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Integrating Adobe Enhance Voice Tech Into My Video Production Workflow ā In Search of a Solution
I don’t know if anyone knows about this free web tool by Adobe: Enhance Voice (link), but it is really impressive (@MattBirchler knows about it). Here is what I’d like to do: find a way to integrate this tool into my video production workflow.
So, I’m producing YouTube videos with ScreenFlow (my YouTube Channel). So far, I’m ok with the results, but I think my voice, and the sound in general, could be improved (I’m using the Blue Yeti Microphone, but Adobe Enhance Voice is really impressive).
So, how can I:
- Do my recording sessions as usual
- Do my video montage as usual
- Extract the audio track
- Use Adobe Enhance Voice to re-process the audio track
- Replace the audio track in my Screenflow document
- Export the final video
Step 3 and 5 are not possible in the current release of Screenflow. Any suggestion of tools I could use instead?
Hereās what I know or already use:
- Permute allows for easy conversion of audio files, including converting video files into the audio-only version.
- QuickTime Player can export the audio track only out of a video file.
- I know how to use iMovie.
- Iām a happy user of Audio Hijack
- I donāt really want to get rid of Screenflow. LumaFusion, FinalCut Pro, etc., maybe could do the job here, but it would be ok if I could find a simple utility that can replace the audio track easily instead.
This question has been posted to the Screenflow Telestream forum.
Update #1: corrected a few typos but added the solution using iMovie. Hereās the solution.
- Do my recording sessions as usual
- Do my video montage as usual and export the video
- Extract the audio track using Permute in .MP3 format
- Use Adobe Enhance Voice to re-process the audio track
- Convert .WAV into .MP3
- Launch iMovie and create a new Project
- Import the produced video in step 2
- Detach the audio track and delete it
- Add the enhanced version of the audio track
- Export the final video using iMovieās share option
VoilĆ !
Update #2: there is a major issue with this process, the video and audio are not in sync over time, even though both files are of the same duration. This is not something easy to fix. Back to the drawing board. š
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Genuine Questions About The War in Ukraine
Here are a few questions that pop up in my mind when reading the news about the war in Ukraine.
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How do they estimate Russian casualties? They are around 500-800 KIA per day. Thatās a lot. Is this number inflated for propaganda purposes?
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Why is Putin not saying, āAny country sending arms to help Ukraine is, in fact, a declaration of war against Russiaā? What would be the implications of such a declaration? Putin looks like a low-profile leader. So why is Putin not more vocal against the west?
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Why is the West not sending military aid to Modlova to put pressure on the 1200 Russian soldiers in Transnistria? How is it possible for Russia to feed them with the required resources?
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Why are tanks so much needed instead of other types of weapons? Are fighter planes effective? What is the aviation role in Ukraine? Are they making a difference?
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How many Ukrainian soldiers are killed each day? Why donāt we get these numbers as much as the Russian KIA?
So many unanswered questions.
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Google’s official announcement of incoming layoffs:
I have some difficult news to share. Weāve decided to reduce our workforce by approximately 12,000 roles. Weāve already sent a separate email to employees in the US who are affected. In other countries, this process will take longer due to local laws and practices. Source: A difficult decision to set us up for the future
And comment from Gruber:
There are numerous reasons the tech industry wound up at this layoffpalooza, but I think the main reason is that the biggest companies got caught up in a game where they tried to hire everyone, whether they needed them or not, to keep talent away from competitors and keep talent away from small upstarts (or from founding their own small upstarts). These big companies were just hiring to hire, and now the jig is up. Source: Daring Fireball
Here’s my view on this. Google is not alone. Microsoft and Meta announced major layoffs too. I’ve been working in IT for over thirty years, and I have never been in such a situation where we have so much difficulty finding or hiring new people. Big companies are competing for great talent not only with each other but also draining talent from smaller companies. It’s very difficult to compete in this context.
I think what is happening is not as catastrophic as it sounds. We will see a redistribution of the workforce in the industry. A lot of talent is being freed in the process from the big ones and is now available for the smaller companies where management is more sound, and financial posture is in good shape.
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Matter is officially a paid service (if I want to get all the goodies). Well, my queue is full of unread articles. So this should be an excellent indicator to decide whether or not to subscribe.
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Thanks for Paying Attention
Thereās this question that keeps popping up in my mind all the time since Iām being more active on Micro.blog. Why am I getting way more interactions with others on Micro.blog compared to Twitter? What am I doing differently? I write about the same subjects, albeit maybe more frequently. I think I have a few possible explanations.
First, Twitter is full of bots. Twitter is a dumpster. I suspect many people or organizations are simply cross-posting stuff on Twitter without real human beings behind the content. I did exactly that myself via Buffer for a few years. Optimizing exposure by scheduling posts at the ārightā time was the idea. A bot worked for me.
Second, and this is probably the most probable reason: algorithmic timeline. The Twitter engine is tuned to generate higher engagement. The more you engage, the higher the probability that your content will appear on peopleās timelines. If youāre well-known, again, the higher the likelihood that you will make it to the timeline of others.
Iām not well-known. I didnāt engage that much with others. Both made me a near-nobody on Twitter. So I didnāt get exposure, hence the lack of engagement with my content.
Third, there is just too much noise on Twitter to get noticed. My content competes against the rest of the Twittosphere. My context was noise for others, hence the lack of feedback, comments, and interactions.
Here on Micro.blog? Night and day. Iām not a star, far from it. But I get a sense that some people are paying attention.
Thanks for that anyway. š¤
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Iām on the Ivory beta. Is it me of updates a long in coming or non existant?
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So, I started the cleanup of numericcitizen.me. Each day, on WordPress.com, I look at my past posts and select the ones that won’t make the cut. Most of them are simply deleted. However, some posts get exported in markdown files before being deleted. Those exported posts, in turn, are imported in Craft for archival purposes. It’s a tedious process.
Before moving to Ghost, I want to bring the most valuable content. But, what is valuable content, actually? I realize that I have put a lot of time and effort into writing in the past several years. Some posts are short and very time or context-specific. Today, they no longer sport any value except for giving a glimpse of what was. Then what? Nothing. It’s probably more of a value to me than to my readers. I probably should be writing in a personal journal instead, right?
Anyhow, it’s time to move on. I know what I want numericcitizen.me to become. But, in its current form and content, it’s off. There is too much noise, I want it to be more focused. Deleted old, insignificant posts will help, but at the cost of time and losing some of my memories.
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Here is something that I always find funny. On any photo-sharing platform, let’s say you like someone’s pictures. The guy will probably get notified and start looking at your photos, generally only the most recent ones. If you’re lucky, he or she will like a few of them and then boom, start following you. It’s like someone who’s clicking with another on the dance floor. š
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The Write.freely Ecosystem Explained
The time has come for the return of a more open web. Iām embracing this movement by joining platforms or services that are built on open standards and promoting the open web in general as a byproduct.
Write.as is an instantiation version of theĀ WriteFreelyĀ writing platform, available as an open-source project. Think of WriteFreely as the open-source version of WordPress. Anyone can get the source and install their own instance.
In May 2022, I took advantage of five-year special pricing to subscribe to the Write.as platform. Without exactly knowing what would be my use case for it, I decided to support the platform, just like Iāve been supporting Micro.blog since 2018. After a while, I discovered the many facets of this writing ecosystem and found it to be a bit confusing. In this article, I explain all the parts of the open and dedicated blogging platform.
First, letās see what ChatGPT says about Write.as (unedited responses from ChatGPT):
Aaron Taylor is the founder & CEO ofĀ Cosmic.orgĀ and a team of remote employees who work on theĀ Write.asĀ andĀ Remark.asplatforms. He is passionate about creating secure, anonymous spaces where people can express themselves without judgement or censorship. He has worked to create tools and features that make anonymous publishing easier and more secure for users. He is also the creator of theĀ Remark.asĀ platform, which gives users more control over how and when they share their thoughts.
Write.asĀ is a project of a small team led by the founder & CEO, Aaron Taylor, atĀ Cosmic.org. They are a remote team based all over the world, from Portland to Berlin to Mexico City.
Write.asĀ is a platform designed to help people express themselves freely and anonymously. It provides a space for everyone to post their thoughts without worry of judgement or censorship. All posts are public and open to comments, however, the identities of the posters can remain anonymous. The project offers a suite of applications and services to make anonymous publishing easier, more secure, and more secure for users. It also provides a way for people to follow topics, publications, or users, engaging in thoughtful dialogue and idea exchange.
Remark.asĀ is a project that is a part of theĀ Write.asĀ platform. It is designed to help users to have conversations with each other in an anonymous, secure, and censorship-free environment.Ā Remark.asĀ has features like tagging topics and publications, creating polls, and engaging in private forums. It also gives users more control over how and when they share their thoughts.Ā Remark.asalso provides users with the ability to create polls, surveys, and other interactive features to encourage public participation.
All in all,Ā Write.asĀ andĀ Remark.asĀ are projects by Aaron Taylor and the team atĀ Cosmic.orgĀ that provide users with an anonymous, censorship-free space in which to express themselves freely and engage with others. They are both designed to make anonymous publishing easier, more secure, and to give users more control over how and when they share their thoughts.
