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DemoCreator enables users to create narration-based software presentations with ease. Here we will learn how to use DemoCreator’s advanced audio capabilities to add and edit audio in your movies. This screen recorder provides 3 ways to add the audio to the screen recordings: record sound at capture time, record sound at preview time, import audio file to the screen recording with audio editor.

Record sound at capture time

Record the onscreen activity with voice-over narration at the same time.

1. Launch DemoCreator and select the recording area, and you can see more recording option in the following window.

2. Tick the option of Record narration, and there are some settings to test the audio recording device.

3. Select the Microphone as the audio input(this depends on the recording input you want to record).

4. Click Calibrate button to detect optimal recording sensitivity level, then speak to the microphone and you will see the audio sensitivity level if the recording device works.

Tips:

DemoCreator can detect the recording device of your computer, and you can select the right recording input. Here are 3 input sources to choose: Microphone, Rear Input, and Stereo Mix.

Recording voice-over narration with microphone can significantly enhance the impact of your presentation. Stereo Mix is for recording the playing audio in the computer. If you want to record some audio from some other resource, connect the audio device with the Rear Input port.

DemoCreator enables you to record a narration from microphone and also you can record the narration from playing audio tracks on your PC.

If there is no problem with the recording device, click Record button and start your recording.

Record sound at preview time

If you are not satisfied with the audio you have recorded with the screen recording, you can rerecord the audio when your audio when you preview the recorded screencast; And it is OK if you want to add the narration to the silent screencast at preview time.

1.When screen recording is over, Click the Audio button and you can see the audio editor window.

2. Click on the Record button at the bottom of Audio Editor and you can see the audio Device testing window. Just test your audio recording device as the method we mentioned in Record sound at capture time.

3.Start recording your narration, and you can view the recorded movie at the same time.

4. When it is over, press the Stop button.

5. Click the Play button to view the recorded movie with audio. Further more, you can modify the narration with editing tools on the audio editor.

Import audio file with audio editor

Besides the two methods mentioned above, you can import audio file to the screen recording as background music. Back to the audio editor, there is an Import button for you to add the wanted music file from you local disk. After the recording you can get the audio file of MP3 format in the project folder.

Get Started with DemoCreator>>

Welcome to Audio File Formats 101! If you’ve used a computer to listen to music you probably have had some experience dealing with MP3 and WAV files before. And if you have spent a bit of time on the computer recording or editing audio, you’ve probably dealt with many of the other audio file formats. Such as AIFF, WMA, OGG, etc. What’s the deal with all these different forms of digital audio?

1. WAV - Although WAV files can be compressed, most WAV files are usually consist of uncompressed audio, also know as lossless audio files. They are a variant on the RIFF bitstream format method for storing data in chunks. Since these files are usually uncompressed and of high quality, most professional audio experts use the WAV file, which is the universally accepted source audio file format recognized in all audio editing software.

2. MP3 - MP3s are encoded digital audio files that use a lossy compression format. Lossy compression is a method that when the file is decompressed, the data retrieved may be different from the original but is close enough to be usable. With an MP3 the parts of the audio that are discarded in the compression are considered less important to human hearing, (i.e. any sounds below 20HZ, and any sounds above 20KHz). MP3 files are great for the internet because of their small size. You can think of an MP3 as an audio version of a JPEG file.

3. WMA - WMA stand for Windows Media Audio, and is a proprietary audio file format developed by Microsoft, and was introduced as a competitor to the MP3 files format. Although it hasn’t overtaken the popularity of the MP3 format, it is in second place in terms of the number of consumer products that support the playback of the WMA file. One thing that the WMA file format offers exclusively is the ability for the files to be DRM (Digital Rights Management) encoded, which is popular with both music and film corporations.

4. OGG Vorbis - The OGG Vorbis file format is an audio codec that is both open source and free, which was developed in 1998 after word of plans to start charging licensing fees on MP3 files were spread. So, essentially the OGG Vorbis file format is very similar to the MP3 file format, which are both lossy file formats. The OGG Vorbis file format is widely used in video games, saving time and money for the developers, since it is not patented.

All of us listen to MP3s, and probably have encountered the 3 other formats discussed at one time or another. This is definitely not an exhaustive list of all audio file formats, and only covers some of the more popular formats. But this should give you a little more insight on some of the file formats that you use on a daily basis.

Probably the first thing you want to think about before you start spending any money on getting a home recording facility together is, why do I want to record at home?

You probably already know the reason, but the clearer you are about this the better your results will be.

