Eyes to See, Ears to Hear

Archive for the ‘Audio/Video’ Category

The lil boy is 7 weeks old today and a lot of his mama’s characteristics are coming through.  We thought she used to eat erratically because her food was threatened as a very young puppy before we got her but seeing him as a young one eating like she did when he’s had no challenge at all… well… it must be in the blood!

(the video is poor quality to the point of really not being able to see just how fast he is eating.  But, listen to the audio and you’ll be able to tell he’s a little vacuum.

Yesterday, I mentioned the desire of the Kinga folks to have a new woman do the part of Ruth in it’s entirety.  They said the first woman sounded as though she was reading (she was) and that needed to be changed.  Below are samples of the same text of the first Ruth, then the new one.  Do you think it was a wise change?

Beginning January 3, 2010, our language project will broadcast a weekly pre-recorded mother tongue radio program.  The Christian station with whom we have a contract has a fairly new tower which reaches up to 100km radius.  That means these radio programs can be heard in at least part of every one of the 10 languages we are translating here.

Basically, our goal is to get God’s Word out there… literally.  So, the focus of every program will be for people to hear Scripture in their heart language, their mother tongue. Wrapped around those audio segments will be announcements, songs, advertisements, intro and outro.

We’ll record six programs at a time so we won’t be in the studio every single week.  I call these our cycles.  Our first cycle will be the dates of Jan 3, 10, 17, 24, 31 and Feb 7.  During that span, we’ll play the Gospel of Mark in the Vwanji language.  I’m excited that for our very first broadcast will give the Vwanji people to hear the actual words of Jesus in their own language.

For your perusal, I’m posting what will be our very first 30-minute program scheduled to be aired on January 3 @ 6:30pm local time, 10:30am Eastern.  Some of you may be in Sunday school or worship service so that would be a perfect opportunity to pray for this great new venture.

That’s the cue sheet above so you can have an idea of what your hearing.

If you’ve been following my recent tweets, you’d know that I finished my first editing phase on Mark in the Vwanji language.  What does that mean exactly?  Glad you asked.  Glad to answer.

As I’ve recorded more and more books here in the local languages, I’ve searched for my personal, best-fit method to go from beginning to end.  In terms of just the technical part of the recording projects, they have grown to look like this:

(1) Record all of the words speaker-by-speaker. For instance, the translator who spoke the MANY words of the narrator in the gospel of Mark spent nearly two straight days in my studio recording his words and only his words. All of the other characters’ words, like Jesus, Bartimeaus, Peter, etc., are skipped over. Once the narrator is finished, I move on to the next person to record and continue this process until all the words for the book are recorded.
(2) Edit phase I this is probably the most time consuming step. I’ve taken some screenshots of the audio clip for Mark 4:36-38a to help you see what this looks like.

This first shot is what my audio looks like at the beginning. From there, I normalize the entire clip. Normalization is the process of increasing (or decreasing) the amplitude of an entire audio signal so that the resulting peak amplitude matches a desired target. That’s Wikipedia. The next shot is the result.

See how the whole thing is bigger? That just means I increased the overall volume (amplitude) to get it in my desired range. From here, I now clean up the silent areas in between sounds. Most of the time, those are just breath sounds where the speaker is reloading for the next word(s).

Look closely. In between the sound waves, the silent areas are now completely flat. No more breath (or other) sounds. Each of those sections are done manually, one-by-one. Time to cut off that little tail on the end.

Easy edit. At this point, I add this audio clip into my overall timeline, the place I compile all of the clips into the final product. Sometimes, after I’ve done this and added sound effects to the timeline, there may be some of a clip that is still a little low in volume. So, I go into that particular clip, highlight the low section and normalize it to a higher level.

Take a look at the area between about 00:06 and 00:17. That’s the area I raised to a higher level.

That is an explanation of one clip’s edit.  Mark has almost 720 clips.  You understand why this is the most time consuming part of my editing.

(3) Edit phase II is where I take all of these clips and place them on a timeline, adjust the timing in between each one and add sound effects.
(4) Translator testing is next. I sit down with the language translators and listen to the entire book, allowing them to point out any obviously needed corrections. I usually do this on the spot so we can arrive at a final draft.
(5) Community testing is the [hopefully] last step in the technical audio part. This takes place in a village in that respective language area. A group of pastors are usually selected to listen to the entire book. Upon their approval, the audio is ready for duplication and distribution.

If you’d like to hear the before and after of the above audio clip, here you go:


For the book of Mark in Vwanji, I just finished Edit phase I.  Today, even with my stomach issues, thank You Jesus, I was able to finish the intro and chapters 2, 3 and 4.  The rest of the steps have to be completed before Saturday, October 24.  Actually earlier because I still have to design the labels and covers, then print them.  And duplicate the cassettes.  Still quite a bit left.  No prayers will be unwanted!

This is the audio I spoke of yesterday:

Nyakyusa sentence

Good news is that after listening to it, our Partnership Coordinator, a Nyakyusa pastor, said the edit was sufficient and that we don’t need to have the original Ruth come in after all.  That’s awesome.  Now, it’s time to plan a time for community testing to see if the recording is acceptable.  Closer and closer…

On the way back from conference, we pass through a horrendous stretch of unpaved road between the Kenya border and Tanga, Tanzania.  To give you a glimpse of why this is the most dreaded part of the conference travel every year, I asked Dana to video a short piece so that we may show you.

One morning at breakfast, this African Pied Wagtail put his charm on…

Their songs are one of my favorite of all the birds I’ve ever heard.

This is a litle piece of video I shot while waiting for our turn to pass through some road construction in Iringa.

This is the place we stayed at on our first stop on the way to conference.  We liked it a lot with the exception of the short bed.  It was really difficult trying to sleep diagonally.  FYI, I’m 6’3″.  The room was Tsh. 50,000.

Daddy & Asher looking at trees and birds