The structure of news pieces
• Intro (bed) - ‘This is Burst’ (bed)• News piece – spoken audio & vox pops• ‘Burst News’ (bed)• For up to date news stories visit
www.burstradio.org.uk, or follow us on twitter @BurstRadio (bed)
Step 1: Recording
• The better the recording the less editing you have to do!
Step 2: Save copies• Get into the habit of saving, and well labeling
all audio, in case something goes wrong in editing. • I label mine pre-edit (raw audio), edit and
final.
Step 3: Chopping
• Taking only the audio you want to include.
• Zoom in to make sure you don’t cut out the end of words.
Step 4: Changing
• Change audio around to the order you want – what is most effective?
• Use either the move tool or normal cut and paste shortcuts (ctrl/cmd x and v)
Stereo Tracks vs. Audio Tracks
• All final audio needs to be on a stereo track (i.e. there are 2 layers of the sound rather than the 1 you get on a mono track. This means that it will play out of 2 speakers.
• To add a new track go to Tracks in the top menu and add a Stereo track.
Step 5: Compress & Normalisation
• Reduces volume variation – takes away random loud/ quiet parts to improve overall sound of the piece.
Step 6: Add the News Bed
• Make sure the bed is on the top track – or autoduck won’t work (see next slide)
• Move the spoken audio to match up with the bed structure.
Step 7: Auto-Duck
• This lowers the bed where there is spoken audio underneath.
• Experiment with the ‘duck amount’, but we usually go for 19dbs on news.
Step 8: Listen back
• Make sure the auto-ducking has worked, and that the bed isn’t too loud.
• Check you are happy with how the story sounds.
Step 9: Export
• We upload news stories as mp3 so it is important finished news stories are exported.
Step 10: Listen to yourself on the radio!
• If you follow all these tips you should be creating amazing news stories from start to finish.
• Now it’s time for you to have a go!
Tips and Tricks
If you have accidentally zoomed in on a track, press shift to change the zoom in tool to zoom out, and click on the side of the track until it looks normal.
• This lets you move tracks up and down. Helps with autoduck so you don’t have to copy and paste whole tracks.
• If anything goes wrong with audacity (especially on the studio computers – sometimes it doesn’t like to talk to the microphone) just close it and reopen, but make sure you have saved everything first.
• Have two tracks open so you can drag the audio you want out of a big interview/ series of vox pops – it means you don’t have to delete everything else as you go along which can take up a lot of time.