Jump to content
Light-O-Rama Forums

I need a Zara Radio Guru to consult


Bowshock

Recommended Posts

Great news! The Demented Elf is going to make voices public for Zara Radio! So we will have a professional voice for you to download. If you happen to use Kevin for your show or radio announcements, everything will match. Talk about seamless, quality productions!

Kevin has been the voice of my show and radio station now for 3 years now! I'll include a few samples from my radio station so you can hear how nice complete voice solution is.



I'm hoping to get the whole package out sometime in August. Let's give Kevin enough time to make some quality files. There are 360 files for him to record... Be patient.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

michael.farney wrote:

Michael R. Zlatic wrote:
The tutorial is video based; no PPT needed.  You'll have the full miniplus presentation and then some.  Give me 2 weeks or so...


Hey Michael...

What's the status of the tutorial?

Thanks for your hard work on this!
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Bowshock wrote:

michael.farney wrote:
Michael R. Zlatic wrote:
The tutorial is video based; no PPT needed. You'll have the full miniplus presentation and then some. Give me 2 weeks or so...


Hey Michael...

What's the status of the tutorial?

Thanks for your hard work on this!



50% give or take. The said miniplus presentation (introduction to zara) is done. The final copy of that spun off the computer yesterday. The second video (zara integration to LOR) is taken but not edited. The third video (my setup with all the bells and whistles) is not started. The webpage also has a good start to the text portion. Kevin motored through all the files, so I have those too. I'll probably be close to wrapping up the video portion (30+ minutes) this weekend, and then integration into a web page will begin.

If you have seen any of the other videos on http://LORsequences.com, you'll see these things are very detailed. I'm reorganizing the so called "Sequencing 101" on LORsequences.com, and rebranding it into a new structure which doesn't limit to LOR (and thus supports this tutorial.) So this little project has breathed new life into that project which has been dead for over a year. I am hoping to add a few chapters this year, particularly on a couple subjects like this one that have taken interest lately.

At any rate, end of August is the target.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

michael.farney wrote:

I need a volunteer or two who would be willing to do some proofing on the tutorial. We're nearing completion, folks!


What do you need me to do? I can help.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

michael.farney wrote:

I need a volunteer or two who would be willing to do some proofing on the tutorial. We're nearing completion, folks!


I am more than willing to be a ginny pig.

Ryan
Link to comment
Share on other sites

michael.farney wrote:

I need a volunteer or two who would be willing to do some proofing on the tutorial. We're nearing completion, folks!

Count me in.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

michael.farney wrote:

I need a volunteer or two who would be willing to do some proofing on the tutorial. We're nearing completion, folks!

The request is now closed. PMs sent.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I want to give my thanks to joshua, clueless, and bisquit476 for taking time to proof read the tutorial draft and make comments on how to improve the quality of the content. Their suggestions will not only help make the tutorial easier to use and understand, but it will also make sure the content at the right level for our target audience. THANK YOU for your help!

:(:):dude::dude:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Feedback has been pouring in and I've been making lots of gramatical fixes to the tutorial. There have also been several other great suggestions for improvements. The only thorn we're having right now is that time announcements with automatic gain control (AGC) turned on causes extra, unwanted noise. It seems AGC improperly boosts spaces in the time files and produces static in the announcements. We're doing some work to see if this issue can be resolved, but research is pointing to Zara's AGC being too agressive. There are several reports of this issue from other Zara Radio users with no resolution. The files work fine with AGC turned off. We're investigating to see if there is anything we can do with the files themselves to make the problem less if not go away completely. If anyone has any Zara experience with AGC and time file static, let me know!

The tutorial launches next weekend, rain or shine, static or not! :)

Stay tuned...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have been working with michael in proofing the tutorial. As Michael had previously noted the problems we have been having are with the time/temp and humidity files. We did get them cleaned up a bit and have corrected the problem as much as we are going to get it at this time. I have been bench testing the files with one of our audio engineers at the television station I work at to see if we can correct this problem. This is directley from him.

