Video Lab 2

My UWS Hamilton campus tour is live at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwjQRXaOyXU&feature=youtu.be

To begin with I had a whopping 48 minutes of video to cut down, after half an hour I managed to cut it down to under 10 minutes of footage, I then set the speed of the video to 2x so I would be just under the 5 minute limit. I recorded the whole thing in portrait which was a mistake because 2/3rds of the screen were just black borders.

• I re-recorded it properly a few days later and this time i had a more manageable 10 minutes of footage to work with.
• To deal with a video that's lasting longer than intended I feel like making too many scene cuts hurts the fluidity of a video so setting the speed faster helps in that regard, especially if the only thing hurting your time is walking speed. This also means that I could show more areas.
• I added various animations between scenes to make the cuts seem less abrupt.
• I recorded myself narrating using the windows movie maker function
  
• The narration included some facts about the campus I got from wikipedia so I could avoid moments of silence.
• I added a a royalty free music track which is calm and non intrusive for the video so it didn't drown out my commentary, after adjusting the volume levels of the soundtrack and the narration it worked a like charm.
• At the end of the last scene I including a sepia tone visual effect and a fade out, also the background music fades out at this time to signal the end of the video.
• I displayed the UWS logo for the last 5 seconds of the video.

Here is a picture of how the video looked in movie maker after saving:

If I were to do this lab again I would record it landscape the first time and record less wasted footage the first time, however, because I retried the lab a second time I feel like I learned a lot from the mistakes I made the first time and didn't do them again.

Video Lab 1

My video edit of the gallery tour is located at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmP4lr79JBU&feature=youtu.be

Answer the following

• Please write a few paragraphs explaining why you made the edit cuts in the footage that you did?
• What emotional effect did you intend to create by making each edit?
• What features of the Video editor and audio editor did you find particularly challenging to use?
• If you were to perform this task again what would you do differently and why?
  
  

At the start the film totaled about 3 minutes in length so the most obvious cut was to take a lot of the walking between exhibits out and only show the exhibits themselves. I thought it would be cool to make the gallery seem desolate so I took out every shot where there is another person in it. I cut down the intro pictures display time a lot, I also completely cut out the credits and added my own "thanks for watching message" in place of them while the video is still running rather than a separate image, this saved me some time that I used to display museum exhibits and left the video under a minute long.

I thought to myself all of these exhibits are very uncanny and strange so why not make my video into a creepy surreal one. I edited out all the other people at the gallery so it seems like the person filming was in this building with all this creepy artwork alone. I found quite a dark atmospheric song to make the museum seem more dramatic. I needed a sound effect to introduce the video with I found a gong noise on freesound and distorted it slightly. Near the end of the video where there is a  picture of a banana I inserted an audio clip of a piano chord playing followed by a man saying "'ave a banana" in an exaggerated voice to make a light hearted joke that contrasts with the videos dark atmosphere. I also added an audience cheer that I used in a previous lab to close out the video.

In class the split tool was breaking my video and making the same few frames repeat over and over throughout the video if I used it, this problem was happening to everyone in class at the time, thankfully when I got home my own copy of windows movie maker did not have this problem so I did my work there.
It was difficult to move audio clips to play at the exact point that I wanted but I fixed that when I found the "import music at the current point" option I had to redo the whole video when I discovered this however.

I now know some features about movie maker and how it works with audio, next time I import audio I should be able to do it much quicker than I did this time, whenever I used movie maker before it was always footage of games with my voice recorded over it and there was no need to import any additional audio.

If I were to do this again I would like to try a different video editing software such as Sony Vegas because I hear it has a lot more features.

Image manipulation lab

Manipulating images using arithmetic

Image filtering, enhancement and general manipulation using Photoshop

1)      Find the images on Moodle to be used in this lab and download on to your desktop.

2)      Click on All Programs->AdobeCreativeSuite4ProductionPremium and run Adobe PhotoshopCS4

3)      Use File\Open CH_Tor.jpg to display the image in Photoshop.

4)      Perform Image->Image Rotation->90 degrees CW

5)      Apply a custom filter to the image in the manner discussed in the lecture to filter the image as Filter->Other->Custom

Modify the default Mask to

   -1

-1 4 -1

   -1

What is the effect of the default mask? Why do you suppose that it creates the effect that you see?

Modifying the mask seems to change the image to black and white. In doing so it highlights straight edges with white lines and solid blocks of colour change into black.

6)      Experiment with various masks and explore the use of the preset masks in the High pass, maximum and minimum options. Where possible describe and explain what you see?

• When I increment the radius value of the minimum option the tower in the picture seems to expand and the colour is predominantly black, I think this increseases the size of all the pixels and the black block of colour from expanding black pixels masks the other colours.
  
  
  
  
• The effect of maximum option seems to be the opposite of the minimum one where it reduces the size of each pixel in the image, although it leaves a white outline, this is leading me to believe I was perhaps wrong about black masking the other colours and it's possibly just the opposite of this white outline effect.
  
  
  
  
• The high pass filter makes the outlines of the image glow and turns the blue sky to grey

7)      Suggest possible uses of this filter technique for processing digital photographs?
The most obvious use of filters is to add effects to a whole photograph without taking the time to edit it manually pixel by pixel, that you wouldn't get from taking a photograph, something that makes it look unique.
Since these filters seem to manipulate pixels maybe it can be used to improve the quality of images, perhaps something along the lines of anti aliasing to smooth out a jagged image.

8)      Create a new filter that is all zeros except for the centre value which should be 1. What does this filter do and why?

The filter doesn't change anything about the image, I suspect each 0 means 0 changes  to the image while the 1 in the middle means display the original image and change nothing about it, if I type 0 instead there it would not display anything.

How can you check that it operates as you think it does?
I just compared it with the original image and I see not difference

9)      Create a new filter with a two by two matrix of 1’s near it’s centre. What does this filter do and why?

This filter overly increases the intensity of light in the image this is known as saturation, some parts still remain dark, I think positive numbers in a custom mask amplify the intensity of light the higher that positive number is.

10)  Create a new filter with a two by two matrix with +1’s on one diagonal and –1’s on the other. What does this filter do and why?

Almost every block of colour in the image is turn to black, the outlines of the image are very faintly in white, I think because if you add all these numbers together they create 0 and if you just type in 0 on the filter the image will be covered in black completely, having 4 different numbers somehow lets the image keep its outlines.

11)

I used the colour halftone filter it converts the pixels in the image to a collection of coloured circles that emulate the original image.

Audacity Lab 3

Combining a number of audio tracks to a single audio master file

Mixing a Music session

1. In Audacity open and listen to the file OriginalJingleMix.wav. How many different types of sound can you hear? Can you name the instruments or other sound sources?
   I heard: drums, bass, keyboard, guitar these play all play a riff throughout the music.
   I also heard vocals, a gong and a Hammond organ that you would hear in soul music.
2. Session musicians recorded each of these tracks. Listen to each instrument track individually. Make notes on the quality of each sound. Quality of sound is very subjective. Use any adjective that you feel is appropriate to describe each sound. eg Does the Bass sound smooth or punchy? Is the guitar jangly or distorted? etc… How loud does each track sound in relation to one-another?
   TimpAndPiano- For the first half you hear timpani drums stuck twice loudly followed by a pause then they are struck 3 times you can hear the echo as if they are being recorded in a large hall. For the second half a low pitch piano riff plays there are 2 notes, then a pause followed by 4 notes, the last note is played 2 more times  quietly as the music fades out.
   SweepBass- The first half of the bassline is a 3 note repetition,  the last half of it is a repetition of one note plucked so heavily we hear the vibration of it as an echo, this whole bassline is heavily distorted making it sound punchy.
   Rickenbacker Bass Guitar- A series of 2 note repetitions followed by muted plucks followed by 3 note repetitions, their is a brief solo at the end followed by one notes echo then another note is played and we hear its echo. This bassline is much less distorted than the SweepBass making it sound more smooth.
   FunkGuitar- This funk guitar is playing very high chords with occasional muted chords and is distorted. The piece ends with the echo of the final chord. The guitar is very jangly making it sound like 80s surfer bands to me. The volume of the track is quieter than the basslines.
   Drums1- The drum beat makes use of a symbol, bass pedal and snare drum. The loudest and clearest of any instrument so far which is important since each instrument probably follows the drum beat. A gong is struck at the end which is surprising.
   DopeOrgan- The most notable feature of the song is this organ, it doesn't start until 2 seconds in. A chord is played and held in for half a second followed by some short spiky single notes then another chord, this is repeated 3 times.
   DloopandAnnouncer- The track starts with silence for 2 and a half seconds then a drum is struck loudly followed quickly by 2 lighter strikes this is repeated 3 more times, there is another pause for 7 seconds. Then the line "sounds beyond cool" is said by an announcer  in an exaggerated distorted voice.
   CEPVoices- The vocals don't start until 5 and a half seconds in, it is a cantata "accompanied singing" of 4 men, however, the first line is said by one man, the second by two men, the third by three men and the fourth by all four. I detect a hint of voice effects perhaps autotune. The voices all harmonize well and the track quickly fades out.
3. Look at each track in the time domain and frequency domain and make note of any distinct features. eg. What time does each sound event occur, loudness in dB, duration, envelope shape… What frequencies does it tend to occupy. How do these features inform your own personal impression of the sound as you hear it?
   TimpAndPiano- Starts at 0 seconds and fades out around 5 seconds in. Hits a trough of -36dB and has a low pitch. Frequency caps at about 7kHz.
   SweepBass- Stars at 0 seconds Hits a height of -24dB. the wave form has lots of breaks and gets lower pitched over the first half. The max frequency is roughly 5kHz.
   Rickenbacker Bass Guitar- Starts at 0 seconds. Hits a height of -24dB. Their are a bunch of muted notes where there would be breaks usually.  The highest frequency is 7.7kHz
   FunkGuitar- Starts around half a second into the track and fades out between 11 and 14 seconds. The peak is -39dB and 7.7kHz
   Drums1- Starts at 0 seconds and the gong is struck around 11 seconds in and fades out until 16 seconds. The loudest amplitude of all the tracks at -27dB and has the highest frequency of 22kHz.
   DopeOrgan- Starts at 2 seconds in and ends at 11 seconds in. Each held in long note is followed by short spikes of notes. The track peaks at 36dB and about 10.8kHz
   DloopandAnnouncer- The first part of the track starts at 2.5 seconds and ends at 5.5. The second part of the track starts at 12.5 seconds and fades out at 16 seconds. The drum waveform is a clear repetition 4 times, the voice waveform is unpredictable and varies in amplitude. They peak at 27dB and 21.8kHz.
   CEPVoices- Starts at 5.5 seconds and fades out until 13.5 seconds. there is minimal breaks and the voices are fairly high pitch. Peaks at 24dB and 22kHz.
4. Use the mix feature of Audacity for each track to create the final mix for this jingle. Be sure to use control-A to select all of each wav before mixing to the waveform mix waveform. Check that the waveform sounds as expected. (It should be identical to the OriginalJingleMix track)
   

