amplificathon

I've used Box for years, and am happy with it--it's been very stable over the years, and you can stream from it--but I'll soon hit the 10 GB free storage limit. So it's either paying $138 a year to get 100 GB, or supplement it with something else.

Any recs?

atamascolily

Does anyone have any tips to make the editing process a more enjoyable experience? I love podficcing, and I have zero problems rambling into a microphone for an hour, but editing consistently takes 3-4x as long as the recording, and I find it the most tedious part of the process. Is this just How It Is, or is there something I'm missing that would streamline the process? I'm really curious how other people handle this. I would post so many more podfics if I could figure this out, or at least make peace with it.

For the record, I am using Audacity, which is generally pretty intuitive. I have been recording podfics off and on for the past year.I still grind my teeth at getting the transition for music and sound effects right, but I'm mostly talking here about the routine work--clipping out clicks and pops, long gaps, and vocal stumbles--not anything fancy. I've definitely heard a lot of improvement in my work, but I'm in awe of how quickly I've seen other podficcers get their work from idea to finished product, and I know I have a lot more to learn!

kribban

I've become addicted to the use of soundeffects. Especially when I adapt a action-adventure/horror fic, I've found that it can really add to the atmosphere and add to the story-telling.

For instance, in my last podfic I used gunshots before the part where the narration tells who fired - creating suspence for the listener.

I'm using Zapsplat.com which has only no-attribution sounds, which means you don't have to give credit to the person who created the sound effect.

(I've used sounds from freesound.org too, but you have to credit the creator of the sound effect which can be annoying when you use many of them. I do upload my own sound effects to freesound.org though. *g*)

The sound effects I use the most are long, atmospheric sounds. Some are loopable, some are not. Some favorites:

https://www.zapsplat.com/music/deep-haunting-drone-mysterious-with-dynamic-overtones/

https://www.zapsplat.com/music/car-drive-on-slightly-wet-bumpy-dirt-track-internal-perspective-windows-closed-binaural/

https://www.zapsplat.com/music/soundscape-dreamy-yet-sinister-with-an-ominous-confused-tone-2/

https://www.zapsplat.com/music/old-abandoned-wooden-house-strong-howling-wind-creaky-doors-close-up-and-distant-internal-perspective/

https://www.zapsplat.com/music/room-tone-wild-track-living-room-closed-windows-high-traffic-dog-barking-construction-works-ortf/

https://www.zapsplat.com/music/summer-evening-cornfield-insects-mid-west-usa/

https://www.zapsplat.com/music/cafe-ambience-internal-quiet-time-of-day-voices-close-by-hum-of-equipment-in-background-newcastle-upon-tyne-uk/

kitsuneheart

Could anybody give me a copy of their base HTML that you use for posting podfics on AO3? I'm making a guide on how to auto generate the code in spreadsheets, and I want to fiddle around with somebody else's formats.

kitsuneheart

I have made...the perfect spreadsheet for me. One that automatically generates the HTML for my AO3 posts. And maybe you all are already doing it, but I just figured it out for myself! Look here for the spreadsheet copy that doesn't give away my ITPE secrets.

So, as I'm recording more podfics of late, handling all the metadata and posting has gotten...onerous. I keep a spreadsheet of relevant metadata and a fill-in-the-blank HTML file, but it still involved going back and forth between two windows, and took a long time. In addition, I recently changed from DropBox Pro to Google One storage; I had enough space to continue storing podfics on DropBox, but I wanted to have download links for both available, in case one shuts down in the future.

I didn't like the idea of going through each of my podfics (about 70, at the moment, but once ITPE is released...) and doing the copy-paste on each attribute AGAIN. And possibly even more in the future, if things break. There had to be a way to do things smarter, faster, easier.

Enter...a lot of trial-and-error on how many quotation marks I need. A LOT. I took my fill-in-the-blank file, turned un-coded line breaks into ACTUAL HTML line breaks, and replaced the "blanks" with the actual metadata cells. Fiddled...fiddled...and...voila.

It's beautiful. And look, not only the main HTML, but I'm so lazy I made it auto-generate my title, as well! AND! I also made a second sheet, which generates the text for my YouTube posts (I'm posting there, as well, trying to seduce podfic YouTubers onto AO3).

With the auto-generated HTML, I went through and updated the HTML for ALL my podfics in about 15 minutes! Over 70 fics, 15 minutes! :D

I'm just...I'm gonna save SO MUCH TIME with this thing!

kribban

What hosting sites do you use for your podfic?

I used sendspace but they only leave the files up for 30 Days (unless you get a premium account.)

I want to upload MP3s for download.

niko

Hey, all, this is a long shot, but I thought I'd give it a try. I've recently pulled out my microphone for the first time in three years and my recordings are having a problem with an intermittent clicking sound every couple seconds. I thought at first that I must be jostling cables and causing line noise or something, but digging into it more, the sound is actually coming from a split second dropout, not static or other line noise. The place in the waveform where the click occurs doesn't have a spike - it has a gap of silence.