Write.asĀ is a simple, privacy-focused writing platform. It allows users to create and publish anonymous blog posts, journal entries, and other types of writing without the need for an account or personal information. The platform also includes a built-in editor and the ability to customize the appearance of your writing with different fonts and themes. Additionally,Ā Write.asĀ supports markdown formatting and has a feature called “focuses” which allows users to group related posts together. The platform is designed for those who value privacy and simplicity.
More seriously, hereās a brief description of each component, starting with an overview.
An Overview of the WriteFreely Ecosystem
The following diagram shows all the parts making up the Write.as service, which is part of the WriteFreely ecosystem.
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The Write.as service is where all the writing experience happens. Since this article isnāt a review, suffice it to say the editor offers a minimalistic and distraction-free environment. Write.as supports adding tags to any blog posts. Cross-posting content in Write.as is available for other platforms like Tumblr, Ghost and Twitter. I connected my account to Ghost but rarely cross-post over there. Itās nice to have, though.
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The writer can attach photos at the end of each post by dragging them on the bottom bar. Photos attachments go to the āsnap.asā minimalistic photo sharing add-on, tied to Write.as. All photos attachments are shown in one place, on snap.as. Photo galleries are available, albeit with a 10$ one-time purchase. Some features are marked as coming soon, but I suspect they are long in coming. I’m unsure if I would invest in this as I prefer dedicated services like Glass.
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Submit.as is another add-on to Write.as. As the name suggests, it is a way for an author to accept submissions from other writers. No registration is required from the submitter, helping a frictionless experience. This service is not cheap and comes with a 12$ per month minimal fee. Itās not cheap and I donāt know why. Again, integration with other platforms is marked as coming.
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Remark.as is yet another add-on closely tied to Write.as and offers commenting to any of the writerās blog posts. Commenting is enabled on a per-post basis by adding a special <ādiscussā> line anywhere within the post.
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Read.write.as is like a content feed coming from other writers. Content published on Write.as gets published on this feed. It comes from the hosted version of Write.as. According to this website, content is cross-posted to an RSS feed, Mastodon and Twitter, but I fear this has been abandoned as the content is somewhat old.
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The Mail add-on is where youāll receive comments from other writers. Those comments are grouped in one place and are public.
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CafĆ© is a place for discussion, but frankly, I donāt know how posts get promoted there. Those discussions are conversations happening on the Read.write.as section.
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Other add-ons like a post signature are available for a one-time purchase of 10$ and eBooks export is also available for another one-time purchase of 10$.
Still with me? I know itās not simple. Write.as certainly feels like a bunch of add-ons taped together.
Some remarks about the whole thing
- The Write.as experience is minimalistic and in need of some polishing. I didnāt see improvements since Iām subscribing to the platform. This annoys me.
- Overall, the Write.as ecosystem feels minimalistic and unfinished. I donāt expect many improvements to come to the platform. Yet, Matt, the founder of Write.as, is active on discuss.write.as discussion forum, so itās a good sign.
- Thereās a Mac app for the Write.freely ecosystem, which should support Write.as but it has been in beta for more than a year. iOS and iPadOS are also available. All apps are availableĀ here. I didn’t test these, preferring the web experience.
- All these services are part of a suite called the Musing Studio. Itās more of a branding thing. The site hasnāt been updated for a while.
With this article, I hope I shed some light on this open-source project dedicated to writers and bloggers. Overall I like Write.as, even with some rough edges or unfinished integration. If I failed to explain something correctly, let me know in the comments!
Update #1: Some references to subscription fees for add-ons have been corrected to one-time purchases, as required. It was an error based on the documentation miss-interpretation.
#tools #services #openweb #opensource
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When Matter Made a Major Strategic Error
Today I spent some time in Matter to read a few articles. I went to the Staff Picks section, noticed those tweets between articles and remembered Matter's decision to leave the social portion in their early days. They preferred to go the Twitter route instead. That was before the Elon Musk fiasco. As you might expect, it was a deception for me, and I preferred Matter to build its own thing instead. I actually like to comment on articles and share my thoughts on them within the Matter sphere. Oh wellā¦Ā
How ironic things can sometimes be. I think the Matter team made a significant strategic error by dropping the social portion of their initial offerings, and they should reconsider their decision.
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I was searching for something in one of my past posts here on Micro.blog, using the built-in search option. Searching is swift. Looking at the search results, It's funny to see all the different writing strategies I used over time. I count four of them that I name like this: the newbie, the teaser, the titled and the balanced.
