Our assignment this week was to become familiar with Audacity and MovieMaker. It sounded like fun to me; I like playing around with technology and trying to figure out how to use it.
It seems like it was not meant to be.
I downloaded the Audacity software (and looking a little ahead, Express Scribe). I went to the Movie Maker website, but I couldn't find a download for a Mac that would work. I have some limited experience with iMovie, so I downloaded the movie I made into iMovie instead.
When I went to work in Audacity, I found out that my Mac would not even show my audio interview file with Seth Fishman that I saved ! It seems I will either need to re-record it on my actual audio recorder (which I had forgotten for last class and had used my Blackberry instead) or to use the PC computers in the lab to convert my audio file to something usable in audacity or express scribe.
So while I was supposed to be trying it out anyway, I tried importing one of the interviews I did in one of my research classes into audacity. That just did some really funky things! On a Mac, it is very easy to just change the file extension, so I made a copy of the interview and saved it as a .mp3. It had the (wait for it...) audacity not to work, either. I also tried saving it as .wav and... nothing. I tried to play around with audacity for a little bit anyway, and it just seemed a little overwhelming to me.
Since it is hard to write a review on tools I can't seem to use, I think this was a good lesson for me. As much I love the user-friendliness of the Mac, it proves once again that it is not necessarily software-friendly. It takes a bit more research to find software, hardware, etc. that is compatible, (such as when I was scouring every electronics store in Columbus for a compatible digital audio recorder!) but in the end, it is worth it. I love the ease of a Mac and its various features (brief tangent... Word for Mac has a template called notebook and it is just like a real notebook! You can tab pages [like in a binder], create check boxes and flags... it is divine).
I look forward to trying Express Scribe and the other transcription tools. For some reason, I really enjoy the - dare I say it - tediousness of transcribing. I really feel as if I get to know my data really well when I transcribe by hand/keyboard, and I'm a little afraid of losing that if I use a software program to help me. It will be really useful to me to see if some "help" will be worthwhile in the long run.
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The audacity of audacity! Ha, I love it. I'm glad you were able to get the video to work though (and I am biased toward iMovie anyway). I had huge trouble finding an audio recorder compatible with a mac too, so I finally gave up (though I think I'll need a better one than the one that is on my phone in the future). I know what you mean about transcribing too... plus, it's so mundane and we don't get to do enough mindless work. Sometimes I welcome it. :)
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