Do you want to just pick up your guitar on a whim and record the latest idea that’s passing by? Do you intend to record an album in its entirety at home and release it? Do you want to make podcasts to broadcast on the web? Do you want to ‘flesh out’ your musical ideas to get an idea of how the final product might sound. All are valid reasons for having your own home recording setup. Each one also suggests a particular amount of money you will need to spend to get the result you desire, and the amount of effort you need to expend making it happen.

What you will need.

From a basic standpoint you will need some way to record your performance or ideas – this could be into a Personal Computer[PC] or mac or onto a stand alone recorder. You’ll also need someway of getting the performance into the recording medium – whether that be via microphone or a piano keyboard. You will also need to find some way to ‘deliver’ your product – via mp3 mix/cd or podcast. All factors to consider as you set up you home studio.

What is best; Computer recording or stand alone?

I will confess that in my opinion and experience, the simplest and most effective way to record anything at home is with a stand alone recorder. Several years ago I recorded an entire album using Fostex DMT8, 8 tracks to do the lot- including backing vocals guitars and eveything. To those of you unfamiliar with what I mean by stand alone recorder then have a look at units from Fostex, Yamaha, Roland and others. In general they have a built in hard drive or media card which records data that you produce as a result of recording yourself. This can be as simple as engaging a ‘record’ button and playing or singing. There’s no fuss involved with this. Some of them also allow you to burn a CD at the end of the process so you can amaze your friends! There can be disadvantages as I will discuss later, but depending on your final aims as discussed earlier, you will make allowances for any shortcomings.

Recording onto a pc or Mac takes us into a more complex word, so if you’re not computer savy, or prepared to enagage in a long and sometimes frustrating journey I’d go with the stand alone unit.

Why is it more difficult to record into a PC?

Recoding into a PC has a minimum of 3 steps:

Input device-microphone/keyboard/turntable

Sound card-converts your ‘real world’ sound into computer language.

Recording software-does the job of ‘capturing’ your performance.

Once you have got your recording chain set up then it ‘can’ be as easy as using a stand alone unit, but to get to that point you have to deal with a number of factors-the #1 bugbear of most home computer recording nuts is a friendly tike called ‘latency’ .

Latency: ‘ something that is revealed later’.

For those not in the know, latency can be compared to hearing your voice echoing back from a canyon, heloooo-hellllllloooo. There is a gap between when you yell and when you hear your voice returned. If you plug in a microphone and set up your recording software and say the ubiquitous ‘hello’ you will get a similar effect!

Unless you invest in a super high end recording system such as ‘Pro Tools HD’, then this is something you need to work with as a home computer recording afficionado.

The reason we encounter latency is that the computer needs time to convert the analogue [physcal sounds via electrcity] into digital data; ones and noughts. With a good sound card this can take between 7 and 15 milliseconds [ yep that's 15 thousandenths of a second] and then about the same number of milliseconds to convert it from a digital signal back into an electrical analogue sytem that we can usefully use to hear the sound coming out of the computer. Bare in mind that our ear ‘notices’ a sound as an echo at around the 50 millisecond mark [ more on this later] – so if we have a sound card with 25millisecond [ms] input delay and 25 ms output delay then our ear wil perceive it as an echo- not much good to play along with as we will be out of time.

That’s pretty useless you might shriek, so how do people manage to do all this computer recording stuff at home? A-ha. Those clever people who make sound cards m-audio, Presonus, Yamaha etc have done something very clever, they instigated a process called ‘direct monitoring’.

Direct monitoring allows us to hear the incoming sound at its source- straight after you have plugged it in- instead of through the computer where you will pick up a substantive delay. You can still listen ‘though the computer’ if you choose, but in my experience it’s pretty distracting especially with large latency times. The other thing that your clever software program/soundcard combo will do is to record your new track in time with the others by making allowances for the current latency times.

In summary; For ease of use and less technology hassles get a stand alone hard disk recorder. For more complex productions consider getting a computer/soundcard/software combo, but be prepared for a sharp learning curve.

Here are tips to improve the reliability of your computer for use as a recording studio for your music.

Working with Audio can place a high demand on your computer’s capabilities – from the CPU to storage and memory.Below are some tips that will increase the performance of your computer and make it less prone to crashes when you are recording or editing your music.

Preparation:

Before you install recording software check the following.CPU speed and memory-

Most modern computers that are only a couple of years old will have a processor that is equal to or exceeding the minimum CPU speed your editing software requires but it is still worth checking – particularly if you have machine that is earlier than this (be aware that processor speed, along with memory will determine how many tracks of audio you can record and the number of effects you can have running simultaneously.

