Batch Processing Your Audio Using Amadeus Pro

February 11, 2009

I use Apple GarageBand to do my narration recording. No, it’s not a high-end pro audio editor (nor am I a high-end pro narrator). But for narration recording, I find GarageBand offers a great blend of functionality and ease of use. And you can’t beat the price (free with any Mac). I plan to post a detailed walkthrough of my narration recording and editing process in GarageBand in the near future.

There are areas in which GarageBand falls short, however. Converting my AIFF files to WAV (for importing into Articulate), for example. Enter Amadeus Pro by HairerSoft, which steps in to fill the void with panache. I don’t use Amadeus Pro for recording or editing – I use it for its excellent batch processing features for post-production of my GarageBand-output audio files. Let me give you an example by showing you how Amadeus Pro saved my bacon today.

I was finishing a course for a customer in Articulate Presenter. Since this course was being delivered in a classroom in a presentation-style format, I wanted the course to auto-advance from screen to screen. When I edit my audio files I typically leave no “dead air” at the beginning or end – I like things concise. The resulting problem with this particular course was the advancement from screen to screen was too fast – there wasn’t any pause in the audio to let the information sink in with the learner.

The customer requested a 3-second pause between each screen. Unfortunately, Articulate Presenter does not allow you to set a delay when auto-advancing slides. The only solution I could come up with was to add 3 seconds of silence to the end of each of my audio files. All 100+ of them. Now that sounded like an awfully tedious task. And I loathe tedious tasks. There had to be an easier way.

And there was. With Amadeus Pro (for the Mac). I simply created a new Batch Processor:

Then I added a new action. The first action I needed was Set Selection – meaning, I needed to identify where in the audio track I wanted to insert some silence.

I wanted to insert my silence exactly at the end of the track. So I selected 0.00 seconds and clicked the Select from end radio button.

Now I needed to add a second action to insert some silence:

3 seconds, to be exact:

And my Batch Processor is now complete. Amadeus Pro will select the end of my track and insert 3 seconds of silence at that point. I’m going to save this Batch Processor and name it Insert 3 Seconds Silence at End:

My Batch Processor now appears as an icon on my desktop (or anywhere else I want to save it):

I open the Batch Processor by double-clicking the icon, then I select all my audio files and drag and drop them on the window well (highlighted below in blue):

And voila, Amadeus Pro now happily goes about its business adding 3 seconds of silence to the end of each one of my 100+ audio files. While I kick back and play a little Rolando on my iPhone. Ain’t technology grand?

I have another Batch Processor I use to normalize my audio files, convert them to mono, and then convert them from AIFF (GarageBand’s native export format) to WAV format (for importing into Articulate). All with a couple of quick mouse clicks.

You can spend a pretty penny for an audio app that does batch processing. Or you can spend a mere $40 on Amadeus Pro.

$40 (Amadeus Pro) plus free (GarageBand) = a pretty good little audio recording, editing, and processing setup for guerilla eLearning narrators for mere peanuts. Sounds like a steal to me.

Note: yes, Audacity (free) has some rudimentary batch processing functionality too, but I’ve found it far more limited than what I get in Amadeus Pro, which dwarfs Audacity in the number of automated actions it can perform. And frankly I’m no big fan of the primitive, open source interface of Audacity. Despite the tempting price tag.

Posted in Audio, Narration, eLearning Development Tools