Record Your Own Audio Book

Books on tape have been around a long time, when I was younger we would sometimes get an audio book to listen to in the car on a long trip. Now that people carry mp3 players almost everywhere there is no reason to wait for a road trip to listen to a good book. And, like ebooks, there isn't the pressure to sell huge volumes that is inherent when publishing a printed book, so it is much easier to get into. In fact with just some audio recording software and a high quality microphone you can get started recording your first audio book.

Once you have decided to record an audio book you can start getting prepared. You want to be very familiar with the text. Read first and record second. You can do some editing of the audio after recording, but you want to keep that to a minimum and keep a flow to the prose. Being familiar with the text will help you keep a steady pace. Keep your pace in check, you don't want to zip through it fast so that the listener can really appreciate and hear everything you are reading. In addition to keeping that slow pace, be sure to add pauses after sentences and paragraphs, and beware being monotone. Try to breathe some life into your reading, no one will want to listen to you drone on in a flat voice. Another suggestion would be to consider printing out a hard copy of the book. Unbound, single-sided pages will make page turning easy.

Once you are prepared you just need to schedule yourself a chunk of quiet time to sit down and start recording. You can estimate the total amount of time you will need by timing how long it takes you to read through a single page and multiply by the number of pages. For a longer book you might want to break it out into more than one sitting. A good choice for audio recording is WavePad Sound Editor. By recording directly into an audio editor like WavePad you can easily go in to the recorded audio file when you are done recording to cut out any places you might have stumbled or make any other adjustment that might be needed like amplifying or equalizing the audio file or eliminating any background noise that might have crept in. And if you recorded in more than one session you can merge the files together before publishing your final mp3 file and sharing it with the world.

Record DJ Mixes Live

The ability to not only save a playlist but record a DJ mixing session to an audio files was a highly requested feature for Zulu DJ Software for a long time running. Now that this feature has been added, we want to give you a quick look at how you can put it to good use for recording your DJ mixes:

Between the two decks there is a Recording indicator, just above the cross-fader. If you click on this indicator with nothing queued in the deck it opens the Recording Options dialog where you can set the output format, destination folder and file name. With your options set once you are ready to start recording click the indicator again to start or stop recording. The recording indicator will blink while recording is in progress. Note if you don't use the date-time stamp to name your recordings you will need to specify a new format, folder, or file name to avoid overwriting your previous recordings.

That is all there is to it. For quick access to your recordings you can open the destination recording folder from the file menu. Then you will be all set to share, save or edit your recorded DJ mixes with WavePad.

Record Video from Anywhere

Debut Video Capture Software records and captures video from webcams, recording devices, and from your computer screen. It’s great for recording tutorials you can post to online sites such as YouTube, for making company messages, for recording streaming video, and more. See for yourself how easy it is to get started capturing and recording videos in this Debut video tutorial:

Mac Video Capture Software

I am thrilled to announce that Debut video capture software is now available for Mac as well as for Windows. I have long appreciated the features of Debut for recording video from a webcam or video screen capture, even capturing video from an external video capture device. We use Debut in our office on a regular basis to record video clips for the developers to show them bugs when testing products and recording video clips for our tutorial videos.

While I have used the Windows version of Debut numerous time, and even turned several friends and family members on to Debut (Ask Dad: Debut is a Simple Solution ), since I have a Mac at home I too have anxiously awaiting the release of the Mac version for those numerous occasions when it would be the perfect solution for grabbing a video clip. Now that my wait is finally over I hope that other Mac users out there will be as excited as I am about this addition to our Mac software line-up. Download Debut video capture software today and let us know what you think.

7 Programs You Can't Live Without

Prism Video Converter If you've ever had trouble opening a video file, you need Prism. Prism will let you quickly convert any troublesome video files into a more manageable format. With more formats supported than any other video converter, you'll be hard pressed to come across a video file that Prism can't handle.

Switch Audio Converter There are a lot of different audio file formats out there, and a lot of places you might want to keep your favorite music, from CDs and iPods to your computer or online, just to name a few. Make sure you always have the right format for every song and every application with the Switch Audio Converter.

FastFox Typing Expander Ever find yourself typing the same things over and over? FastFox can be a huge helping hand at home or at work. Use keyboard shortcuts to expand to anything you commonly write, and save time inserting signatures in email, filling out online forms, and writing long responses to customer questions.

Debut Video Capture Whether you want to transfer the video from a camcorder to your computer, are trying to record a video from your webcam, or even recording your screen, Debut is your single software solution for capturing video.

Express Burn Disc Burning Software Burn pictures, home movies, resumes, portfolios, or back up your files to CDs, DVDs and even Blue-Ray discs in a variety of file formats with Express Burn. Simply drag, drop and burn.

PhotoStage Slideshow Creator Bring your digital photos to life and share your favorite memories with family and friends. Tell a compelling story, display your best images, or show off your proudest moments. PhotoStage lets you combine images, video clips, music and narration in a fun and dynamic fashion.

WavePad Audio Editor No list would be complete without one of our all-time favorites: WavePad. WavePad is the perfect application for any audio project in the sound studio or at home. The easy-to-use interface will have you up and running quickly with all the powerful tools you need at your fingertips.

Boost Audio Quality for Radio and Podcast Production

From radio to podcasting, having high quality audio matters. So if you are recording and producing audio content, NCH Software's top audio software duo Wavepad audio editor and Mixpad multitrack recorder and mixer will provide you with the audio tools you need to produce high quality audio to your listeners. Just ask the people behind The Yes Hour Radio Show, a growing radio program that will be increasing their broadcasts in January. As they grow they have been committed to providing the highest quality audio to their listeners, so one of the recent changes they've made was changing their audio editing software and coming to NCH:

"The first thing we've done, which you might have noticed, is to change our editing software. We initially started by using magic studio, which served its purpose for a small production, but as things grew, that is, as we began to develop our content for The Yes Hour and invited guests on the show we decided to try another program called Mixpad and it's editing component Wavepad... These two NCH Software applications have enabled us to do so much, including recording on a multi-track bed, editing telephone interviews, importing new music from local and existing artists."

– Serious Voice of New York, The Yes Hour Radio Show

If you are producing your own radio show, or any other audio project, we hope you too will check out the full range of audio software and software for radio stations we provide to help make you sound your best.

Create Unique Sounds with MixPad and WavePad

MixPad is typically used as a multitrack audio recorder and mixer instead of spending 10’s of thousands of dollars for a professional multitrack mixing desk. However, I like to use MixPad to create a variety of unique sounds I can use as sound effects or to play on my synthesizer. These sound effects can be used in commercials, movies, videos, music, audio programs, or by DJs on the radio. I still have a synthesizer in my basement midi studio that utilizes waveform oscillators to create sounds. One of them was advanced for the time and had 3 oscillators to create sound. With MixPad, I can create sounds with a virtually unlimited number of oscillators by loading snippets of sounds on the tracks and mixing them to create a new unique sound. MixPad has given me a range of possibilities I hadn’t had before.

To create your own sounds, once MixPad and WavePad are installed, all you need is a sound or waveform. You can get this from WavePad’s new sound library, NCH Tone Generator (another handy program from NCH Software), load an mp3 from your computer, rip tracks from a cd, or record a new sound with a microphone. I would begin in WavePad and play around with the sound. Listen to it forwards, backwards, apply live effects, etc. Once you have the fundamental sound, you can load it into MixPad to mix with other sounds. MixPad will allow you to stagger and mix the various snippets of sound you create. The result is a unique sound envelope that is yours and doesn't exist anywhere else in the world. Vanilla Ice could have learned a lot from this simple technique back in the early 90’s.