Making Recordings
Now, what were the settings I used last time? Doing certain things relatively infrequently brings this on with me. I note here the recording process and settings I use when making recordings for this site.
My screen readers are currently:
- Jaws 6.1 from Freedom Scientific
- Home Page Reader 3.04 from IBM
- Window Eyes from GW Micro
My audio recording program is GoldWave 4.26.
Setup and recording steps are these:
- Set GoldWave to record from “Wave Out Mix.” This eliminates the need for a patch cord. Options > Controls > Volume. Check “Select” for Wave Out Mix.
- Set the system volume controls. Mute everything except WAV. Set WAV volume to 5.0 on the slider.
- Start GoldWave and open a new recording file with these settings: mono, 22050 hz sampling rate, 10 minutes recording time.
- Start a screen reader.
- Hit RECORD in GoldWave.
- Open the test case web page in IE.
- Wait patiently.
- Stop recording when the VU meters go quiet.
Editing steps are these:
- Find a fraction of a second of “quiet” space in the recording and copy it to the clipboard. This represents intrinsic background noise from the PC.
- Use Filter > Noise reduction… > Reduction envelope=clipboard to clean up the background noise.
- Trim off the unwanted material at the start of the recording and the dead space at the end.
- Enter File > Information… for recording name, author, copyright statement. Typical values are:
- tc4-1-3-321 CSS Ordered Columns 3-2-1 - Window Eyes 5.0
- Bob Easton
- 2005 - Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
- Save to the recordings directory as mp3 at 16000hz, mono, 32kps. This reduces a typical 7 minute recording from about 14 mb to about 1.5 mb with little sound quality sacrifice.