I can't come up with anything I'm physically doing to account for the dropouts... fiddling with the cables or the microphone doesn't trigger it directly, and there's no consistency in terms how loud/soft I'm talking when it happens.

Has anyone ever run into something like this? My microphone's approaching ten years old, so I'm willing to hear that I need to update my equipment if I want to get back into podficcing, but I'd hate to invest in a new one and find out that it doesn't fix the issue, if there's anything else I can try.

honeynougat

So backstory, I've just recently upgraded from an iPhone 4 (ios6?) to a XR. I had been looking forward to finally fitting my whole podfic collection in all its curated, tagged, metadata'd, smart playlisted glory onto one device at the same time... only to be horrified to find out that iOS now puts all files set as 'audiobooks' into the book app and not the music one. No sorting to be found. After freaking out a little, I did figure out one workaround. If I set all my podfic back to 'music' then I can still play them through the music app...but they no longer remember the playback position. I'd also like to still be able to have an actual music collection to shuffle without worrying about podfic popping up at inappropropriate times!

Please tell me someone has a good system they can share! In a perfect world I'd be able to just use my current playlists while still retaining functionality. That said, if anyone has alternative apps, systems, hacks... anything! Please help me out, my google-fu is failing me <3

Current Mood: discontent

desireearmfeldt

Hi all -- I hope this post is not out-of-line for this comm...

Can anyone tell me how to do the thing where you embed a streaming link in your AO3 post such that there's a Play button right in the post? Like this. I assume step 1 is you have to host your audio file somewhere that allows streaming...?

Thanks very much

anatsuno

Heya!

This is probably going to get lost in a sea of challenge podfic announcements (yay!) but I figure I should say it anyway: I posted in my journal the other day to explain how I (and others) made a podcast feed for my podfics. I thought people might be interested.

As you were. :))

cybel

All day--or possibly since sometime yesterday?--every time I access amplificathon here on DW a generic file named "player" automatically downloads to my Mac. Checking it via Get Info indicates it is from Soundcloud.

Is this happening to anyone else? Any suggestions as to how to stop it happening? It's extremely annoying and worrisome!

paraka

Many of us now offer a streaming option for our podfics. And because I had posted a tutorial on how to embed Google's media player, there are a lot of us that used that code to get our streams.

A couple months ago the Google hosting on that player started to become unstable, causing most of our streams to become broken. Thanks to a fix found by

argentumlupine, I was able to upload a copy of the player to my website and offer it to anyone who'd like to use it.

I've also been talking to AO3, and they've done some coding on their end, so now the code will work over there as well.

So, the new streaming code, for anyone interested is:


<embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" flashvars="audioUrl=LINKTOMP3HERE" src="http://podfic.com/player/audio-player.swf" width="400" height="27" allowscriptaccess="never" allownetworking="internal"></embed>

With LINKTOMP3HERE changed to an actual link to the mp3.

Note: you need to have the podfic hosted somewhere that allows for streaming (many of the free upload sites do not allow this), but my offer to host podfics is still open to anyone. :)

inteligrrl

I was using MP3 to Ipod Audiobook Converter, and it worked fine for a while, but now I'm getting m4b files that (while they play fine) say they're 778 hours long. What did I do wrong?

sordid-humors.livejournal.com

Hi folks!

I'm relatively new to podfic and joined the community to get some good recommendations and listen to the works of others to improve my own drivel. I've been really happy and impressed with all I've seen (and heard) so far.

As I've been perusing the archives, I got to thinking. Podficing appears to be overwhelmingly female. Could anyone point me in the direction of fellow guys who podfic? ...If there is such a thing?

Ultimately, I suspect this is coming from a place of anxiety on my part. As a not-exactly-young-anymore fellow with a "femmy" voice, I'm waffling over the way I sound. My female impersonation is good. Really good--we're talking "Kurt Hummel from Glee," full-on Lady Voice, often mistaken for a woman over the phone. I've pretty much been recording with a female-style voice and have only just started to practice narrating in a lower register. I'm not happy with the sound. It might be nice to hear how other guys are coping with the enunciation and cadence issues which come with a deeper, less "crisp" speaking voice. If anyone has links or knows of men who podfic, I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks in advance!

UPDATED:
You can hear my female impersonation and character voices HERE, along with my regular speaking voice, downloadable HERE. I feel like a prat, but whatever. I'll get over it in time.

paraka

Today is the first day of

pod_aware! A full week devoted to spreading awareness about podfic!

Today's theme is Podfic 101/Why We Podfic. To kick things off, there's a podcast on the topic. I've also written a podfic tutorial.

Come check out the comm and see what other treasures have been posted and feel free to join in! (you don't need to have signed up to participate, and you can post anything you'd like to help spread podfic awareness, your work doesn't need to be podfic related).

Podfic: it's an audio recording of a fanfic, like an audiobook, how awesome is that? Fans from all over put their voices out there so you can enjoy fanfic on the go or just in a different way. To find out more about podfic, why we do it and how to get started, check out pod_aware on LJ or DW.

loriel-eris.livejournal.com

I'm looking to buy a new mp3 player and was looking for some advice. I'm looking for some fairly specific, kinda podfic related features and figured that this was a good place to look for some advice.

