Archive for the ‘Multimedia (HSLU)’ Category
Saturday, October 11th, 2008
Task 2: MP3-Player
The task was about creating a little MP3 player which is able to play mp3 and display the amplitude graphically. I added a few extra features so that for example the filename of the current track and its time are shown. The graph’s color and stroke weight are also dynamically changing.
View Applet / Source
The mp3-file used in this example may take some time to load (0.9 MB).

Task 3: MIDI-Player
This applet plays a MIDI file and enables the user to pause the file. With the keys 1 to 9 you can also generate basic sounds.
View Applet / Source
Midi replay doesn’t yet work due to some problems with the paths.

Task 4: Fourier Analysis
This is an extension to the simple MP3 player from Task 1. This one shows not only the amplitude, it displays also the frequencies by FFT (Fast Fourier transform).
View Applet / Source
The mp3-file used in this example may take some time to load (0.9 MB).

Posted in Audio, Multimedia (HSLU), Processing | No Comments »
Saturday, September 27th, 2008
Audacity is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds.
Task 1: Removing noise
To use Audacity’s Noise Removal effect, you start by selecting a few seconds of noise. Then go to Effect -> Noise Removal… and click Get Noise Profile. The dialog closes and you return to your file. Select the whole track and again, open the Noise Removal dialog. This time you can chose the degree and you can perform some fine-tuning.
When you are happy with the result, click Remove Noise and voilà, your noise is gone.
In my example I also applied another effect called Normalize in order to boost the volume a little bit.
Example
Before (strong background noise):
mixed.mp3 – Before
After noise removal:
mixed. mp3 – After
Task 2: Experimenting with Bit Rates
Definition Bit Rate (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bit_rate):
In digital multimedia, bit rate often refers to the number of bits used per unit of playback time to represent a continuous medium such as audio or video after source coding (data compression). The size of a multimedia file in bytes is the product of the bit rate (in bit/s) and the length of the recording (in seconds), divided by eight. In case of streaming multimedia, this bit rate measure is the goodput that is required to avoid interrupts.
…
Audio (MP3)
Examples
beispiel.mp3 – 16 Bit
beispiel.mp3 – 16 Bit
beispiel.mp3 – 128 Bit
beispiel.mp3 – 128 Bit
beispiel.mp3 – 192 Bit
beispiel.mp3 – 192 Bit
Task 3: Podcast

For this task, I tried to overlay the songs “Put Your Hands Up For Detroit” and “Let Me Think About It” by Fedde Le Grand in Audacity. Here is what I did:
1. File -> Open … “Put Your Hands Up For Detroit.mp3″
2. Go to Project -> Import Audio… and select the second song ”Let Me Think About It.mp3″.
3. Adjust Tempo by selecting a track and going to Effect -> Tempo… This changes the tempo without changing the pitch, so your song won’t sound like Mickey Mouse. It may take some trial and error until you get the right tempo.
4. With the aid of the Time Shift Tool you can easily move the tracks until they match. The Envelope Tool can be used to create a nice fade in and fade out effect.

Result:

Due to legal issues I’m not allowed to publish the result here. If you’ve got further questions, just leave a comment or contact me.
Posted in Audio, Multimedia (HSLU) | No Comments »
Monday, September 22nd, 2008
Exercice 2a: Random black lines on a gray background.

Exercice 2b: Use your mouse to draw lines! With the keys r, g and b you can change the line colors to red, green or blue.
Exercice 3b: Rotating Globe with changeable direction on mouse click.

Posted in Multimedia (HSLU), Processing | No Comments »
Saturday, September 20th, 2008
Processing is a great tool, but to be honest, the code editor could be better. Fortunately there is an easy way to integrate it into TextMate.
(more…)
Posted in Mac, Multimedia (HSLU), Processing, Tips & Tricks | 2 Comments »
Thursday, September 18th, 2008
Just installed Wordpress. Great, isn’t it? Well, stay tuned for more information and exercices.
Posted in Multimedia (HSLU) | No Comments »
Friday, July 6th, 2007
Say hello to the iPhone, Apple’s revolutionary new cellphone. Not many products have been so eagerly-awaited and fascinated both lovers and haters. It seems like every second news report is about that magic multi-touch smartphone and some may ask how it can live up the hype … Well, here’s how!
(more…)
Posted in Mac, Video | No Comments »
Saturday, March 3rd, 2007
Since Microsoft officially released »Windows Vista« to its end customers in January. It comes with a lot of sophisticated features and all seem to be totally new – at least to Windows users. Some say, that Vista is just a rip-off of Apple’s Mac OS X. Check out David Pogue’s opinion in his »New York Times« video column.
(more…)
Posted in Mac, Video | 1 Comment »
Saturday, March 3rd, 2007
The term »Web 2.0« is on everyone’s lips at these times. There’s a fabulous movie made by Michael Wesch conveying an idea of »the new web« (found via 72quadrat.de).
(more…)
Posted in Video, Web | No Comments »