Post-Production – Sound Bites (Chromebook Mini-Documentary)

If you did a good job recording interviews, what people said will provide the majority of content in your mini-documentary. Similar to using quotes in a research paper, you will use Sound Bites (excerpts from your interviews) to tell the story. Once you have recorded an interview for your story you may begin creating sound bites from it.

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Organize Recordings

On your Chromebook, click on the File icon and navigate to your Google Drive Project Folder.

If you have not already created a Recordings folder, do so now.

Move all of your recordings into your recordings folder.

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Open the Audio Editor

Open the Chrome browser and navigate to the twistedwave.com/online website. This audio editor is similar to Audacity, the program you used earlier this year.

Return to your recordings folder and select one of your interviews. Drag the recording file onto the TwistedWave Online Drop a File button.

With your sound file open, click the square in the top right corner to make the window fill the screen.

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Select a Sound Bite

With your file open, press your keyboard’s spacebar to start playing the file. When you get to the end of the first question you asked, press the spacebar to stop the playback. You want the timeline marker to be stopped just before the first question is answered. There should be a low point in the waveform between your question and the answer.

If it is hard to see, click the Zoom In icon.

Click on the waveform low point and press the i key on your keyboard or use the Select menu to choose the Set Selection Start option.

Directly above where you clicked on the waveform you should see a marker indicating the selection start. The area above the large waveform shows which part of your sound file is visible in the main timeline. It is highlighted with a salmon color.

Press the spacebar to start playing the answer to your first question. When you get to the end of the answer, press the spacebar to stop the playback. If you are not in the waveform low point at the end of the answer, click on the waveform low point.

With the timeline stopped at the end of the answer, press the O key on your keyboard or use the Select menu to choose the Set Selection End option.

The answer to the question should now be highlighted.

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Save the Sound Bite

With your sound bite selected, open the File menu click on the Download option.

In the Audio Export window make sure there is a checkmark next to Export selected audio and for File format choose the MP3 Audio option.

For the Title use the following naming format: #-NAME replacing # with the number of the question you asked and replacing NAME with the name of the person you interviewed. In this example 1-mr-yacco indicates it is the first question from the interview with the teacher.

When everything is correct click the Download button.

When the download window opens check that the file name is correct and ends with the .mp3 extension. Make sure you are saving in your Google Drive Project Folder Recordings folder, then click the Save button.

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Create All Interview Sound Bites

Repeat the steps above for all of your answers in this interview recording. For choosing the next sound bite you most likely need to use the Zoom Out tool for press [ctrl+-] keys to show more of your recording.

After the next question you ask click just before the answer, then press the i key on your keyboard or use the Select menu to choose the Set Selection Start option. As before, a selection start marker should appear.

Go to the end of the question’s answer and click on the waveform, then press the O key on your keyboard or use the Select menu to choose the Set Selection End option. You should now have the sound bite selected.

With your sound bite selected, open the File menu click on the Download option. In the Audio Export window make sure there is a checkmark next to Export selected audio and for File format choose the MP3 Audio option.

Remember to change the number of the sound bite name, but use the same name for the person. For example:
2-mr-yacco.mp3
3-mr-yacco.mp3
4-mr-yacco.mp3
5-mr-yacco.mp3

When the name is correct click the Download button to save the sound bite into your Google Drive Project Folder Recordings Folder.

When you are done creating all of the sound bites from this interview recording, use the File menu to Close the twistedwave.com/online/edit window.

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Repeat the Process

Follow the same sound bites procedure above for each interview recording. When all of your interviews have been converted to sound bites, proceed to the next project step: Refine Sound Bites