Comments

Episode-1951- Listener Feedback for 2-13-17 — 27 Comments

  1. Haven’t listened yet… But I have a feeling these two are connected:
    * This weekend at Nine Mile Farm – a bit of GSD reporting
    * How I use Dr. Christopher’s Tissue and Bone Ointment

    Did ole Jack whack his thumb with a hammer?
    🙂

    • Nope but and God this makes me feel old, today it is damp and cold and both my knees ache, well they did, a bit of this stuff and they are now fine.

  2. +1 for a trapping show. I’d love more info on all kinds of traps from snares and box traps to fishing traps.

  3. Regarding Southpaw Ben contributing to the History Segment, I’m delighted. I’d like to coordinate with him somehow so that we don’t put a lot of work into the same subject. I’ll try using the Talk page on the wiki for the given year, but Ben (or anyone with a History comment or question) can contact me at …

    AlexShruggedHistory@gmail.com

    Alex

  4. YouTube offers “YouTubeRed” which will apparently let you let videos play in the background on your phone… like you can with podcasts. The youtube app on my android phone let me know about this when I was listening to some lectures that are only available on youtube recently. I checked on pricing, and to have that, it’s $10 a month. So I will just continue using bluetooth headphones and just keeping my phone in range somewhere on a shelf while I do that. It’s a shitty experience, but sure as hell not paying $10/month to be able to do it nicely.

    • It’s more of a professional audio program, but I’ve been using Reaper for the last few years. While it’s not free, it costs $60 which is nothing for a DAW, it only has a nag screen at startup. It’s full featured with nothing missing. While I do love Audacity, the biggest problem I had with it was it wasn’t able to do effects real time. So if you wanted to tweak eq or add some compression, it had to render after each step. All other audio programs can do it real time.

      If you need to remove background noise, you can use removal tool to do that.

      Audacity
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10FFKl_0GSA

      Reaper
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knDG8qYkR1A

    • The other advantage of youtube red is no ads on youtube, and exclusive content. (I like the show from vsauce called mind field)

  5. In referance to the question about mp3 file output at FM quality I have used a program for years called Format Factory for all my video and audio conversations. It let’s you go into the details about getting exactly what you want. It can be a bit overwhelming but it has a lot of presets and I have included a link below to a tutorial to outputting MP3s to whatever bitrate you want.

    My one caution is that while this is a free program, I’ve had mine installed in years and if it has gone the way of a lot of free software it might try and bundle other stuff on install. I know it is safe and just tell it not to install the other crap and it will listen.

    There is a download link for the program in the tutorial but I have included a link straight to the main page so you don’t have to go hunting for it on the web.
    Download:
    http://www.pcfreetime.com/formatfactory/index.php?language=en

    Tutorial:
    http://tips.betdownload.com/convert-audio-into-mp3-format-with-format-factory-1284n.aspx

    On another note, if the price of Vegas 13 scares you, they also have Vegas movie studio that does everything the average person needs for about $50. I’ll tell you from personal experience it is worth the pennies to get it.

    Rick in WV

  6. Jack, another point about that program Format Factory is that has presets for YouTube upload. it will also convert from video to audio at the desired bitrate. This option might help the guy that had the question about podcast length. He said (if I heard right) that he was thinking about just converting his videos to audio. This would allow him to adjust audio quality and pull that audio out in one step instead of multiple steps.

    Feel free to merge my comments if you want.

    Rick in WV

    • I need to correct myself. I installed the newest version of Format Factory and it seems they have removed the YouTube preset. I apologize for giving out bad info. You can still use it to optimize for Youtube, it’s just not as easy anymore.

  7. RE: Podcast Audio Quality
    In Audacity, go to File->Export Audio…

    When the dialog box opens, there is a button for “Options” in the lower right of the dialog box (at least there is in Windows v2.1.0). If you click on the Options button, you get another dialog that allows you to select bitrate anywhere from 8kbps to 320kbps. You can also set the bitrate mode as Preset, Variable, Average, or Constant.

    Mine defaults to 16kbps and constant. Can’t remember if that’s because that’s the last setting I used or if I set it that way somewhere. Worst case, you just have to make those two clicks each time.

    • The problem with Audacity is that as you lower the bit rate below 64, it does a terrible job at maintaining quality. I prefer to export to wav, and then use LAME to directly encode to mp3. (Audacity uses LAME, but it doesn’t expose a lot of the options.)

      I personally get the best results from
      lame –abr 32 -h -a
      (average bit rate, high quality, mono (the mono switch is optional, because at 32 bits, LAME will automatically downmix to mono if the source isn’t already))

      Jack, Vegas actually got its start as an audio editing program, which is why it’s so robust for editing audio.

