Category Archives: troubleshooting

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Audio Post-Production: Getting Rid of those Hums

  March 22, 2015 , ,

Hi everyone, Don’t tell me it’s already Spring Break? Mamma mia, time does pass by quickly. Anyway, I want to share with you some stuff that I’m currently working on. This is mostly going to be interesting for those of you who have an interest in audio post-production especially as it relates to dealing with the kinds of issues that pop up when you produce videos. So, as you know one of my projects is about recording a couple of videos that not only promote hybrid teaching (some also call it blended learning) but videos that offer advice for faculty and students who want to try out hybrid forms of learning. While the video has already been cut, there are still a couple of problems as far as the audio is concerned. For one, our interview videos will have music running in the background, so we need to make sure that the music doesn’t overpower the speakers. So, some level adjustment is in order. Besides that, we will have to deal with some unwanted noise issues that were part of the recording process. So, what I am going to do now is run you through the way I deal with these kinds of things. That is not to say that it is the only solution. It’s simply my way of working. The steps I will be running through quickly are: cleaning, level adjustments, filtering out hum, compressing, and limiting. All of those steps I applied to the vocal performances. On … Continue reading

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The Tableau Experience

  November 20, 2014 , , ,

Today I attended “The Tableau Experience.” I’ve been struggling with what to call it: a conference, a convention… It had only one speaker, and a Q&A – and a wet-bar.  So… I’m settling with ‘experience’ as they do. What it really was though, was an advertisement. Don’t get me wrong – I like using Tableau to recreate charts for the Tobacco Ebook I’m working on, and this ‘experience’ was worth it for several reasons: 1. The speaker demoed several ways to share data that I haven’t seen in action since I’ve only been using it to create charts for data sets that are already created for me.   2. There were a lot of people there from many different kinds of institutions.  I met others from universities like me – Georgia Tech, Gwinnett College, and so on. But I spent most of the time schmoozing with a lady from Home Depot, and then talked briefly to a man from a company called Norfolk. Everyone was using Tableau for something different – I’m pretty sure I was the only one making an Ebook. 3. I was able to ask about that pesky issue Ryan Cagle and I have been having in trying to get the distance between pane tick marks and labels to be exactly the same in all our charts so they’re uniform within the Ebook. Sorry, Ryan – there is no way to do this. The guy I asked said your idea was the smartest. Overall, I’m glad I went to … Continue reading

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Art Vandenberg and the World Community Grid

  November 17, 2014 ,

Today I went to the talk given in CURVE by Art Vandenberg. When I decided to attend, I didn’t know what the World Community Grid was, and now I know – and I think you should know too. First, Art started off telling us a bit about himself. Here he is on the right: Art was funny, and personable, and the perfect person to be telling us about World Community Grid. What IS the World Community Grid, you ask? It’s pretty much the most complex, yet most simple thing you can do to help save the world. Essentially, if you join the world community grid (make sure you join the GSU team!), whenever you’re not using your computer, and it’s on (this also works on android phones, but they have to be plugged in), the world community grid can use your computing power to increase their ability to solve data problems like producing clean water, or mapping cancer markers. It’s really that simple. And what’s cooler, is that all of our library computers (CURVE too) are already running world community. When the library is closed, there is a lot of world saving going on in there. I left the link up there at the top of this entry – check it out. And if you have additional questions, go ahead an leave them below in the comments and I’ll see what I can do to find you an answer. –Valerie

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Tableau Training

  November 3, 2014 ,

Since the beginning of SIF, I’ve been on the Tobacco Ebook project. I have learned iBooks Author layout and design techniques, which has completely reoriented my thinking about how design works, and increased my attention to detail by… a lot. This week, I got moved from layout and table building within iBooks Author to recreating charts in a program called Tableau. Tableau can create really clean-looking, beautiful line graphs, bar graphs, and many other types of graphs and charts, like pie charts :). But it’s not easy. First, the data in the spreadsheets the book writers provided us with must be formatted in a way that Tableau ‘likes,’ which is a feat all on its own. If the data isn’t formatted properly, nothing works. Then, the chart has so many formatting options, its enough to make any beginner’s head spin. Here are two screen shots of graphs I’ve been working with that I can’t seem to get to combine – one line graph and one bar graph: The good news is that once I figure out how to make the graphs function the way I like, they are actually pretty easy to make and turn out well. Thankfully, Will knows how to do most of it and is helping me figure out the trickier aspects. Phew! Valerie