledge, and feel like I did a decent job at that, but when I heard myself give the speech, it sounded very....scripted. Sure, I did write a script, and did read off of it, but when they were reviewing other people's audio clips in class, they sounded a lot more natural than I did.

Hopefully when I do the second audio recording project, I'll be a bit more confident in myself, and should definitely add more enthusiasm in order not to cause whoever is listening to fall asleep.

Creating A Website

Creating A Website

That's what I've been doing these past two weeks, I apologize for the lack of updates, but it has been a difficult task, and one that has required me to remember things that I learned back in 9th and 10th grade. I have been spoiled with tools such as Joomla, and many other web tools that provide a large portion of the HTML (or CSS) coding. Using Adobe Fireworks and Dreamweaver was pretty difficult, especially since I have not used these tools since CS5 was still brand new. I have huge respect for the people that master these applications, because they require a lot of patience, and also a lot of skill in order to not have anything go wrong with the pages that you develop.

Using Dreamweaver in order to create a website was pretty hard to do. Not only did I have to relearn the proper codes, but I also had to consistently check that none of the HTML code I had written was invalid. Doing this was simple, the hard part was figuring out WHY it didn't work. When everything seemed to be okay, it would be the tiniest mistakes that would hold back all of your work. If you forgot to close an action (ie. adding </b> to stop the words from becoming bold after you didn't need them to be) would cause everything to mess up, in the case of the example, every word I had written had become bold, even though I only needed one word to be bold.

In order to fix a lot of the issues I was facing, I did what almost any other person would have done. I took shortcuts. I didn't cheat - that's not what I meant by taking shortcuts, what I mean is I used a program I was a bit more familiar with. I used Adobe Fireworks.

Using Fireworks to create a working website was a lot more simple for me to do. It didn't involve the dirty task of coding all of my work, all it required was for me to provide a decent layout and also provide the content for my website. By using Fireworks, I was able to complete the task with relative ease. I definitely made the website look better than if I had coded it myself, but one of the setbacks was that a lot of the site isn't interactive. The website was uploaded in HTM format, but before that, it was saved as a PNG. Why does this matter? Because the words I typed into my website cannot be copy/pasted. My links work properly, the videos I embedded work flawlessly also, but at the cost of readers not being able to copy the words I have written on my website. In the end though, this is a minor flaw for the sake of completing the project on time. A lot of the class struggles to meet the deadline, and based on those I have talked with, they really wanted to make more out of the website than what their final product was. 

As for me, I'm happy with the website that I created, It's educational, informational, and best of all, clean and easy to follow. I verified that all of my links work using the school computer, but one thing I am nervous about is weather the links will work once Professor Cameron uploads the file onto his laptop. 

If the website works well, and he's able to publish and finalize the links, I will post it on my Blogger for sure, as well as my Twitter.

Here's hoping for the best, and thanks for reading!

Visualizing Your Resume

   The concept itself is actually really amazing, take a few words, and add pictures that tell the story for you. 

   Similar to our Infographic assignment, this visual resume assignment is meant to put data together, but this time, it's about you.

   Vizualize.me is an awesome website in which one can post information, and have it transformed into a detailed combination of pictures. I created a Linkedin.com profile for my multimedia class, and filled out a few details about my education and my experience working. I was quite surprised at the results when I combined the data from the two.

   Below is my professional resume, "vizualized".

http://vizualize.me/a.capilla?r=a.capilla

Infographs

Informational graphs (infographs) are an amazing way to share information. They not only provide great data, but they do so though an interesting use of pictures and small icons to get you ro appreciate the story just a bit more. 

I have worked on my infograph using a website called www.piktochart.com, that is free and available for anyone to use.

My infograph focuses on a disease called Diabetes, and gives pretty useful information for anyone hoping to find out about it. 

The link for my infograph is located in http://bit.ly/VWcsMT, I hope you enjoy what I've put together, and hopefully come out with a bit more information than you had before.

Xtranormal Movie Finally Finished!

I'm excited to show you guys my creation using the web tool Xtranormal, I spent a couple of days editing the script, and eventually decided to completely rewrite it in order to fit a more conversational tone. Anyways, without further ado, here is my short movie presentation on my take on video game violence.

Video Game Violence

Xtranormal (A Bit More) In Review

  Xtranormal is an awesome tool that allows you to animate any script that you type into it. 

  The control you have for the animations are limited, but you get to change enough things to make it look like a unique production.

  Camera angles, characters, character voices, facial expressions, and a small variety of gestures are what you are allowed to change.

  The backgrounds, however, are very limited, and depending on your choice of characters, you are locked into 5 or 6 specific backgrounds that may or may not relate to the story you are trying to tell.

  Aside from those things, you type in exactly what you want each of your characters to say with a varied amount of voices.

 

  You are limited to only having dialogue between 2 characters, but for our class, and for my small production, it was enough for me to be able to send my message across.

  I am very excited to be able to post my production once it's finished and polished up a bit more, be sure to expect a link to it on my Twitter and here on my Blogger too.

Animated Cartoon

   Today we're learning to how to create an animated cartoon. It's something I've done in the past using pencil art being scanned and spliced together into a computer, but never using an actual program to do both at once.

   Animation is something I've always been interested in. Being a gamer, I love knowing all of the little details that the artist include to their designs. I know art is usually claimed by someone with some form of signature, but that's not always possible, especially when you're trying to make some form of cartoon or weapon/armor design for the company you work for.

   So how do you make yourself known in the world of animation? Style. The way you design something should be carried onto other things you produce, even if it's completely unrelated.

Xtranormal

Awesome website that wil create a bit of  dialogue between 2 characters. Using Microsoft's Text to Speech technology, this website will help you create informational, or even funny videos.

DeviantArt

This website is an amazing place to post your artistic creations. Photos, drawings, and even media productions can be posted on this free website. Many skilled people in different fields all gather work here (both famous and underground artist) and post some amazing things. If you're looking to show off your artistic talents, this is an amazing website to do so.