   

   
   

   The waveform I created sounds exactly the same as the Original JungleMix track .

Creating your own version of the mix

Using the previously explored features of Audacity, modify the component wav files before mix to produce a new style of mix…

1. Make the Bass Guitar less prominent, Make the guitar sound smoother and Make the whole mix sound as if it was recorded in a large room.
   

   

   I used the equalizer effect to equalize the amplitude of the piece making the bass guitars less prominent. 

   
   

   I changed the frequency of the guitar to make it slightly less high pitched and it's amplitude to make it louder.

   For the large room recording effect I used reverb and set the room size to 100%.
2. Make a special mix to your own taste, you may edit each individual track before mixing as many time as you feel necessary experimentation is the key here. You can even record you own tracks if you wish or add wavs obtained from freesound.org in the mix.
   

   

   
   

Matching an audio track to video events

In the early days this was called “Mickey mousing” where an organist in the cinema would improvise sounds to match the events taking place in cartoons and movies. This aimed to create a sense of drama, suspense, excitement and surprise in the mind of the viewer. We can do the same with video computer games or animation. Open the OldMovie file using Microsoft Movie Maker. Watch the film many times and make a note of any events that you consider important. When do they start when do they stop? Are they sudden or gradual?

The music starts as the title card of the video shows and keeps playing as we see the person swing as if we are to think he was already swinging on the flying fox before we saw him.
The guitar stops suddenly at the same time the person puts his feet down to stop himself.
The guitarist resumes finger plucking as the person unharnesses himself and a chord is abruptly played as soon as he finishes.
The guitar resumes as soon as we see another person start swinging along.
One note is held in as their is a time skip kind of like an ellipsis.
Around 35 seconds in the music starts to play slowly and calmly as if the video will end soon.
At 45 seconds the final chord plays as the conclusion to the video and the ending title shows up.

Open-ended task

Use Wavosaur and any wavs from today’s exercise or freesound.org to create an appropriate Mickey mouse tack for the video being careful to match audio event times to video event times. Once again time, effort and experimentation are key here.

When you are happy with audio track mix it into the video and ask a fellow student to assess your final product. (Use Microsoft Movie Maker to replace the audio track with the one that you have created.)

Keep all of your audio and video work from today’s session as you will be required to submit it on week 12.

I added an audience cheer whenever someone is about to complete their swing, each cheer is amplified so it gets louder every time it's played. There is a total of 4 cheers one for each swing.
I did this to make the video gradually more exciting, the music is very laid back and relaxing and it contrasts with the excitement of the swinging, I added  the cheers to aid in portraying the excitement the people swinging had at the time.
Here is a link to my Mickey mouse track for the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PO3Ivj6ooY8

Audacity Lab 2

AIVP Laboratory 2 2014

Audio Signal Processing – Generating Signals with Audacity.

