2012 OLF audio

This page is to coordinate activities for editing the audio files from the 2012 Ohio LinuxFest. It is divided into a section for each SD card, which contains a number of talks. To claim a particular talk or set of talks, download the raw audio file from the linked directory and then change the entry in the "Editor" column from "unclaimed" to your name/e-mail address. If it takes you more than a few days to work on them, e-mail Vance, otherwise he may revert it back to "unclaimed" so someone else can pick it up.

More specific instructions on editing will appear at the end of this page. When you're done, name the resulting WAV file as ##.wav with the track number from the table. Compress the WAV files as FLACs (this saves upload time and storage space) and upload them to INSERT LOCATION.

Card 1

Early Penguin Talks

Track #	Title	Speaker	Raw File(s)	Editor
01	Freebase: Big Data and Archiving	Kirk Kimmel	SR000F.flac / SR000R.flac	unclaimed
02	SSH The Easy Way	Carl T. Miller	SR000F.flac / SR000R.flac	unclaimed
03	Physical Computing with Arduino and Linux	Ethan Dicks	SR001F.flac / SR001R.flac	unclaimed
04	Computer Reach, Ghana, and Free Software	Beth Lynn Eicher	SR002F.flac / SR002R.flac	unclaimed
05	Software Patents: What You Can Do	Deb Nicholson	SR002F.flac / SR002R.flac	unclaimed
06	MySQL Replication	Keith Larson	SR002F.flac / SR002R.flac	unclaimed
07	The Perfect Storm	Jon 'maddog' Hall	SR003F.flac / SR003R.flac	unclaimed

Track 1 Talks

Track #	Title	Speaker	Raw File(s)	Editor
21	Android Custom ROM Development with Kexec	Mike Kasick	STE-001.flac	unclaimed
22	Embedded Development with Linux	John J. McDonough	STE-001.flac	unclaimed
23	Collabograte: Open Source Collaboration	Kartik Subbarao	N/A; didn't use microphone
24	The Importance of Free Software and Accessibility	Jonathan Nadeau	STE-002.flac	unclaimed
25	Servers So Easy a Caveman Can Do It	Christopher Laco	STE-003.flac	unclaimed
26	The Road to 31 Flavors	Todd Robinson	STE-003.flac	unclaimed
27	Level Up: Linux and the Original Gameboy	Dru Streicher	STE-003.flac	unclaimed

Card 2

Track 2 Talks

Track #	Title	Speaker	Raw File(s)	Editor
31	Free Software for Audio and Video Production	Neil Clopton	STE-002.flac	unclaimed
32	Automating Video Editing with Open Source	Raul Suarez	STE-002.flac	unclaimed
33	Amahi - Powerful, Simple, Home Server	Alan Jachimiak	STE-003.flac	unclaimed
34	Imaging with FOG	Richard Gingerich	STE-003.flac	unclaimed
35	Customizing FreeNAS 8.3 Using Plugins Jail	Dru Lavigne	STE-004.flac	unclaimed
36	Creating a Self-Defending Network with Open Source	Steve McMaster	STE-004.flac	unclaimed
37	Highly Available Applications	Brian Likosar	STE-004.flac	unclaimed

Card 5

Track 4 Talks

Track #	Title	Speaker	Raw File(s)	Editor
41	We Will Be Legion: Decentralizing the Web	Deb Nicholson	STE-001.flac	unclaimed
42	How to Create Your Own Cloud	Joe Brockmeier	STE-001.flac	unclaimed
43	Aeolus: Deploying Across Clouds the Open Source Way	Mo Morsi	STE-002.flac	unclaimed
44	It Takes an Open Source Village to Build a Cloud	Joe Brockmeier	STE-002.flac	unclaimed

Closing Keynote Talks

Track #	Title	Speaker	Raw File(s)	Editor
71	Growing Up with Linux	Elizabeth Garbee	STE-003.flac	unclaimed
72	How to Create Ravenously Passionate Contributors	Angela Byron	STE-003.flac	unclaimed

Card 6

Opening Keynote Talk

Track #	Title	Speaker	Raw File(s)	Editor
11	Stopping SOPA and Its Spawn: Free Expression on the Internet	Wendy Seltzer	STE-001.flac	unclaimed

Track 3 Talks

Track #	Title	Speaker	Raw File(s)	Editor
12	Bedrock Linux	Daniel Thau	STE-001.flac	unclaimed
13	Introduction to PC-BSD 9	Kris Moore	STE-001.flac	unclaimed
14	What Are Open Source Communities Like?	Samuel Greenfeld	STE-003.flac	unclaimed
15	Extraterrestrial Adventures of an Open Source Community	Sarah White	STE-003.flac	unclaimed
16	Yes, You Can Run Your Business on PostgreSQL	Josh Williams	STE-004.flac	unclaimed
17	Fund Raising 101	Cat Allman	STE-004.flac	unclaimed

Card 7

Open Source Solutions Stage Talks

Track #	Title	Speaker	Raw File(s)	Editor
51	Advancements in Open Source Virtualization with KVM	Mike Day	STE-001.flac	unclaimed
52	Bringing Linux Essentials to the Classroom	Medina Dupuis	STE-001.flac	unclaimed
53	Open Source Initiatives at HP	Phil Robb	STE-002.flac	unclaimed
54	Help a Sysadmin Out!	Alex Juarez	STE-002.flac	unclaimed
55	Cloud Monitoring in 15 Minutes or Less	Rob Booth	N/A; didn't use microphone
56	Arista Networks Extensible Operating System	Darrin Machay	N/A; didn't use microphone

