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I attended, working on one of the camera units.  Had a great time, learnt lots, at all sorts of levels.  Even how to make good use of the Movie Slate application on my iPhone!  Link: http://www.fstopacademy.com/

I have never used Garage Band before, so had a play with it to see whether it could be useful as an audio editing/processing tool.  The answer is a resounding “yes” - despite its “domestic” looking interface.   Not only that, it can edit videos, leaving the video stream alone and affecting only the audio stream.  Just drag a file into it - I tried with a M4A audio file out of iPhone’s Voice Memo.  Some features I discovered were:

• Basic cutting
• Envelope shaping (on keyframes)
• Effects such as:
  • Dynamic range compression
  • Reverb etc.
  • An “Autotune” pitch-stabiliser

“Whatever gets the job done”…

A poignant song from the past:

• I wondered for years about a song I recollected (not completely accurately) I thought was maybe from the offshore pirate radio “graveyard shift” shows of the early 1970’s. In that song, as I remembered it, a plaintive little girl sang something like “The sky is green and the grass is gold” (or something broadly along those lines). It was about how she saw the world (through individuality, not hallucinogens!). Hauntingly-tragically, by the end of the song, her teachers had finally brainwashed her to sing the “correct” colours, which she obediently did, but now devoid of spirit.
• Thanks to a reply at the Radio Caroline Q/A Forum, I now know it was: Flowers Are Red by Harry Chapin from his album: Living Room Suite, 1978 (that’ll be the Radio Caroline on “319m” period then).
• Lyrics are at http://www.lyricsdepot.com/harry-chapin/flowers-are-red.html. Searching around YouTube I found it, though I much prefer his older, simpler version  to his more recent and adorned arrangements, let alone someone else’s acapella version I came across.  And it was about a little boy being criticised for his choice of flower-drawing colours.  Apart from that I got it right.
• Now I’m going to adapt it to perform with my girlfriend (she sings, I pluck  guitar).

Installed SmartSound Sonicfire (”The Music Score for Your Vision”). Wanted to install version 5.5.2, from Avid MC 5.0 install disk (it is unchanged in MC 5.5), but the installation hung (problem with disk or at least incompatible with my MBP’s reader?).  No download was available for this product on my Avid Download account, while on the SmartSound website, only the latest version (update), namely 5.7.0 (on Windows, else 5.7.1 for Mac) could be downloaded.  However that downloaded and installed fine.  The Sonicfire app also pulled in some additions to its sound library, initially from the web and subsequently from SmartSound’s Core Sessions disk (which was fully readable); spontaneously once I inserted it.

(more…)

• http://www.shockwave-sound.com/

http://www.sefan.org.uk/Regular_Listings.html

 On the Nokia N95 8GB, where is audio recorder and where does it store?

• [Applications > Media > Voice Recorder]

Settings:

• Recording Quality = “High”, Memory in use = “Mass memory” (as opposed to “Phone memory”)

Save-Location:

• [\\Memory card\Sounds\Digital]
• (as opposed e.g. to [\\Memory card\Sounds\Sound clips])

Just wondered what was happening video-wise in the linux world, for example how was Cinelerra going.  Last I looked (months or a year ago) it was possible to get Cinelerra working under Ubuntu.  So when I came across UbuntuStudio, I thought it was worth checking out, just to keep abreast of developments.

However it appears not to include Cinelerra, instead OpenMovieEditor http://www.openmovieeditor.org/

From [https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuStudio/PackageList]: 

Description:

• openmovieeditor - Video editor
• ffmpeg - Multimedia player, server and encoder
• ffmpeg2theora - Theora video encoder using ffmpeg
• kino - A non-linear editor for Digital Video data
• stopmotion - A program for creating stop motion animation.
• dvgrab - Grab digital video data via IEEE1394 links

It is only available as an Installer, not LiveCD [http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=703822] . For more info:

• https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuStudio

http://www.soundtrack.net/albums/database/?id=3603