Texts referenced in this post: “Mulimedia Basics: Text” & “Multimedia Basics: Sound” byDr. Estrella Jorgenson
“WorldWideWaveForms” by Thad Brown
There were parts of these readings that were comprehensible for a digital immigrant such as myself. Much of the “Text” article by Dr. Jorgenson made sense. I now know what many of the font terms I’ve seen in past mean, such as Sans Serif, Postscript, and TrueType. I understand that a word processing program takes the keys I type and assigns a binary number to it in a language that can be understood by all computers. I was not aware that RTF and HTML were related. I assumed that HTML specifically pertained to websites but this is not the case. HTMLs are word processed documents and I wonder if it’s possible to type reports in the form of HTML as opposed to a Word document. I guess I’m still a little confused on the differences between the various file formats.
I enjoyed reading the “Sound” article as well, which began fairly basic. It described what exactly sound is and how it is picked-up by the human ear vs. how it is picked-up by recording devices. Sound waves are transformed into pictures of the electronic voltage they produce. With cassette tapes, these pictures are printed onto a magnetic tape and the picture is eventually read back by the stereo. However, digital recording is different because they actually assign numbers to the voltage signal and no picture is created. Another term I’ve apparently been confused about is kilohertz, which actually refers to the quality of a recording and not the amplitude. Kiloherz refers to the amount of sound which is being picked-up every second (frames/sec.). The article became slightly too complicated for me after this; however, the author’s overriding point was that recordings of higher quality sound take-up more space.
I was not aware that Apple’s QuickTime was a free application. This software could certainly have many benefits for music educators but I’m looking forward to understanding the technology better. I have enjoyed taping my teaching endeavors since being here at Case but I have struggled to actually post the video clips onto my eportfolio. I was never trained how to do this and I have always had to ask for help from a friend. I wonder, however, if I will have access to the technology that will allow me to post videos online after leaving school (Case). I know I certainly cannot play mini DVs from my own computer. Dr. Jorgenson also suggested that I browse shareware.com which I now intend to do. I was confused, for example, rather or not MoviePlayer was a free application or if it was part of QuickTime or if it was an entirely separate package all together.
Thad Brown’s article discussed how recording software encodes sound. He explained the term which occurs when audio codecs simply eliminate sounds that have the same harmonic content of another, louder sound. It essentially takes away the softer sounds that are “not needed.” This seem alright, but it’s unfortunate that some of my performers might get cut from the performance simply due to the recording process. The subsequent discussion about MP3 files and the use of CBR or VBR was a little confusing but I think my main concern is that whatever sound clips I post on the internet can be heard by any listener who accesses the link, regardless of what type of computer they have. It’s not worth the work of posting the music online if people cannot actually play it. At one point in the article, the author mentioned the HTML code for embedding a sound file. I was excited to realize that I already know how to do that from this week’s tutorial!
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Thank you, Damon, for such a thoughtful addition to our MUED 420 blogosphere! I, too, thought HTML was language simply limited to the construction of websites. I suppose I might have made the connection earlier if I had taken the time to realize that on many email servers, RTF and HTML texts behave the same way in a browser. I'm glad this information was made available to us, though. I didn't know the real differences between all these different forms of media for the Internet. Placing videos online, at least the act of doing it, is very simple. What I didn't know until I read these articles was that a standard for what could be acceptable for certain types of media and, also, why some files are sometimes simply impracticable for use on the internet. The same can be said for audio files. I grew up with my father's analog recording equipment and while it was a very small leap to go from analog to digital, what was hard for me to quantify was what was acceptable and what might be an equivalency between mp3 and CD sound recordings. In Brown's article, he does mention how some information is reduced in a sound file. This has been one of my chief complaints about the use of mp3s as an acceptable source of high-quality sound recordings. On some audio sources, like PC speakers, for instance, the loss of material isn't detectable. In all likelihood, that loss wouldn't be detectable even on good home speakers or average headphones. The loss he's referring to I don't think refers to the cutting of a performer.
ReplyDeleteI am totally amazed by Quicktime. I didn't realize that Quicktime did animations, sound files, video, etc. etc. etc.. This could be a powerful tool for an eportfolio, especially since it is a free software that is available for download on every platform.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad to hear that some of these terms are starting to have new meaning for you. Hopefully this will all continue to become clearer throughout the rest of the semester.
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