My last mp3 was a Creative Zen: Vision M, bought it for the watching avi videos on the train commute into work, and the mp3 capability was an added bonus. I would still be working with it, except it doesn't work any more.

So. I'm replacing it. This time, podfic is the primary aim (and playing avi/videos would nice but in no way essential).

How I listen to podfic: I listen to podfics as mp3s rather than podbooks (mb4?). I would really like to keep listening that way, as I do a little bit of editing to the files before I listen and I don't think that's feasible for podbooks?

My Killer Feature: The absolute must for me is bookmarking of some sort. And by bookmarking, I mean that it will let me mark the point in the track at which I stopped listening. Handy for when the track is 3 hrs long! The Creative Zen let me mark a bookmark point and stored them in a list. However, I don't mind 'passive' bookmarking (where the player remembers where I last listened to), so long as it doesn't forget as soon as I listen to another track, or when I switch it off, or when the battery runs flat. If it also remembered the playlist, that would be awesome (I've got a few podfics that are multiple track or one of a series) but not quite as essential.

I've done some asking around, both the internet and people I know, but I keep getting funny looks when I talk about bookmarking mp3s; hopefully you guys will know what I mean! And this is primarily why I'm asking here for recs.

Really Nice to have: good volume (to combat noisy environments, and, spoken word is quiet anyway), reasonably compact and I would love battery life > 20hrs.

Other stuff: I'm not too concerned with capacity, probably in the 8GB - 16GB range, but anything over 1GB or 2 GB would be acceptable. Cost is pretty flexible, I'd prefer something on the cheap end (tho, oh god, I will pay for bookmarking if needed). I'd also like something that's going to be pretty reliable, so if you've have good or bad experiences with a brand, feel free to give me that too. Oh, and I'm a Windows user.

In an ideal world: Any associated software will be entirely optional. I should be able to just drag and drop mp3s from my desktop to the mp3 window, to get the basic 'plays mp3s' functionality. Software that provides added extras / cool features, is fine.

My research so far: I'm currently contemplating SanDisc Sansa Fuze 8GB. There is a newer 'plus' version, but it got absolutely slated in the Amazon reviews.

I would really rather avoid ipod/itouch/ipad/istuff, but if you're willing to talk me through why you think i-whatever would work for me, then I will totally have that discussion with you!

So. Any advice, recommendations, opinions etc on mp3 players would be much appreciated.

cybel

This may also pertain to Audacity users, but then again, maybe not.

In GarageBand, when you are ready to export your podfic and you click on Share >> Send Song to iTunes, if you don't edit the tags for Album Artist and Composer to display as you want them (or later check and change these and possibly other tags as well in iTunes before uploading your podfic to the web), GB will automatically insert your computer's user name. If this also happens to be your RL name, that is what shows up in the podfic's tags. Oops, not good!

I know this from opening downloaded podfics into iTunes, where I keep all my usual podbook tags visible. Since I don't actually use GB myself, perhaps others who do can chime in with what they know on this subject. :-)

lunchee

Hi all!

I'm thinking of making a series of podfic tutorials for garageband users, and I was wondering if there was anything anyone might like to know/learn about specifically? I've gotten some requests for music/sound effects help, but any specific questions will really help me out ♥

EDIT: if there was anything in one of my pods you wanted to learn specifically, please cite it! Here is a list of planned tutes so far.

chemm80

I've done a bunch of podfics, but I'm still having trouble with overly hissy sibilant sounds in my recordings. I've seen a post here about using a microphone screen to tone down plosive sounds, but nothing about this. Any suggestions?

soldierly.livejournal.com

Title: A Chapter Out Of Someone Else's Life Story
Author:

longsufferingly
Reader:

character_bleed
Length: 3:07
Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing: Dean/Lisa, implied Dean/Sam
Rating/Warnings: PG / Spoilers for 6.01

Recorder's note: This is my very very first attempt at recording any sort of fic, so critique is welcomed. Also, what's the best program for recording/editing? I was using Audacity, and every time I messed up I had to re-record the whole thing. Thanks!!

download the mp3 here at megaupload

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
						1
2	3	4	5	6	7	8
9	10	11	12	13	14	15
16	17	18	19	20	21	22
23	24	25	26	27	28	29
30	31

Where do you store your podfics these days?

editing tips?

Soundeffects

Need some html samples for a meta post

I did a podfic thing I'm really proud of today

Hosting sites?

Tech Support

Suggestions needed....Change is hard!

Technical question: embedding streaming on AO3?

how I made a podcast feed for my podfic

Soundcloud app weirdness

Streaming Podfic and AO3

technical help?

A Question for the Community

Pod Aware and a Tutorial!

Advice on a podfic friendly mp3 player

GarageBand User Warning

Input for tutorials!

Softening the sibilants

A Chapter Out Of Someone Else's Life Story

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March 2025

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