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| Counter Creatures by Ferrel D. Moore |
This is the third of three podcasts we're doing to learn something about the way this technology works. It is the longest of the three- the original story is roughly 8,000 words. That makes it about an hour in length if you're brave enough to help out and see how it plays.
"Blunt Ed" (screenhandle) at Shocklines gave us the following feedback after checking out the download size of this latest podcast:
"Take a look at Audacity -- http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ -- it's a free prog for recording. By the look of your file sizes, you've probably got too high a bitrate for voice. I went to stream your reading, but it didn't start for me, so I went to right click and save the file to my hard drive and found it was 230 meg or so. If that's at 180 k sampling rate, you could reduce the file size by two thirds by reducing the bit rate to 60 k, which is usually fine for voice recordings. Changing from a .wav file to an .mp3 format will make a huge difference, too."
Great advice. We'll be re-formatting these and re-presenting them on the new magazine along with other authors reading their stories. So thanks again for helping the staff learn.
Remember, this is roughly an hour in length. So make popcorn if you're going to listen. Let me know how long you think an audio podcast should be. How long is too long for you as a listener? 5 minutes? 10 minutes? 30 minutes?
To hear the audio presentation of "Counter Creatures," by Ferrel D. Moore, click LISTEN .
6 comments:
Almost made it to the end of the story, but after 45 minutes, I simply couldn't listen to it anymore.
What I heard was pretty good, but it reminded me why I don't listen to audio books anymore or dabble in podcasts: sometimes the details that make a story riveting when you read it, don't translate well to the spoken word.
You are a natural when it comes to giving public readings, and it was a pleasure listening to you read this story.
I'm with you, G. And one of the things I'm hoping to gauge is how long people will spend listening to an audio podcast.
Counter Creatures is 8,000 wods and just about an hour in length. And if you think it was long to listen to, you should try reading it out loud!
I think think 2,500 words or 15 minutes will about top out people's attention span and that Flash Fiction- say between 500 words and 1000 words- will run the best for listeners.
I really appreciate your honesty on this G because I've never done this before.
I definitely think the shorter lengths will work better. It's not the listening time, per se, because I often listen to longer audio material while in the car. It's very difficult to follow something long on the computer and while surfing the net because there are so many competing demands on your time. In making my rounds today, for example, there were at least five different blogs with audio features embedded, and you can only do one at a time.
This has been a good learning experience, Charles. I see what you and G mean and I'll adjust the time down for audio readings to something much, much shorter- say 5-10 minutes tops. Does that sound better?
Hi Rick
I'm back again and have almost finished listening to your whole story.
Oh, all done now at 53:28.
The story was a bit long for me but I had to keep on listening!
Wonderful story!
Wondeful reading!!!
Margie :)
Thanks, Margie! This whole exercise has been a wonderful experience for me. Without eveyone's input, I wouldn't have know to keep the story's short- so thanks to everyone for helping me.
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