Audio Editing Sucks @$$!
Only one day left until our first episode should be released! And I actually don't know if we'll make the deadline...
Where has the time gone? Well, I know part of the answer: audio editing. Holy crap has it taken a long time to edit. I've put well over 100 hours into this episode.
We recorded three different versions, so those had to be spliced together to make one coherent episode. But we also suffered because of not-so-great recordings, quality wise, and trying to clean them up has been a total b&%*#! I spent hours and hours working to try to clean them up, and reading untold numbers of websites on this subject. Then I finally mastered the audio to something I thought was acceptable (listening on my headphones), and played it back in the car for a check on a different sound system. It was total crap! It sounded like we were underwater. F&%#!
So, many more hours of effort later, I thought I had mastered the audio better for clarity (again, listening on my headphones), and proceeded to play it back in the car again. The "ess" sounds were so sharp they hurt my ears. S#@%!
Umpteen hours of work later, having played with the EQ and some other settings, I mastered three different versions to play back in the car and see which sounded the best. And wouldn't you know? They all sucked. Triple f&%#!
At this point, with only several days left before our release date, I was certain that we would have to re-record. Gabrielle was not too keen on this idea, though, as she had a 10 page research paper due, and we had the kids all weekend (need quiet to record). Now I started to feel the sense impending doom. I had no idea what to do...
But yesterday, after many more hours of researching and reading, I tried going back to the original raw sound files (with no editing), split the channels to mono, and tried a different method for noise reduction and mixing on only the best channel. Played it back in the car, and it sounded pretty okay there! I mean, not great, but marginally acceptable. Hallelujah!
The problem is that to use these newly mixed audio files, I will have to redo all my splicing and editing of the three different files to make it a coherent episode again. That took days to do last time. I have about 24 hours now...
So I better get off this damn blog page and go edit some audio! Really hope I can pull it off!
