Technology search can you help?

[dsteele]

My nephew is the closest thing I will ever have to a son. I'm okay with that, actually more than okay.

 

He loves Unc's stories and the way he tells them, but he lives 300 miles away from me.

 

I'm looking for a way to record the stories onto cd's and send them to him by mail. He's three years old and a very visual boy. He doesn't need to see Unc. on a DVD to get the story -- and his parents don't need to see Unc. either. I don't want the lousy sound quality my camcorder would produce, nor do I want his parents to have to fast forward or rewind to find the story or song the boy wants to hear.

 

I would like to be able to go from voice to cd and have tracks they can jump to.

 

Is there such a thing as a voice cd recorder -- money isn't really an object.

 

Does anyone know where I can find such a thing and about how much it costs?

 

Unc.

[Fat Old Guy]

It isn't that difficult if your computer has a CD-R drive. Attach a good microphone to your computer and record the WAV files. There's CD burner software out there that let's you burn a "music" type CD using WAV files as the source.

 

Also, if you plug a good mic into your camcorder, the sound will be much better. Most camcorders are capable of recroding hi-fi or nearly hi-fi sound, the weak link is the mic.

[dsteele]

Where does one get a good mic? Thanks for the help, FOG.

 

Any idea what the name of the software is? I haven't done theater since college and haven't done children's storytelling since I took second place in the state in high school forensics.

 

Unc.

 

PS -- both parts of my life were a while ago . . .

 

UG

[scoutldr]

Look at the Sony MiniDisk. My son used one to interview visiting Rock stars when he worked at the campus radio station. I'm no expert, but I believe you can record to a MD (unit is about $200), then download the digital file to your hard drive and transfer it to CD-R.

[hops_scout]

Check WalMart...

 

I was looking there awhile back (had some time on my hands) and saw digital recorders for like 30 bucks. I dont know a lot about them, but just an idea:)

 

 

[Fat Old Guy]

Supposedly, the software comes with most CD-R drives. I'd find a high school student that is into ripping CDs and ask him. However, I'll poke around this evening and see what I can find on ZD-net.

 

As for microphones, go to a store that sells stuff for performing musicians. My wife has a couple Shure SM-58 that she likes but they might be overkill for your needs. The SM-58 runs about $100. I'm sure that there are much less expensive mics and ones that may be better suited to your needs.

[NWScouter]

Fog's advice is good about going to professional music store for a mike. You might talk with them about what you want to do. They may have ideas on equipment to use or they might know were you could get a profeesion studio recording. Hey you said money is no object. It might be cheaper in the long run anyway

[OneHour]

Unc.

 

Here is a good document on how to capture audio using a microphone (mic) with your pc. http://www.halldavidson.net/R11-SoundOnWindows.doc or http://computing.sscnet.ucla.edu/training/tutorial_capturing.htm

 

Now ... for software, try Nero for software. It is fairly good especially if you can get the recently outdated version 6.0. They have it for $2.99 at http://www.softwareandstuff.com/SWW12205.html . There are many other that you can use to add your Wav recording on to a CD. FOG has the best idea on finding the mic. You can also do well with a store that sells Karaoke machines. They tend to have better mic. I have always shopped with Crutchfield. http://www.crutchfield.com/S-KuCNbzG2sAN/cgi-bin/ProdGroup.asp?c=1&g=16300&s=0&cc=01&search=

Don't forget to buy the a mic that has a jack (most are the stereo mini-plug) that can hook up to your audio card or audio port of your pc. Using your audio card or audio port of your pc may not produce the best quality of sound and it depends on the quality of your audio card. So eventhough you may have the best mic, if your audio card can only record mono then your recorded audio will be mono and not stereo. When you do capture the audio, use nothing less than 44kHz sampling rate with 16 bits and 128kbps at a minimum.

 

Since money is no object, then Roxio CD Creator 7.0 is not a bad CD maker at all. It can even do DVD and that's where you can really spice up your story for your nephew. You can take your video camera and use something along the line of Dazzle's Digital Video Creator 150 or Pinnacle's Studio DV Ver 9 (better if you have firewire on your digital camera). Once converted to digital format, the sound quality is not bad at all. I use Ulead's DVD Movie Factory 3 that came with my DVD burner. This software allows me to do chaptering which means that you can skip from one scene to another. Of course, you will need a fairly good PC as well 2.4 GHz with boat loads of disk space, memory, and a DVD burner ($129 nowaday).

 

You can also use the following audio recorders (http://www.mp3-recorder.net/) to record MP3 format which is about 10 smaller in size that you can email easily to your nephew if you and he have broadband Internet (ie. cable modem and dsl).

 

Anyway ... one can write a whole book on this, but the only way is to try audio capture first with a cheap mic and a freebee type of software like Microsoft Media Player (and freeware CD recorder as I have pointed out previously) and try it before you spend good money to buy a mic, a capture card, and the software.

 

Good luck

1Hour

 

ps: it doesn't take 1 hour! To convert my family's video to a 2 hour dvd, editing, converting, and producing it took me well over 10 hours, but then I was very picky and added a whole bunch of stuffs to the video!