The same goes for required RAM (most good recording programs state a minimum of 512 megabytes) More is better- a gigabyte or higher (in fact increasing the memory of your computer can compensate for a slower processor to some degree and is probably the cheapest way to add more speed to your machine).

Storage space –

In most cases you will have enough storage on your operating system hard drive to install the software and related effects – what I’m referring to is a second drive dedicated to storing your songs and all the files they are created from.

This is a must, because having both your software and songs on the same drive will place a high demand both on your drive and CPU as it tries to find, read and write and execute a program all at the same time from one location.

Also note that music files are large so you’ll need a lot of space – one five minute recording can easily be 250 megabytes or more – multiply that by eight for a song consisting of eight different instruments, (each on an individual track) such as drums, bass, guitar, keyboard and vocals and you begin to get the idea that a 40 gigabyte drive will fill up fairly quickly so go for something bigger (say 150 gigs or larger).

Choose a reliable brand and get an external drive to keep your files backed up.

While we are on the subject of hard drives – if you are planning on using an external drive and writing directly to it, choose a unit that has a cooling fan.

Enclosed drives can generate and trap a lot of heat and if you are doing a long session without much ventilation you can cook your drive and cause it to fail prematurely. (internal drives are less prone to this because they usually receive cooling from the power supply fan and you can mount them in such a way that there is an air gap between each of them for circulation).

Removal or disabling of other programs.

The absolute best computer based recording studios in terms of speed and stability are those that are dedicated units – in other words they are set up to specifically record and edit music.

This means they are not connected to the internet (except for updates and registering the software), they don’t have anti virus running, screen savers or other widgets running in the background that use up memory and CPU.

The result is that dedicated computers are far more reliable and tend to have significantly less problems.Windows is particularly notorious for having many programs running in the background and can cause havoc with your audio work. Mac is less so.Consult an expert when disabling background programs – some are vital for the operation of your computer and should be left alone – others are ok to shut down (you just need to know what can and cannot be touched).

If you are financially able, and serious about recording – try to get yourself a computer just for audio work and keep your current machine for the internet and any other work you might be doing.If you can’t do this and are stuck with just one machine – do the following.

Upgrade the RAM if you need to.

Uninstall any programs you don’t use and do a thorough clean up.

Disable background processes that are not essential to the running of your machine (This applies to Windows only) – again if in doubt get expert help.

Close your internet connection and disable automatic updates and anti virus etc while you are recording (you can re-enable them later when you are done).

Use a plain background as wallpaper.

Defragment your hard drive and (make sure your operating system has no errors first and is up to date) before installing your recording software and any drivers you might be using for your sound card or external inputs.

You are now good to go – install your recording gear and enjoy less problems on a more stable computer.

Recording on your home computer has never been easier to do than it is today. With the speed of the modern day computer you can do some pretty neat things with your recordings. Modern technology will take you a long way toward success but you still need to understand what is going on if you want to have a great recording. It does not take all that much computer recording studio equipment to have a nice little setup.

To record on your computer you will need a few essential items. You must start out with a powerful computer that has a pretty decent soundcard. The next step is to go shopping for the software you need to actually get the sound inside your computer. You will find a decent set of headphones handy to have around and the most important thing you need is a good microphone. This article will take a look at these items and how they relate to home recording on a computer.

You cannot do much computer recording without a computer. Almost any modern day system will get the job done. The faster CPU and the more memory you have the better. Many people like to build a special computer just for recording purposes. This may be overkill if you only want to record one or two tracks at a time. Next you need to add a good soundcard or audio interface to your system.

There are many choices you can make when picking out a soundcard or external audio interface. You do not have to spend a lot of money to get a decent sound but usually the more expensive brands have some features that you may need. It is wise to search the Internet and forums to see what people are saying about the different soundcards before spending your hard earned money.

You will need to get some recording software to add to your computer recording studio equipment. There are many brands to choose from the free Audacity to programs costing a lot of money. If your recording needs are simple you can probably get by with one of the cheaper packages. On the other hand if you want to record a band you will probably need to spend a few more bucks on one of the more expensive software programs.

Add a microphone to this must have equipment list and you will almost be done. Get the best mike you can afford as the quality of this piece of equipment has much to do with the final sound of your project.

