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How do I balance my audio levels in my online course

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Course contents
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Course info

26 lessons / 4 hours

Overview

My name is Dan & I’m a full time online course instructor. In this training I will show you the best way to successfully launch your very own first course. 

This training is aimed at people who have never created an online course before and  no previous experience is required. 

You might not be doing this full time like me, so I’ve broken process up into easy steps which you can tackle one at a time together with me - step by step. 

You'll learn: 

  • Check the profitability of a course
  • What you should name your course
  • How to create an outline.
  • Options for recording and editing your course. 
  • Places you should sell your courses
  • How to price your course
  • How to successfully launch your course.   

I’ve produced 22 courses. On my journey here I’ve learnt an amazing amount about what to do, and equally what not to do when creating a course. This course will take you through personal steps necessary to develop & launch a successful course.

So if you’re ready to earn extra money, working from home, join me and together let's make your first online course a great success!

Course duration 4 hours
Daniel Scott

Daniel Scott

Founder of Bring Your Own Laptop & Chief Instructor

instructor

I discovered the world of design as an art student when I stumbled upon a lab full of green & blue iMac G3’s. My initial curiosity around using the computer to create ‘art’ developed into a full-blown passion, eventually leading me to become a digital designer and founder of Bring Your Own Laptop.

Sharing and teaching are a huge part of who I am. As a certified Adobe instructor, I've had the honor of winning multiple Adobe teaching awards at their annual MAX conference. I see Bring Your Own Laptop as the supportive community I wished for when I was first starting out and intimidated by design. Through teaching, I hope to bring others along for the ride and empower my students to bring their stories, labors of love, and art into the world.
True to my Kiwi roots, I've lived in many places, and currently, I reside in Ireland with my wife and kids.

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Transcript

Hi there. Uh, this video is all about normalizing  or balancing your audio. What does it mean? It just means we just wanna get a, your,  the loudness of your voice, okay? That you've got in your tutorials  to be a consistent across your whole course  and to be consistent with the world. Um, you've probably stumbled across this.

You're watching a YouTube video  and it's just really quiet compared  to the last video you watched. They're not quite balanced, okay? So, um, that's what we need to do here just  to add some consistency and so that people don't complain. Like, I can't even hear 'em. It's not loud enough, and you're like,  just turn the volume up. But there's a kind of like a, a, a median level that the,  the internet should be at.

Um, and they'll call it either normalizing  or balancing the audio. Okay? So those are the terms that you can use. I'm gonna show you just the, the software  that I am comfortable using with, uh,  using and how to balance it. I don't know every single one,  so I'm just gonna show you the ones that I know. Um, but if you're using some other editing software screen  flow that I haven't mentioned  or say using Windows movie make it,  it's not something I have much of, uh, um, experience in  and I don't have on this, this computer.

Um, just go to YouTube and say how to balance  or normalize audio using and type in your editing product. And I'll show you just the basics of I'll do Premier Pro  'cause I know that, well, Camtasia 'cause I know that well,  and I'll do iMovie. I have no idea really how to use that,  but it's on my machine and I've had a little look for you  and I'll just give you the, the once over quick version. All right, let's jump into the computer  and I'll show you how to balance your audio. Alright, so this is gonna be a quick  demo, especially iMovie. I'll start with this one 'cause it's the free one.

It's on a Mac only  and it's not gonna be comprehensive, mainly  because I don't use iMovie a lot. Um, and this version  of iMovie changes depending on which computer you have. So I'm just gonna give you a quick, kind of a rough so  that you can get an idea of  how you might do it with your project. So I'm gonna create a new movie. I'm gonna add some content, which one? I'll add one of the videos  that I've recorded for this course.

I'm just gonna drag it into the timeline  and all the versions are up the top here. I know, but what you're looking for is, see,  there's like little bar down the bottom here, okay? This little blue one. In my case,  I've seen it being green in older versions. And you want, you want basically the little peaks, um, to be  not too far over that line. Okay?

So if it's down here, which is,  I'm gonna grab the line that runs through the middle. Can you see, you can lower it and higher it. So that's way too loud. If it crosses the top there,  it's gonna be, uh, they're gonna kind  of what's called clipping. It's gonna clip some of the sound out. So  You editing with Camtasia, okay?

It's  Just way too loud. Um, so you want it to be where? About there. So you don't want too many of the little peaks  to peak over the line, okay? You want it to be close to the top,  but nothing touching the top. And that's kind of, it's very visual in iMovie.

It's not very scientific. There are fancier ways of doing an iMovie  and I just dunno how to do them. But that's the basics, right? You're looking for this waveform here  to be not too close to the top. Let's jump into Camtasia for Mac that I know a lot more. So I've brought in something  that I've recorded for this course here.

They're more likely to use words. Okay? So, um, how do I know this one's okay,  it's the same sort of principle. They don't have a really scientific way  of doing sound here in Camtasia either you're using this  full width here of this bar to be, that's too high, okay? And down here is too low. So what you can do is click on it, okay?

And you'll hopefully get the same sort of line like iMovie  and which is, if I can ya it up high, okay? That's way too high. And down here is too low. So if you've recorded it and it's nice,  it's really low down here. You've just gotta pull it until where? Till, see these peaks here, none  of these peaks should appear over the top there.

Okay? So you're just looking for something like this. Now that's for one clip. If you end up getting to a point where you, you need  to trim it and you've got you, you know,  you've edited all up and there's lots  of different ones you might have to go through  and just kind of edit that one, okay? Go through. You've got this piece here.

You wanna be this a bit quieter. So you'll end up having to manually go through  and raise them and lower them. There might be a chance where actually say  it's really low, okay? And it starts off really low. There's only a certain amount  of drag you can do. You could do a point where it just  won't let you get any higher.

Say you do need to get higher, you can go to view, um,  and go to show properties, okay? And click on this audio, uh, icon here. And with this selected, you can actually just drag it. You watch this, can you see it's adjusting over here,  but you get more, um, more scope to go up and down. Okay? You don't have to just use that line.

So Camtasia is very visual in terms of its editing. Let's look at the slightly more professional tool. Premier pro. So I've brought in a track here,  I'm gonna add it to my sequence. Okay? And same sort of thing here, except I get  to make this a lot bigger.

So can you see, uh, I'll drag it back over. Where are you, you up? Um, over here. See this little line? So this is your video, this is your audio. I can make the audio a lot bigger  so it makes it a little easier to see.

Now mine is looking pretty good. I same sort of, um, rules here. The top of it is way too high, okay? And the bottom of it's way too low. So somewhere kind of in this, uh, top two thirds is,  is perfect, but  what you can do in here is a little bit more scientific. Let's say that I've got this one,  but I'm gonna bring in a different track.

Let's bring in this one. Okay? So I'm gonna drag it onto my timeline. So I got two of them. And let's say they're pretty close in terms of their  uh, um, sound. But let's say this one is just a lot lower  than this first one here.

There's a couple of things you can do. You can drag the center line just like the other programs  to make it louder or quieter. It doesn't go up and down though. Can you see these, uh, little peaks and valleys don't go up  and down like the other two programs. It does raise it. Okay?

And what you're looking for is this thing. This is called your audio meters, okay? And it just shows you actually with a bit  of more science, okay? The actual disbel level of the audio  and what you're looking for for any kind  of spoken word tutorial. You're looking for the, um, disavows to  between this minus six and minus 12. Don't ask why it's a minus, but I'm gonna preview pretty  much all the editing software you can see allow you to do  that kind of real basic stuff.

Me, some of will let you animate it as well  and you can see it's, and if you wanna go a bit beyond that,  I'd say it's pretty good, right? It's bouncing in between here and here and it's perfect. You are not gonna be that, uh,  yours is probably gonna be a lot lower probably, um,  or maybe just a bit too high. I'm pretty practiced at recording it at a really good level. But, um, let's say we want to,  let's say I wanna raise it, lower it down. I just drag this line now.

Headspace bar a little more like what I've got. You see he is bouncing around down here between 18 and 30. And if you're gonna do it so it's too low, so you wanna kind  of raise it up until you get to a point where self,  like I do, it's bouncing in here. Um, that will just mean it's, yeah, it's gonna sound  equivalent to everything else on the internet. So you can do it manually by dragging these things here,  you can get a little bit more fancy, okay? And select, say you've got lots of different,  you've recorded from different cameras.

So there's uh, very different audio  levels you can grab them. Okay? And I'm gonna turn the levels back  to here or the adjustments here. Okay? I'm gonna select both of these  and there's a cool thing and the new version of Premier Pro. If we go to window and go to, you're looking  for essential sound.

It's got a handy trick in here. So I've selected both of these. Okay? Or let's say you've got, I don't know, 30 clips  that you've edited out or a hundred. Just select them all by dragging across them all go into  essential sound and you're looking for this dialogue box. Click on that, click on audio match  and keep an eye on these watch.

Can you see? They're all adjusted. So it's trying to do an average, okay? It's trying to average to a kind  of a international standard. And you'll notice that it should bounce now between,  you need some reasonable, the um, minus six  and minus 12 if you can't see the numbers  here, okay, watch this. I can just grab the little line in between them.

It's a bit annoying when that disappears. Just 'cause it's too small, it gets rid of them. Cool. So hopefully bouncing in between Okay. Minus six base minus minus 12 disbel. Again, I try not to,  I guess this wasn't like a full hardcore tutorial, it was,  I didn't want to just leave you with, um, no understanding  of how you might do it in your software program.

So remember the term is normalizing or balancing audio  and just type in that into YouTube, how  to balance audio using iMovie or Windows movie maker. And hopefully you'll be able to work out how to kind  of get your audio in some sort of reasonable order. Alright? So that's gonna be it for getting your audio ready. Let's get into the next tutorial.
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