Bradlee Goes! | | Christmas How to By DR. ANDREW WALTER D, D. Staff Writer DrAndrewWalter@psu.edu Artwork by Christina Felizzi o£ Lion’s Video EyePod bs ~ Nightmare before Christmas Home Alone 2 The Santa Claus Home for the Holidays A Christmas Story Polar Express It's a Wonderful Life Die Hard National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation Toy Story 2 \o Ever search the internet for sound clips of popular movies or popular games music like the Super Mario theme song music? Wonder how they make those clips? Well the answer is as simple as the microphone function of your computer. If you've ever tried to record these things using the microphone function normally, you've noticed it just doesn't turn out the same as the way it's meant to sound. That's where a function known as an internal mic setting comes in. No, you don't need any special attachments or even software to do ” it(Although if you want to get fancy, I recommend Adobe Audition, but more about that later). Every computer that has a sound card (in other words, every computer), has the ability to record ANY sound it plays to a file - without the distortion of a physical microphone! To get started, go to the Start bar and select Program Files, Accessories, Entertainment, and final- ly Volume Control. A box will appear showing you volume levels for different types of sound, each with dials to move them up and down. Ignore those for now. Select "Options" followed by "Properties." A: window will appear containing the text "adjust vol- ume for" then giving you the option to choose between playback and recording. Select recording and hit OK. You'll now see the list of volume options has changed to only two selections - "Stereo Mix" and "Microphone." Click the select box under Stereo Mix (if it isn't already), put the vol- ume for it on maximum and you're ready to go. Close the box and then go to the same place where you selected the volume control. This time select sound recorder instead of the volume control function. Those of you familiar with any recording device will recognize simple symbols such as the red-dotted "record function" (This is how you activate your microphone), as well as the fast-forward, rewind, stop, and play functions. Hit record then open up some web page or program which produces sound i.e. Myspace pages or a game. You'll notice that as soon as your computer starts making noise, the recorder function will start to pro- Rip Music and Sound The Lion's Eye ' December 13, 2006 Th aed ncdnlce os am as 4d AA LUGO AL UALILLARAS 22 LL duce waves indicating you're recording content. Hit stop at any time and play back the clip. You may notice there's a gap between when you start to hear the sound you just recorded. That is because of the time it took you to start the sound after hitting the record button. That means that if you save the file now, it will have that same gap again. Using the sound recorder you can select edit, and move the cur- sor to just the point in time before, or after the sound clip is played. ; Once you do this, select "Edit," then "Delete before current position" (or after current position depending upon whether you moved the cursor before or after the sound clip file). All the sound in the direction you told it to delete will now be gone. Using this method, delete the remainder of the sound (or in this case, lack thereof) you don't want. Now, save the file to where you'd like and you're done! Playing with some of the options you'll realize that you can save the files into different playback formats such as MP3 (YES, THAT MEANS YOU CAN PUT IT ONTO AN MP3 PLAYER) and, WAV. OK, so if you've gotten to this point in this arti- cle and are asking yourself, "I can save anything I hear from my computer to files. So what?", I've got your answer. You'll have the ability to do whatever you want with these files, moving them onto your cell phone as ringers(see last months SDFS"Never pay for a cell phone ringer again" arti- cle), or even just put them on your music play list. Be imaginative, have fun, and take advantage of this under-used opportunity. I'd also like to warn you that using this function to rip songs you hear from websites such as myspace, youtube, or even your free Penn State Napster's play function is ILLEGAL. / Even though the temptation may be great to form your own unlimited collection of free music, I warn you that it is in violation of copyright laws. One final and brief tangent, if you start to find yourself using this function often, I advise getting your hands on a copy of Adobe Audition, as it is a much better . equipped program than sound recorder in recording and editing sound files. fusasiess} gmesussssspasimassesvssssssswssssssseifeigeessgesmmeeren LC dasssessd E8eEmeEm AM sje mo|<izZz xT 0 “1 [ca im > rx - ic v=0lo BEEBE EY imclm Fis =| LY Dinosaur: Plesiosaur
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers