Introduction to News Production Verity Green Heads of News

The structure of news pieces Intro (bed) - This is Burst (bed) News piece – spoken audio & vox pops Burst News (bed) For up to date news stories visit or follow us on (bed)

Step 1: Recording The better the recording the less editing you have to do! Step 2: Save copies Get into the habit of saving, and well labeling all audio, in case something goes wrong in editing. I label mine pre-edit (raw audio), edit and final.

Step 3: Chopping Taking only the audio you want to include. Zoom in to make sure you dont cut out the end of words.

Step 4: Changing Change audio around to the order you want – what is most effective? Use either the move tool or normal cut and paste shortcuts (ctrl/cmd x and v)

Stereo Tracks vs. Audio Tracks All final audio needs to be on a stereo track (i.e. there are 2 layers of the sound rather than the 1 you get on a mono track. This means that it will play out of 2 speakers. To add a new track go to Tracks in the top menu and add a Stereo track.

Step 5: Compress & Normalisation Reduces volume variation – takes away random loud/ quiet parts to improve overall sound of the piece.

Step 6: Add the News Bed Make sure the bed is on the top track – or autoduck wont work (see next slide) Move the spoken audio to match up with the bed structure.

Step 7: Auto-Duck This lowers the bed where there is spoken audio underneath. Experiment with the duck amount, but we usually go for 19dbs on news.

Step 8: Listen back Make sure the auto-ducking has worked, and that the bed isnt too loud. Check you are happy with how the story sounds.

Step 9: Export We upload news stories as mp3 so it is important finished news stories are exported.

Step 10: Listen to yourself on the radio! If you follow all these tips you should be creating amazing news stories from start to finish. Now its time for you to have a go!

Tips and Tricks If you have accidentally zoomed in on a track, press shift to change the zoom in tool to zoom out, and click on the side of the track until it looks normal.

This lets you move tracks up and down. Helps with autoduck so you dont have to copy and paste whole tracks.

If anything goes wrong with audacity (especially on the studio computers – sometimes it doesnt like to talk to the microphone) just close it and reopen, but make sure you have saved everything first. Have two tracks open so you can drag the audio you want out of a big interview/ series of vox pops – it means you dont have to delete everything else as you go along which can take up a lot of time.