User talk:Valerieinto

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Re: Project Gutenberg spoken
Hi, Valerieinto. I've just reviewed this spoken article, and while I'm loathe to criticise such a finely crafted recording, it has a little technical issue which needs to be corrected: it's been encoded to Ogg Vorbis at a bit-rate of 160 kb/s, and in stereo (two channels). If re-encoded (not re-recorded!) at the recommended settings of 96 kb/s in one channel (mono), as your other excellent recording has been, the audio file would be much more compact. This would make your recording more accessible to those with slower internet connections, and, although it seems counter-intuitive, would not result in any loss of audio quality.

There are a couple of options:
 * If you still have the original un-encoded version, you could mix it down to one channel, encode that at 96 kb/s and re-upload it using the "Upload a new version of this file" link (which only appears when you're logged in) on the recording's image page, [[Image:Project Gutenberg.ogg]]. Your recordings are very high quality, so I'm guessing that you already have the necessary expertise to make the changes. Otherwise, let either one of the recording assistance guys or me know if you need assistance.
 * I could make the necessary changes to the existing version myself. This would incur, in theory, a slight reduction in audio quality. In practice, it'd probably be barely noticeable.

Please let me know what you'd like to do (and I hope this all doesn't sound too terse and un-friendly). :) -- Macropode 11:47, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Hi, Macropode. Sorry, I've been away for a few days. Thank you for your comments. As I'm new to this process and record other non-Wikipedia work in stereo (and .ogg is a new format for me to work with), I missed this difference. I can probably get it down to mono myself, and though I'm not sure about changing the rate, I suspect I probably can. I'll start on it today and let the "recording assistance guys" know if I have much trouble. Watch this space. :-) Glad to hear everything else I've been doing is on the right track (no pun intended).

Thanks very much again. -- Valerieinto 12:43, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I've converted the file down, and I think I know what happened. I encode to .ogg in Audacity, and under the settings I have in preferences, it seems to automatically convert mono files to 96kbps and stereo files to 160kbps. (This isn't made clear in the prefs, but I've been trying for ages to make the bloody thing convert mp3s to 96kbps at 44.1kHz instead of 33.0kHz, so this behaviour is consistent in a twisted way.) I also had no way to read the rates of my .ogg files, but found Cog, and while the playback was scary, it could tell me my new file is 96. I've spot-checked the quality in Audacity after conversion and it sounds fine, so up it went. Please let me know if anything has been adversely effected in the process.

Again, big thanks for your help. -- Valerieinto 13:47, 10 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Heh, you sound just like one of my offspring, who has little patience with software that doesn't work the way she expects it to. :) Kudos for persisting.


 * I should've mentioned earlier that Ogg uses a "Quality" scale from 0 to 10, with 5 equating to a nominal bit-rate of 96 kb/s. So, (as you've already discovered the hard way), set "Ogg Quality" to 5 in the preferences before you "Export as Ogg Vorbis", and Bob's your uncle.


 * The new version is excellent.


 * At the Spoken project, we're slowly but surely building up a pretty good body of work which we hope will be useful to people in all kinds of ways. If there's anything I can do to assist (or frankly, to encourage) you to continue recording Wikipedia articles, please, yell out! Cheers -- Macropode 05:42, 14 August 2007 (UTC)