The newbie strategy was to write and don't pay too much attention. It was in my early days here on Micro.blog. Then came the teaser strategy era. Taking advantage of Micro.blog cross-posting feature, all my posts had to be cross-posted on Twitter and made sure to systematically add hashtags to the post's title to get attention. People on Twitter using hashtags for search could potentially hit my posts. That was total nonsense. Then, the "titled strategy" came in where all my posts would get a title. Readers would then need to expand my post to read the content. Lastly, the current strategy, the best IMO, is to use the title for longer posts only. Otherwise, I leave the title field empty, hoping readers will hit the link to read the rest of the post.
Maybe I should have set the title for this one. š¤
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Interesting (and sadly valid point) from Om Malik:
Regardless of age, the big elephant in the room is that we are certified addicts to attention.
It doesnāt matter whether it is Twitter, Instagram, or Mastodon. Everyone is playing to an audience. The social Internet is a performance theater praying at the altar of attention. Journalists need attention to be relevant, and experts need to signal their expertise. And others want to be influencers. For now, Twitter, Instagram, and their ilk give the biggest bang for the blast. It is why those vocal and active about Mastodon are still posting away on Muskās Twitter.
If we didnāt care for attention, we wouldnāt be doing anything at all. We wouldnāt broadcast.
We care. I certainly care that you care about my content, my words, and my thoughts.
Instead, we would socialize privately in communication with friends and peers.
Even in this social scenario, we are broadcasting and expecting that people are listening. This is how we are programmed. This is why social networks, and the web in general, are so addictive.
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Listening to Leo Laporte’s voice of Twit.tv in my AirPods Pro 2… wow, what a great voice this man has.
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Today, from WordPress:
Your favorite Jetpack-powered features from the WordPress app ā including Stats, Notifications, and the Reader ā have a new home: the Jetpack app! These features will soon be removed from the WordPress app so that its focus will be on essential user and publishing tools. With the Jetpack app, you can expect the same attention to core features like managing and editing content, as well as next-level tools to grow your audience on a trusted platform.
The JetPack app is now officially being pushed out, and WP asks site owners like me to consider transitioning to JetPack for managing the website and viewing stats. I’m not sure why the one-app-fits-all" is considered in need of a rework. I’ve read the blog post and couldn’t find a real reason worth forking these apps into two. Even more strange, when you run both WordPress and JetPack on the same device, the latter suggests removing the former from the device. Anyways…
I’m not sure if I want to spend too much energy trying to understand what’s going on. The reason is that I’m in the early stage of planning my migration off the WordPress.com platform. It will require some serious planning and some tedious work, but I’ll move out, before the end of the present year.
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The new HomePod, as well as the mini, can measure room temperature and humidity. I don’t want to sound cynical but, what a clever way for Apple to trigger more HomePod sales. I want temperature and humidity readings in all my house!
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The new chips are yet another example of Appleās chip division being so far ahead of the rest of the company. The reason iPad suffers is not that it isnāt good; it is because it is too good, and very few applications take advantage of its hardware to the maximum. Source: Apple launches new (M2) chips ā On my Om
As an owner of an M1 Mac mini, I’m pretty much sure that none of the software I depend on would take advantage of the M2 or M2 Pro. Lightroom? Nope. Screenflow? Nope. Teams? Nope. What else? The same goes for my aging 2018 iPad Pro.
Is there such a thing as a local version of ChatGPT?
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I wonāt upgrade my original HomePod pair but I thank Apple for bringing new features to a product that I thought was done. Iām happy to learn that release 16.3 will enable dormant sensors of the HomePod mini.
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On October 13, 2018, I wrote:
This morning I found out about the existence of a blogging platform called Micro.blog. Something very special. Very lean. Very light. Without ads. Leaner than WordPress. Yet capable. Close to Twitter but with less clutter. Iām on a 10 days trial period. Tested the web posting interface. Tested the native macOS (light) client. Tested the iPad version too. Now, testing cross-posting from WordPress via an IFTTT applet. Iām loving it so far. Stay tuned for more discoveries about Micro.blog.Source: The Return of Micro Blogging? - Numeric Citizen Blog
This is the oldest post on my main website. I still love this platform, more than ever.
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āWith the popularity of HomePod mini, weāve seen growing interest in even more powerful acoustics achievable in a larger HomePod. Weāre thrilled to bring the next generation of HomePod to customers around the world.ā Source: Apple introduces the new HomePod with breakthrough sound and intelligence - Apple
What?? Am I dreaming? It really seems to be the same device from the exterior. Still expansive. Still wireless only. Old Bluetooth (5.0).
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The yearly renewal of my WordPress.com business plan is a reminder that I need to go elsewhere. This thing no longer makes sense to me. Hard to justify. Where (and how) to move my data? Ghost?
