Using Cool Edit 96
Cool Edit 96, produced by Syntrillium
Software Corporation, comes in two versions. Cool Edit Pro
has all featured enabled for use at any time. The cost is $399.00.
If you plan to edit lots of audio for your course, it might be
worth it to purchase the fully enabled version.
Syntrillium also has a shareware version, called
Cool Edit 96. If you choose not to register it, you can only use
two features per session. If you register for $50.00 you can use
all features. Registering for $25.00 allows you to use most, but
not all features.
To experiment with, the unregistered version will
work just fine.
This is only a brief introduction to this complex
and sophisticated program. To use its features fully, some knowledge
of sound is required. The Help menu can help you learn more
about sound.
From
the Start menu, select Programs, then select Syntrillium,
then select Cool Edit 96.
From
the dialog box that asks which two functions you would like to
use in the unregistered version click OK to select the default
options.
The Cool Edit 96 program opens.
From
the File menu, select Open and open the .wav file
you have recorded. Or, open the audio1.wav file on the diskette
for this workshop. A visual pattern (waveform) of the sound file
appears.
Click
the Play button in the lower left hand corner. Notice that
a white line begins to move from the left side to indicate how
far along in the file you have played. Clicking Stop moves
the white line back to the beginning of the file. Clicking Pause stops
playing temporarily. Click Continue to continue playing.
The image above shows a .wav file that was recorded
in stereo. Notice that there are two different waveforms,
one above the other. For files that are monaural, there would be
only one waveform.
The
boxes in the lower right corner provide information about your
file and how it was produced.
In the example above, the file was recorded as a
16 bit stereo file. It contains 645645 samples. The more samples
in an audio file, the closer the file comes to the actual sounds
that were made when the file was recorded. the more samples, the
larger the file and the longer it will take to download.
The Time box gives the length of the file
in minutes and seconds.
Deleting Part of a Sound File
Editing
sound files for use in a course often involves removing unwanted
sections, such as sections that contain "dead space" at
the beginning or the end. Cool Edit 96 does this very easily.
First,
use the Play button to identify the part you want to delete.
Use the Zoom, In and Out buttons to zoom in
on the part of the audio you want to edit out. The green/black
bar at the top of the waveform acts as a slider so that you can
find the section of audio you are interested in.
When
you have identified the part you wish to remove, click and hold
down the left mouse button. Drag it to the right or left to select
a portion of the waveform. From the Edit menu, select Cut,
or use the keyboard shortcut, Ctrl X.
If
you find you have made a mistake, from the Edit menu, click Paste.
Note that you can use a similar procedure to move a piece of audio.
After cutting, find the place you want to insert the clip, select
it with your mouse, and from the Edit menu, select Paste.
Resampling Audio
Sometimes audio is initially recorded at settings
that produce a high quality audio file that is too large to use.
By resampling, the file can be made smaller (and poorer quality).
Click
and drag your mouse to select all or a portion of a file that you
have opened in Cool Edit 96. From the Edit menu, select Copy.
From
the File menu, select New Instance. A new empty Cool
Edit window opens.
From
the File menu of the new empty window, select New....
A dialog box opens asking for the sampling information and other
characteristics of the file.
Select
the options you want and click OK.