Make lab notes, sketches, graphs complete tables and answer questions.

Tones, Harmonics, Spectra and Spectrograms

1. -PCM stands for pulse-code modulation, a digital representation of an analog signal (in this case, sound waves). The more bits you use, the more accurate the digital representation. But in addition to bits, there's another thing that influences the quality. It's the frequency, which is measured in kilohertz (kHz). Audio CD quality is 16 bit and 44.1 kHz, so if you're ripping to WAV files that's the highest quality you need to use. Any higher and you'll just be using more space without improving quality.
2. Use Audacity Help at any time.
3. Use the Generate->Tone option to generate 1 second of a sinusoid (single pure tone) of frequency 440 Hz at amplitude 1, mono, 16bit, sample rate (frequency) 44100 kHz. Save the pure tone as a *.wav file in C:\TEMP or on your pen drive if you have one.
   
   This is my tone generation.
   
   
4. (I used units aproximately close to 1/3, 1/7 and 1/9 in audacity)

Harmonic Number	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
Amplitude relative to Fundamental Let it be x	1 1	0	1/3 0.333	0	1/5 0.2	0	1/7 0.143	0	1/9 0.111
Amplitude in dB 20 log x	0		-9.55		-13.98		-16.89		-19.09

Here is the fundamental followed by all the harmonics before they were added together

When added together they made this wave form

5. When the fundamental and all of the harmonics are combined the waveform is approaching a square shape, the amplitude becomes an average of the combined amplitudes it stays almost as loud as the fundamental meaning the harmonics only affect it slightly. When the wave peaks and rises transitioning between every box shaped wave those are periods when most of the harmonic waves were transitioning (think of each harmonic like a vote and on average most of them want to go down at certain points and up at others). The frequency of the whole box if you look at the wave that way isn't changed much from the fundamental but the waves within that shape are affected strongly by the fundamentals.
6. Similarly to the previous lab view the frequency content (Magnitude Spectrum) of the waveform using the Analyse->Plot Spectrum option. Compare the peaks in this display with the fundamental and the harmonics you have added to it. Sketch or cut and paste the spectrum in your lab note and describe it.

fundamental

3rd harmonic added

5th harmonic added

7th harmonic added

9th harmonic added

With the addition of each harmonic the amplitude peak for each harmonic is lower than the previous, the fundmental hits 0dB and the 3rd harmonic hits -11.5dB, the frequency goes up by roughly a third each time a fundmental is added, I came to this conclusion due to the fundamental frequency appearing as 2000Hz and after the 3rd, 5th and 7th harmonic are combined it appears as 4000Hz 

5. Now view the Spectrogram of the waveform using the audio track triangle and selecting spectrum setting. Describe and sketch this result in your note. Save the final waveform as a *.wav file in C:\TEMP. Listen to the waveform and compare it with the sound of the original pure tone sinusoid.

Spectogram shows intensity by colour or brightness on the axis of frequency and time.

With all the harmonics added it sounds higher pitched than the pure tone due to the added frequency each time a harmonic is added. The original tones amplitude peaks higher than the harmonic tone although each wave doesn't stay there for long, the harmonic tone's amplitude is louder overall due to the box shape wave less of a break descending from the high amplitude.
As a listener the harmonic tone sounded more unpleasant than the original due to the consistent loud tone that there is less of a break from.

8. Now start afresh and add to the Fundamental pure tone the harmonics up to and including the 5^th in the proportions shown below. Display and sketch the waveform each time you add another harmonic.

Harmonic Number	1	2	3	4	5
Amplitude relative to Fundamental x	1 1	1/2 0.5	1/3 0.333	1/4 0.25	1/5 0.20
20 log x	0	-6.02	-9.55	-12.04	-13.98

fundamental

fundamental spectrum

2nd harmonic added

3rd harmonic

4th harmonic

5th harmonic

9. What shape is the waveform gradually approaching?
   The wave gradually becomes more and more of a sawtooth shaped wave.
10. View the frequency content (Magnitude Spectrum) of the waveform as previously. Identify the peaks in this display with the fundamental and the harmonics you have added to it. Sketch it in your lab note.
    Pictured above. 
11. Like the first time each time a harmonic is added it's amplitude peak is lower than the wave before it, however the frequency is increasing at half the rate compared to the first time, I think this is because the first time we moved up 2 successive waves (1-3-5...) and this time we were moving up 1 (1-2-3...) and each successive wave has a higher frequency so if we increment 2 harmonics at a time the  frequency will end up roughly double as high.