Card 9

Career Track Talks

Track #	Title	Speaker	Raw File(s)	Editor
61	The American Dream: Seven Steps to (Career) Ownership	Janine Moon	SR000F.flac / SR000R.flac	unclaimed
62	CoverMyMeds	Matt Scantland	SR000F.flac / SR000R.flac	unclaimed
63	2CheckOut	Alan Czako	SR000F.flac / SR000R.flac	unclaimed
64	The Perspective of Recruiters	Lou Russo and Rufus Smith	SR001F.flac / SR001R.flac	unclaimed
65	LPI: Catching the Wave of Open Source Careers	Ross Brunson	SR001F.flac / SR001R.flac	unclaimed
66	The Intentional Career	David Crone	SR001F.flac / SR001R.flac	unclaimed
67	Manta	Steven ?	SR002F.flac / SR002R.flac	unclaimed
68	Rackspace	Tricia Medina, Deborah Carter, Christine ?, ? Brown	SR002F.flac / SR002R.flac	unclaimed
69	You Inc. - Taking Control of Your Career	Ben Blanquera	SR002F.flac / SR002R.flac	unclaimed

Editing Instructions

Some general notes:

• Audacity works fine, and is what I'll describe. If you like something else better, use that.
• Take care not to change the sample rate from the original. Some files are 44.1 kHz, some are 48 kHz. Using File -> Import in Audacity will cause resampling to the project's rate. Use File -> Open instead to avoid this.
• The final product will be a separate 1-channel (mono) 16-bit PCM WAV file for each talk. Compress this into a FLAC file before uploading to save time and space.

There are two methods that were used for recording the talks. The Early Penguin and Career Track talks were recorded using the H2's four built-in microphones. This results in two stereo files with the names SR###F.wav and SR###R.wav. The "F" comes from the front microphones and the "R" from the rear ones. The rest of the talks were taken directly from the PA soundboard via the line-in jack. These have only a single stereo file named STE-###.wav. All of these were compressed into .flac files before uploading.

Separating talks

Load the STE-###.flac or SR###F.flac file into Audacity with File -> Open. If applicable, also import the matching SR###R.flac file using File -> Import. Locate the beginning of the talk in question. There may be some random discussion, so find the place where the speaker "officially" starts their presentation. Highlight and delete everything prior to this point (Edit -> Delete). If you have more than one track on screen, make sure you hit all of them.

Next you locate the end of the talk. This is after the speaker has finished and any open question-and-answer period. Some recordings may capture post-talk conversations that individuals are having with the speaker. These should not be included as they are not intended to be public. Highlight everything from this point to the end of all tracks, and then delete.

Selecting audio channel

From the drop-down track menu (the downward-pointing triangle at the upper left of the track), select Split Stereo to Mono for each track. Now your job is to choose which of these sounds the best. You can isolate tracks using the Mute and Solo buttons on each track.

If you're working on a STE-###.flac file, there should really be no difference. If you find that one has more noise or lower signal, then delete that track by clicking the X in the upper left; otherwise, pick one at random to delete.

For the SR###F.flac / SR###R.flac files, you'll probably find that one of the channels is louder than the others. Pick whichever one seems to have the best signal to noise ratio, then delete the rest using the X in the upper left.

Normalizing

At this point you'll have just one single mono track left. Make sure you do not have a selection made, or alternatively select the entire track. Now you'll want to change the display to Waveform (dB) using the drop-down track menu (the triangle in the upper left of the track). You can zoom in by left-clicking on the scale or zoom out by right-clicking.

You should see something like the above (minus the red and green lines). The red line represents the noise floor: that is, the amount of sound present when no one is talking. For STE-###.flac files, you can probably just set this to -60 dB and not worry about it, since noise shouldn't be a problem there. For the SR###F/R.flac files, you'll have to listen and pick a reasonable value (take note that this can only be adjusted in 5 dB steps). Here we've chosen -55 dB.

The green line indicates the threshold value. This is the point at which the effect starts to tamp down the louder peaks so that the entire track has a more consistent volume level. Set this around the level of the most quiet parts of the speech. Here we're using -50 dB. Try not to set this too close to the noise floor; a 5 dB difference is probably as close as you want to be.

Now we select Effect -> Compressor from the menu and get a dialog like the below.

As discussed, we have set the threshold at -50 dB and the noise floor at -55 dB. Those two settings are the only ones that need to be changed from one speech to another. Make the ratio 10:1, attack time 0.1 secs, and decay time 1.0 secs. Check the box for Make-up gain, and uncheck the one for Compress based on Peaks. Then click OK and wait a few minutes for it to work its magic.

When complete, you should get something like the above. The times where the speaker is talking should be no lower than -15 dB, and preferably -12 dB or greater. This example is quite noisy, so you don't see as much differentiation between periods of speech and periods of silence. Take a listen and if you're not happy, hit Edit -> Undo and try again with different settings.

Saving

Once you're happy with the way things sound, go to File -> Export. You can select "WAV signed 16 bit PCM" as the format, or if it's supported choose "FLAC" from within Audacity (make sure under "Options" you choose 16 bit). Name the file with the track number (e.g., 07.wav or 07.flac). WAV files can be compressed after the fact using the command line flac --best ##.wav which will create a file named ##.flac.