#Ocenaudio instructions download#
#Ocenaudio instructions free#

There are two other things to think about when you reach the point of saving your newly edited file: the name and audio properties of the file. Before pressing “Save,” though, make sure that you have backup copies of your original, unedited sound file. The final step is to save the changes that you have made to your sound file. After normalizing the sound file to -3 dB, our Western Meadowlark recording looks like this: This is very easy to do in Ocenaudio, which has a convenient “Normalize” command in the Effects menu, under “Amplitude”. By setting the peak level of your recording to -3 dB, you’ll be creating a sound file that is consistent with the thousands of sound files archived in the same way at the Macaulay Library. Returning to our Western Meadowlark example, we now have a sound file that looks like this:Īfter trimming the ends of the sound file, the next step is to normalize the recording so the loudest sound from your target species reaches a level of -3 dB. So, we will instead create a shorter buffer that ends immediately after the handling noise, creating a clean one-second buffer before the first Lazuli Bunting song: If we included a three-second buffer in this case, the loud handling noise would prevent us from normalizing the recording. However, loud handling noise caused by the recordist moving occurs shortly before the Lazuli Bunting song: In the sound file below, the target species, Lazuli Bunting, begins singing near the 4-second mark: In some cases, it is not possible to create a clean three-second buffer immediately before the first target sound. In our Western Meadowlark recording, there are about three seconds of additional audio that we will delete:Īfter trimming the beginning of your recording, go ahead and do the same thing at the end of your recording-look for the last sound from your target species, include a three-second buffer of ambient sound after that sound, and then trim any additional audio after the buffer.

But if there is any additional audio before the buffer, go ahead and delete it. In a case like this, you should include this three-second buffer of ambient sound in the final sound file that you add to eBird. Looking at the waveform of this recording, we see that the three seconds that are highlighted are “clean audio,” with no recordist noise or prominent, potentially confusing background species. The first step is to listen to the recording, find where the first sound from the target species occurs, and then highlight the three seconds immediately before that sound: Below is a single sound file, without any pauses, with four songs from a Western Meadowlark:

If you have a single sound recording that you’d like to add to an eBird checklist, it can be prepared in just a few easy steps. With this approach, using the “Save” function will just make changes to a file that you have specifically designated for editing purposes. To deal with this issue, the Macaulay Library recommends keeping two copies of your original sound files (one on your computer and another on an external hard drive), and making edits to a third copy.

Ocenaudio is a destructive editing program, which means that if you edit a file and then use the “Save” function, the file will be permanently altered to reflect the changes you made.

#Ocenaudio instructions download#

For a more in-depth overview of using this program, you can also download our Editing sound recordings in Ocenaudio PDF.

#Ocenaudio instructions free#

Ocenaudio is a free sound editing program that works well for preparing audio recordings for submission to eBird and the Macaulay Library.