"I played them in several different programs and they all seemto play OK. It may be possible that the max sampling rate of 48K cannot be handled for the AGC however since we converted all the files and still noticed the problem this may not be the case it seems the AGC code that zara uses is too aggressive, the settings for for the playback of the time/temp/humidity are partically effected. The gate and threshold settings are not set up correctly. The gate seems to open too fast and the threshold is set to high. If you listen close it is possible to hear a cycle in the music files also, although this is not as detectable as individual files like the time/temp files, which seem to play fine in a playlist so something tells me there is a settings problem between the playlist and direct access to the mp3's in the specific folders. Although the misc audio on the head and tail of the clips were under 5db Zara amplified this many more times than the original level. Greg I would recommend you not to use the AGC setting for now. "

We have done everything we could think of, converted them to different sampling rates, ran them through various filters, played them with different versions of Zara, re-dubbed them to different formats and couldn't correct the problem totally. In the end we simply cleaned them up a bit, they do work now, however, you may experience some pops/or static. Believe me this is much better then when we started. Take note, this only happens when you have the AGC(automatic gain control) turned on. Everything is fine if you have this setting off. I normally run Zara with AGC off which was recommended to me. I would also recommend this setting.

Greg

michael.farney wrote:

Feedback has been pouring in and I've been making lots of gramatical fixes to the tutorial. There have also been several other great suggestions for improvements. The only thorn we're having right now is that time announcements with automatic gain control (AGC) turned on causes extra, unwanted noise. It seems AGC improperly boosts spaces in the time files and produces static in the announcements. We're doing some work to see if this issue can be resolved, but research is pointing to Zara's AGC being too agressive. There are several reports of this issue from other Zara Radio users with no resolution. The files work fine with AGC turned off. We're investigating to see if there is anything we can do with the files themselves to make the problem less if not go away completely. If anyone has any Zara experience with AGC and time file static, let me know!

The tutorial launches next weekend, rain or shine, static or not! :)

Stay tuned...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Greg wrote:

I have been working with michael in proofing the tutorial. As Michael had previously noted the problems we have been having are with the time/temp and humidity files. We did get them cleaned up a bit and have corrected the problem as much as we are going to get it at this time. I have been bench testing the files with one of our audio engineers at the television station I work at to see if we can correct this problem. This is directley from him.

"I played them in several different programs and they all seemto play OK. It may be possible that the max sampling rate of 48K cannot be handled for the AGC however since we converted all the files and still noticed the problem this may not be the case it seems the AGC code that zara uses is too aggressive, the settings for for the playback of the time/temp/humidity are partically effected. The gate and threshold settings are not set up correctly. The gate seems to open too fast and the threshold is set to high. If you listen close it is possible to hear a cycle in the music files also, although this is not as detectable as individual files like the time/temp files, which seem to play fine in a playlist so something tells me there is a settings problem between the playlist and direct access to the mp3's in the specific folders. Although the misc audio on the head and tail of the clips were under 5db Zara amplified this many more times than the original level. Greg I would recommend you not to use the AGC setting for now. "

We have done everything we could think of, converted them to different sampling rates, ran them through various filters, played them with different versions of Zara, re-dubbed them to different formats and couldn't correct the problem totally. In the end we simply cleaned them up a bit, they do work now, however, you may experience some pops/or static. Believe me this is much better then when we started. Take note, this only happens when you have the AGC(automatic gain control) turned on. Everything is fine if you have this setting off. I normally run Zara with AGC off which was recommended to me. I would also recommend this setting.

Greg

michael.farney wrote:
Feedback has been pouring in and I've been making lots of gramatical fixes to the tutorial. There have also been several other great suggestions for improvements. The only thorn we're having right now is that time announcements with automatic gain control (AGC) turned on causes extra, unwanted noise. It seems AGC improperly boosts spaces in the time files and produces static in the announcements. We're doing some work to see if this issue can be resolved, but research is pointing to Zara's AGC being too agressive. There are several reports of this issue from other Zara Radio users with no resolution. The files work fine with AGC turned off. We're investigating to see if there is anything we can do with the files themselves to make the problem less if not go away completely. If anyone has any Zara experience with AGC and time file static, let me know!

The tutorial launches next weekend, rain or shine, static or not! :)

Stay tuned...




Thanks for the update Greg. I will be releasing everything sometime this weekend. There are a small amount of cleanup items left.

As for AGC, this is personal preference. I prefer to have it turned on myself, because the files I use do occasionally need the gain corrected. For everyone else, I'd say try it both ways, and if you don't see any advantage with AGC, then turn it off.

One last side note: The English Male announcements work just fine with AGC. So you are not stuck if you wish to use the AGC normalizing feature. In fact, in my 3 years of running Zara Radio, I've never run it with AGC off.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...