The tone sounds flatter than the fundamental tone, it also sounds like it's buzzing, the pitch is medium in between the original tone and the 9th harmonic tone I created earlier.

Noise, Mixing, Signal-to-noise ratio, and Filtering

1. Open the waveform noise1.wav This is a white noise file. Listen to this nuisance file. View and sketch this waveform in the time domain and in the frequency domain.
   
   

   

   
   
2. Add a sinusoid of amplitude 0.02, 1kHz frequency of 1s duration. Does the resulting waveform look sinusoidal? How does it sound? How does it look in the frequency domain?

   

   The resulting waveform is shaped like sine wave so it is sinusoidal. The tone is a high pitched beep not as loud as the others though. The trough is at 10.2 dB and the frequency peaks at 1000 Hz.

   
   
   
3. View and sketch the spectrum, view the spectrogram, and listen to the waveform. Locate the pure tone if possible. Save the mixed waveform as an *.wav file in C:\TEMP.
   
   
   
   
   
   
4. Try using the Effect Graphic Equaliser options of Audacity to select the tone and reject the noisy in the waveform( we need a slider at max at 1000KHz and sliders at zero elsewhere if possible). Does the waveform look more sinusoidal than before? If so is the period of the waveform approaching that of the original pure tone? How does it sound? To what extent did this filtering work?
   

   

   The waveform does look more sinusoidal than before. The period of the waveform is approaching that of the original pure tone. There isn't as much white noise as before although there is still some. The filtering has worked somewhat.
5. On waveforms of your choice from freesound.org explore the effect of the other filter options that are available.
   

   

   I used a stereo wave form of a 5 second piano riff.

   
   

   

   To begin with i reversed the track making it sound very surreal like playing a record in reverse you hear the echo of each note before each note is played. I added fade to the end of the wave worm, there was originally a large amplitude spike at the start which became a large spike at the end when I reversed it, I added fade to smoothly transition out of the track, this got rid of the problem of the large amplitude spike and brings the track to a calm finish.

Week 3 - Human hearing

•Sound: Sounds are vibrations

•Ear: Divided into your outer, middle and inner ear

•Cochlea: Part of your inner ear, where your actual organ of hearing is located

•The outer ear consists of the pinna, ear canal and eardrum•The middle ear consists of the ossicles and ear drum•The inner ear consists of the cochlea, the auditory (hearing) nerve and the brain

•Locating sounds: Sound reaches your two ears at different times, enabling you to locate its source

•Ears, nerves and brain: Your ears are your organs of hearing. In order to hear, however, you also need your cochlear nerves to transmit nerve impulses to your brain, which then interpret the sounds coming from the world surrounding you.

Week 3 - Focus of Activity

1. λ=v/f.  333/1000 = 0.333 metres.
Remembering the Vfλ triangle/calculations are important here.
I learned acoustic waves travel with the speed (velocity) of sound, 333m/s.
2.  λ=v/f. 5000/440 = 11.4 metres.
I learned concert pitch is 440Hz.
Through a steel which is a solid, sound travels through steel at 5,000m/s
I am assuming the question I am being asked is the wavelength of the sound when it is travelling through the tuning fork.
3. f=v/λ. 333/3.33 = 100Hz.
Sound travels quickest through a solid with the particles being so close together.
4. The duration of a cycle is a second divided by the frequency.
So the duration of the cycle with a frequency of 20Hz is:
1/20s = 0.05 seconds.
5. A standing wave can occur because the medium is moving in the opposite direction to the wave, or it can arise in a stationary medium as a result of interference between two waves traveling in opposite directions.
A real life example of this is gliders using standing waves that form in the lee of mountain ranges to their advantage.

6. Where two waves meet, their effects are added together. This is called interference.
When they arrive in step, they reinforce each other to give a wave of greater amplitude. This is called constructive interference.
When they arrive out of step, they cancel out. This is called destructive interference.
7. The amplitude of an acoustic wave determines its loudness.
8. Decibel is used to indicate the level of acoustic waves and electronic signals. The logarithmic scale can describe very big or very small numbers with shorter notation.
9. A 1KHz tone has a period of 1/1000 or 0.001s. So it will take 20/0.001 = 20,000 seconds
A 10Hz tone has a period of 1/10 or 0.1s. So it will take  20/0.1 = 200 seconds.
10. The speed of sound in water is slower than in a solid because the particles are more spaced out, however, it is faster than in air because the particles are closer together.