TODEPOND TIMES: Noises

Sound the alarm! It's time for the weekly...

🐸📢 TODEPOND TIMES 🐸📢

What's new this week?
It's the NOISES SPECIAL!

Voice

When I record my voice for a video, I put a bunch effects on it. And with each video, I learn a few more things. These are all the steps I currently take:

1. Volume
First, we increase the volume of my voice. This doesn't actually affect the final volume. It's just to help the next step...

2. Noise
Next, we reduce the white noise of the recording. Sometimes my denoiser thinks that my quiet whispering is noise. By increasing the volume first, we help it to avoid this mistake.

3. Filter
My voice has a bit of a 'buzz' between certain frequencies, which sounds a bit grating when recorded. We reduce those frequencies in this step.

4. Chorus
We add a bit of width to the recording. This helps to give it a slightly dreamlike effect. But it does sound quite weird on mono speakers!

5. Compress
Let's give the recording a bit of punch! We raise all sound in the recording to a specific volume. This helps my voice to be audible over the music, even when I'm whispering.

6. Reverb
We add a tiny bit of reverb, to make the recording sound a little bit more crisp.

7. Limit
Finally, we put a limit on the recording, so that it never goes above a certain volume.

I feel like I could spend hours and days fiddling with all these effects, or adding more. At some point I have to say "enough" and just settle with what I've got.

I still have lots to learn, and there's a lot I could improve. But I try to stick with one or two new audio experiments with each video. Sometimes it makes it better. Sometimes it makes it worse.

Trail

It's time for me to record footage of SandLab, one of the new engines I've made for the video. And it still 'flickers' a little bit, because of some imperfections in its code.

In the engine, cells try to reach a target size. They get smaller/bigger by splitting and merging with surrounding cells. When they do this, they evaluate all their options, and pick the best one for them and their neighbours.

But this can cause different decisions based on which neighbours they look at. Judging one cell in isolation might paint a very different picture to looking at it alongside its neighbours. What's best for one individual might not be best for the whole group.

When there isn't a clear answer, cells sometimes flip-flop between two different arrangements.

To avoid this, I put a timer on each cell. After splitting/merging, they need to wait a moment before doing it again. This helps to calm them all down!

And I was really pleasantly surprised to see that it creates quite a nice 'trail' effect! Maybe I should have started with this approach :)

Thank you very much for your continued support of my projects! It's honestly such a delight to share what I'm working on. And I'm really looking forward to sharing more soon! 🐸📢

Days since tode fell asleep: 14