The last thing you will need to complete a basic set up is a set of headphones so you can hear what is being recording. Get a decent set but you can get by ok with a simple pair of headphones.

As you can see you do not have to spend a lot of money on computer recording studio equipment to get started recording on your home computer. Take your time and choose your equipment carefully and you will not have to go this again in 6 months when you have figured out that the cheap stuff you bought just is not getting the job done.

Recording telephone conversations used to require expensive hardware and dedicated recording equipment. On the low end, one could use a simple wire to connect a phone handset with a tape recorder. An office with multiple phone lines would need expensive solutions that integrate a PBX with call recording. PBXpress www.callcorder.com is a great example of this approach, providing effective simultaneous recording of analog and digital (VoIP) telephone conversations over multiple lines.

But what if you only need to tap certain conversations once in a while? Purchasing expensive hardware is not nearly cost-effective in this case. Using a tape recorder is always an option, but it does not give you the convenience of digital, its user-friendly instant navigation and transparent search.

Using a computer to handle the recording is perfect for the purpose. Surprisingly, you might already have the necessary equipment to start recording phone conversations immediately. A simple voice modem is the only hardware you need. It is fully capable and sufficient to record your phone conversations. Have a close look at your modem. If it is marked “Voice” or “Data/Fax/Voice”, you can use this modem for tapping. If, however, it is labeled as “Data/Fax” or “Fax Modem”, then most probably your modem does not support the necessary voice features, and therefore it won’t be able to record.

Having a voice modem alone is not enough to record calls. You need call recording software to complement your modem. The software would control your modem, record and store conversations on your hard disk. In the past, modem manufacturers used to bundle such software with their modems, but this is not the case today. Currently, you are on your own if you need software that can record your calls.

Call Corder (www.callcorder.com) by Pingram Software is one of such products. Its purpose is recording telephone conversations, compressing them, and storing in Windows compatible sound files that can be played back with Windows Media Player, Winamp, or any other music player.

Call Corder supports most brands of modemd. If it can’t find an exact match for your hardware, it defaults to the closest generic device. If you are recording an incoming call, Call Corder will log Caller ID information provided by your modem. This usually includes caller’s name and number. In order to receive this call information, you have to subscribe to the Caller ID service offered by your phone company. If you do not have Caller ID, you can always fill in the caller data by hand.

Make marks and memos about the conversation while you’re recording or when you’re finished. You can conveniently search for a particular call by typing any word or phrase that’s in the call’s memo, and Call Corder will automatically show you all conversations containing this information. Of course, you can also search by the telephone number or the name of the caller.

Try Call Corder free for 30 days to ensure that your modem is compatible! Download your free evaluation copy from www.callcorder.com

Due to the latest advances made in computer software and hardware, now it is achievable to prepare an audio recording studio entirely almost on a PC. Many modern PC’s are quick enough to manage with twenty four audio tracks along with extra plug-ins for dynamics and effects. It is a feasible idea to own a PC only dedicated to audio or/and music production. 

Here are few important points that should be considered while buying a computer for music/audio recording

RAM and Hard Disk Size

Audio data requires loads of drive space, thus always get the hard drive with maximum space. A hard drive with 300GB is quite common now, and 500GB hard drive is available as well for extra space. Make sure that your main board is capable of handling the proposed range – therefore you should ensure this first. In addition, you can connect two hard disks within one computer as well.

Likewise, the music software applications require a lot of space, especially while you are exercising specific kinds of plug-ins effects, including reverb, thus get the RAMN with maximum space. Now the benchmark size is 2GB RAM. Some may require a bigger RAM of 4GB, but for that make sure you have a 64 bit system.

While expanding your computer this way (memory wise), an essential factor to consider is the power supply or PSU. If the computer was made on a fix price budget, you might discover that the original power supply struggles to manage with the extra power supply, which you have recently included and this consequently may result in hard to isolate and strange faults. Buying highest quality and the largest PSU is a good idea, as this will allow you to store as much data as you want without facing any power supply fault. PSU of poor quality might cause issues such as earth leaks, ripple and brownouts, which may mess up your efforts. 

You most probably will not require an extremely large unit, with two disks with 2GBb RAM, you must get 550-650W unit. Bigger unit like 750W is also acceptable but will be of no benefit, since a PC may use only a substantial amount of power of about 500W 

Back-Up Facilities

It is a nice idea to incorporate a large external hard-drive, preferably 300GB or additional and ideally, fire-wire connected in order to back up the recording projects. This will further enable to free-up the valuable space from your PC’s hard drive.