Audio Workflow on the Surface Pro Windows 8 Tablet - Part 1
I continue to put the Surface Pro through its paces and continue to be amazed by its versatility for everyday activities when used by teachers and students. In my opinion the Surface Pro Windows 8 tablet is currently one of the best tablets on the market for educators. This is a great tablet choice for teaching and learning for both students and teachers.
I have recently had a few questions from readers about how I handle some of the audio workflow that I routinely do. I thought I would share some of what I have learned from using the Surface Pro to create audio over the past couple of months in this series of blog posts.
The good news is that I have been able to do everything that I previously did on a full-sized Desktop machine, the bad news is that I have had to make a couple of adjustments into the way I handle audio input in and out of the Surface Pro.
This change is a result of the existing audio port on the Surface Pro only supporting headphones using a single standard 3.5mm jack. What that means in practical terms is that I cannot use a “line-in” connection to directly plug my mixer or other microphone with a 3.5mm jack into this audio port for recording audio. Therefore, I have had to find a few work-arounds to my normal workflow.
I really wish this 3.5mm jack supported the “line-in” capability on the Surface Pro but alas it does not. So… I have had to adjust my audio workflow and convert parts of it over to using USB audio input when using the Surface Pro.
Call me old-fashioned but I have long used a mixer that allows for multiple audio inputs that are mixed down to one single 3.5mm line-out jack. There are now new USB mixers available but I prefer to keep my audio workflow analog throughout the audio recording process until I get to the editing stage. This has served me well over the years. Times are however changing and there are now many USB mixers on the market, but old ways die hard.
If you are thinking about recording audio for more than one person I highly recommend you get a mixer. Mixers do what the name says, they mix different audio inputs into one outbound stream of sound that is mixed from multiple sources. By having multiple microphones, one for each person you are recording, you can control the sound of each, you can even input sound from your computers sound card to add to the mix!
Mixers are scary to most people. Mixers seem extremely complicated when you first begin to use one but if you stick with it and learn just a little bit about their capability it will take your audio production to the next level. Having great sound is a necessity for any quality multimedia project, audio or video. Yes, sound is just as important in video as the video is, maybe more so.
I now have to handle the output from my mixer in in a couple of different ways. The first way really is not a change at all for me when recording our TechTalk4Teachers audio podcast.
I have long used a digital audio recorder connected to a mixer to record the TechTalk4Teachers podcast. I currently use a Roland R-05 digital audio recorder that uses SD cards to record and store the audio files. When I am finished recording the podcast I simply pop-out the SD card, place it in a USB SD card reader and plug it into the USB port on the Surface Pro. I then copy the files to the Surface Pro in a folder for editing. This still works extremely well thanks once again to the Surface Pro’s USB port.
Having a USB port of the Surface Pro has been extremely useful and is an advantage over other tablets on the market. Since I regularly deal with multimedia files getting content on and off the Surface Pro with a USB port is a breeze. Unlike some other tablets that rely on cloud storage, or tablets that require the inconvenience of plugging into another computer to get content off the device, the USB port on the Surface Pro, for me, is still the best method for quickly and reliably moving multimedia content around.
Stay tuned for Part 2
Thank you for reading our blog.
Until next time.
Keep on Learning,
Follow me on Twitter @tomgrissom Please subscribe and listen to the
TechTalk4Teachers Podcast:
Interested in Teaching and Learning with Technology?
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar