Movie Maker Live, No Voiceover?

Oh Microsoft, you made such significant leaps forward with the new MovieMaker Live, but one glaring problem exists. In the classroom, I’m not always going to be importing full-on video clips. Often, my students just need a great way to add photos to a movie and record their voiceover as a narrative of the visual story.  Or, perhaps I have the video, but I want to easily speak over a clip that has poor audio. You took away the easy voiceover tool in earlier versions of MovieMaker.  So let’s share a work around.

Adding A Voiceover To Movie Maker Live Projects
It’s actually pretty easy, as far as work arounds go. Record your narration in your local audio recorder, export the audio and import it into Movie Maker as a music file.  From that point, you can clip and adjust the length of still photos to match the new audio, or clip and place the audio track so that it matches the video segment that goes with it.

Audacity is my preferred audio recording tool on the pc. It’s a simple and free install. The only trick is that you need to install separately the LAME encoders so that it will export your audio as an mp3.  But even that is pretty easy.

Once installed, open Audacity and hit the little red button to record. Stop when done and go to File – Export as MP3 to get your audio Movie Make-ready.  Movie Maker will import that MP3 after you click the big ‘Add Music’ button at the top of the window.  Drag the new skinny green audio track to wherever you want the audio to be in your movie.

Tips
Movie Maker doesn’t allow multiple audio tracks. There is any audio you have with the video track and the Add Music track.  If you want to have your voice over  with a music background and the occasional frog croaking in the background, you can do all of that audio in Audacity and export it as one single audio track for Movie Maker. Audacity can have many tracks in the project, but exporting will flatten it into one.
Another thing to remember is that when adding audio to Movie Maker, you can edit the audio just like a video clip. Select the audio and then you can split the audio clip in an effort to put space between spoken sentences or such.

Innovate?
So, how do you use movies in your classroom?  One middle school teacher is having the students pull or capture still images that compliment their written stories and record it all as a movie.  Another teacher had students create short movies where students demonstrated what they learned during anti-bully lessons.  An easy scaffolding lesson would be to give small groups the same 3 minute video clip of a class Science demonstration. Have each group compete for the best video using text and voiceovers to show understanding. How would YOU use video in your classroom?

photo: microphone

A Managed Volume is a Happy Volume

"Dear ET, The sound coming from my IS desktop is very crackly compared to my desktop. This disturbs my students greatly. What can I do?"

Most the of problems we initially have with bad sound often come from the volume levels of the computers attached to the IS.   The document camera is automatically set at 50% volume. The computers also have their own volume controls, but these are more often manipulated by teachers during normal use. Volume that is set to 100% on the computer will often sound 'too loud' or 'crackly' even when the IS audio is set low.

Manage your volume by keeping the volume on the computers set to 50-60% volume. Leave them there and, when connected to the IS, don't adjust the volume through the computer, but only use the WACI pad volume controls.

In these examples, both Mac and pc audio levels are set to 50-60%.

Playing Audio With No Video

The Innovation Station has been designed with controls to provide audio mute and audio/visual mute capabilities for all inputs.  By pressing the input button a second time, you will mute both the video and audio of the input you had selected.  Pressing the now-red input button again will un-mute the input.

During discussions with teachers, it is quickly pointed out that sometimes, all they want is the audio, without the distraction of video on the screen. You have that option as well.

Since the Lightspeed Amplifier is always on, the IS does not have to be turned on to do this. You can present almost any audio source without having to login to the IS cart.

Each Lightspeed REDMIKE microphone has an audio in plug on the side. This is the same type plug as the headphone jack on most MP3 players or your laptop. Using the supplied 3.5mm audio jack in the IS cart, plug one end into the REDMIKE's audio in jack and the other into your laptop's headphone jack. The laptop's audio will be played through the REDMIKE microphone to the room's speakers.

 

Andrew Bevins, Online Marketing Manager - Lightspeed Technologies

Things to remember:

• Use the REDMIKE volume control on the back of the microphone to control volume when speaking through the microphone. However, use the audio device's volume control to manipulate volume when plugged into the REDMIKE.
• You can use almost any audio device that has a headphone jack; MP3 players, iPhones, jamboxes, laptops, cassette recorders, and even refrigerators that have a built-in stereo with 3.5mm audio out jack. 

For a much better detailed tutorial on the daily use of the Lightspeed classroom audio system, take some time to look at a short Flash-based tutorial specifically designed for Austin ISD. Lightspeed Tutorial!

--Instructional?--

How does this play a role in the classroom? The most frequently heard response to that question has been, "I want to play internet radio from my laptop without having to see anything on the screen. The station I play has a positive impact on my students during sustained Writer's Workshop."

What are some instructional examples that you could share with this community?

Mute Video But Keep Audio?

Teachers are finding great value in the audio mute and AV mute features of the Innovation Station's control pad. Whether as an attention grabbing or refocusing strategy or energy-saving strategy, the mute features are very effective.

However, given that success, some teachers are asking for a way to mute the video but still play the audio over the speakers. That feature was not built into the system, but our microphones give us that ability all on their own.  Each mic has an audio input jack on the side. This is the basic 3.5mm 'headphone' jack which is the same as the audio cable that came with the IS. As an input, that jack will connect any devices audio out or headphone jack to the always on audio system.  Once plugged into the external device's (iPod, jambox, laptop, etc) headphone jack, the device will control the volume level.

Remember, the IS does not need to be on since the Lightspeed sound amp is always on.  Plugging a laptop into the mic means that you will be adjusting the sound level via the laptop's sound control. Remember to return the laptop volume back to about 50% volume when connecting back to the IS and use the IS volume control at that point.

--Instructional?--

What ways do you or would you use this for instruction in your classroom?  Teachers have said they are using it to play soft music during writer's workshop while the screen stays blank. Others commented that they play music during morning routine while the screen can go back and forth between morning agenda and morning announcements.

How would you use it?