      • Awesome, thanks guys! The audio has improved a lot. It was the constant vs variable, average setting. I’m running Linux so it’s just slightly different, graphical interface ways. That really improved the amount of background noise, now I need to to improve everything else. Like Jack always says, nobody is listening anyway.

        Thanks for all the help and feedback folks!

  8. “When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Leave them for the poor and for the foreigner residing among you. I am the Lord your God.” NIV Leviticus 23:22

    “Nor shall you glean your vineyard, nor shall you gather the fallen fruit of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the needy and for the stranger. I am the Lord your God.” Leviticus 19:10

    “When you reap your harvest in your field and have forgotten a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it; it shall be for the alien, for the orphan, and for the widow, in order that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands.” Deuteronomy 24:19

    I find it interesting who’s to be supported. Not only the poor, but the foreigner. Those without support. Being a ‘stranger’ during these times was a much bigger deal than now. In the modern day, even your neighbors of ten years may be ‘strangers’.

    • Thank you Insidious. I am not a Christian or Jew, however that does not mean that I cannot appreciate some of the ideas proposed in the their holy book.

    • One can see the system in action by reading the Book of Ruth. Ruth is both a widow and a Moabitess. She shows up to glean at the field of her deceased husband’s cousin (or something) named Boaz.

      Thus, Ruth is a foreigner, but she showed up to work. Boaz set her aside and had someone else glean for her. His choice. And there are limits on what is available. Although it does not say so, I know that there are men assigned to watch the gatherers to prevent any stealing.

  9. Comment to the department of education
    We landed on the moon in 1969
    Department of education in 1979
    We no longer go to the moon… enough said. Lol

  10. Regarding the protection of national park: Do you actually support the idea of national parks? Does the government at any level have any business controlling land, or should it all be completely owned and controlled by the citizens? That being said, if it were to be completely controlled by “We the People,” it it completely possible for trusts to be set up that would serve to protect that property and even make it available for the general public to use if the owner wishes to see that property protected and used in such a fashion.

    • I find the idea reprehensible that the State controls property and uses stolen money to buy it, maintain it and regulate it!

      However again pragmatism, off all the things the state does things like roads, parks, libraries, etc. pretty far down the list ranked as evil.

      I would love a stateless society but if I could trade what we have for a world were our government only saw to actual defense, set up public lands, protected property and saw to infrastructure I would take that deal in about 5 seconds.

      You know what is worse than the government controlling lands? Removing said control while we still live in a neo fascist state! The powers of government should be removed in a specific order, this type of stuff is WAY at the bottom of the list.

  11. If you’re having a problem with your Audacity files being too large or sounding bad. Use the variable compression rate of 125-155 or something close but also take and turn you voice only parts to mono. You will still have sound from each channel if you use the tied stereo or something like that setting. However you will have half the info for it to compress into that byte rate so it will be a better quality.

  12. Jack, thanks again for the advice you gave for my omrants.com site! It was my first time making it on the show as I normally just listen and take in your content, and have been doing so for years.

    Quick question, what plugin do you use to embed podcasts? It looks like there are a bunch and i was wondering which one you used?

  13. Installed and will be playing with it tonight, as well as getting my feeds setup. Thanks again for the advice and all that you do Jack.

  14. Just a heads up to the man asking about podcast audio. if you are wanting to fallow what jack does and use a video editor for your audio edits, (Sony Vegas 9 in Jacks case) there is a cheaper alternative that Sony offers called “Sony movie studio platinum 13” for 55 dollars (on amazon) and they have a 30 day trial. i just downloaded it (450mb) and it has mp3 32kbs audio output. it’s not one of the main presets though so you will have to customize one that is already there, not a big deal just a drop down menu. just pulled audio from a 1.5 hour video and it was 20mb.

  15. On Audio recording.

    I think the problem you have is with your MP3 codec. Audacity has a terrible MP3 codec which means that mp3 encoding sound bad. This is why jack does better in Vegas. The reason for this is that there are licensing issues around mp3 meaning free software cannot pay the licensing fee for the proper codec.

    I use Audacity for recording and then output it to garageband and then levelator and then back to garageband for music adding and final mp3 output.

    Alternatives could be to try outputting to different format like ogg (but I don’t do that myself).

    Hope that helps

    Paul

  16. Jack , when the user mention Variable he was referring to the encoding method. You sound like you are using 33k CBR aka Constant bit rate. Variable aka Variable bite rate means just that. It varies the bit rate as it does the encoding. It’s good for audio with lots of talking and dead space. It’s easy to encode silence to a really small bit rate since there is not audio. You would wind up with smaller files, that’s the benifit.