[MUSIC] In this video, I'm going to demonstrate how to use the free audio recording and editing program Audacity. To record narration that can be inserted into a digital story. Audacity is a good choice, because it's available for free for both Windows PCs and Mac computers. So I have Audacity downloaded and installed on my computer. And I also have a microphone plugged in and configured to record. So when you first launch the program you'll see a basically blank interface like this with a row of controls across the top of the screen. And the ones that we're going to look at first, are these buttons, that should be familiar to you, if you remember using a video cassette recorder, or VCR. If you mouse over them you'll be able to read some labels. This is the Stop button, the Play button, the Pause button and the one that we're going to use right now, the red Record button to begin a recording. So let me click that now, and when I do, you'll be able to see that when I'm speaking, and when I stop nothing happens, and when I start talking again you'll see a wave form show up in two windows on the screen. There's basically a left channel and a right channel because this is a stereo recording. So you'll see two wave forms that look very similar to each other. You also see some numbers across the top of the screen that show the amount of time for my recording in seconds. And when I click stop, which I'll do now, you can see that I recorded for 36 seconds. If I want to listen to what this sounded like, I can click the play button, and when I do, you'll be able to see that when I'm speaking, and so we heard that that sounded fine. And if I decide I want to keep this then I can save the file. But, let's say for example, I don't like this recording, and I want to try again. I can click this little x here, and that recording has now been deleted. It's not completely gone. Because if you change your mind, you can go up to the edit menu and click on Undo Track Remove to bring it back. But you need to be careful with this. Because if you click the x to delete the recording, and then close the application. If you haven't saved it, then that recording is gone for good. So let's say that we do want to save it. What we can do is go to the File menu. And you have to realize that saving files in Audacity is a two step process. So the first thing we're going to save is the project file. This is a .aup file that Audacity creates, so that if you ever want to come back and continue working on this recording. Maybe you want to do some editing. You want to change the volume, or mix in some music, things that we'll look at later in future videos. Then you need to save the project file. So let's go ahead and do that. It will ask me where I want to save it, and I will click on Desktop and create a folder. I've created a folder already called temp01, so I'm just going to save it there. I'll double click there, and I'll put test-1 and click save. And now that project file has been saved, if I close the application and come back later I can re-open it to this exact point, so that I can continue working on this recording. So let's just say that I am satisfied with the recording, and I want to save it to insert into my digital story telling software later. Then what I'm going to do is, again go back to the file menu and click on export. And then I can choose the location. It remembers the name of my project file and assumes that I want to use the same name, I don't have to, I can name it something else if I want to, but I'll just keep it Test 1 for now, and I'm going to export it as a WAV file, a W-A-V file, which is a good format. For high-quality audio in both PCs and Macs. So I'll just click 'save,' and you'll see that a little metadata window opens up where you can provide additional information about this file if you want to. That's optional, but you should click OK and not Cancel, because that will cancel the saving, so click OK, type in some information if you want to. Again, you don't need to, click OK. And now your file has been saved as a WAV file. So if we close that and come over and look at our folder where we've saved things, then we'll see that there is the AUP file. Which is relatively small. And then the WAV file, which is much larger, and so that's basically a quick introduction to how to record and save projects in Audacity. [MUSIC]
