Quirky Voices Presents

MADIVA PODCAST 404 - Fiona Thraille and FILE NOT FOUND - archiving, sharing and saving etiquette for VA's and new producers

April 26, 2021 Sarah Golding / Fiona Thraille Season 4 Episode 404
Quirky Voices Presents
MADIVA PODCAST 404 - Fiona Thraille and FILE NOT FOUND - archiving, sharing and saving etiquette for VA's and new producers
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Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

Helllooooo - how am ya?!

So here we are at the aptly named FILE NOT FOUND EP 404....

I am riDICulously excited to once again chat to my audio and real life pal Fiona Thraille, producer, writer, and VA and tbh brilliant all round creative - employ her doooo for alll of the things!

We talk all things archiving, saving, naming and sharing files, discuss what an MP3, FLAC AND WAV is, and for those VA's who are also producers, there's some groovy top tips for you too!

The infรถ for MICROSOFT TEAMS packages can be found on the link below if you want to fathom price plans....dooo!

Enjoy

THANK YOU FOR LISTENING - Please do rate and review! Cheers!

HAPPY CREATING

Sarah๐ŸŽ‰๐ŸŒ๐ŸŒ๐ŸŒŽ๐Ÿ’™


Links to Fiona Thraille
Fiona on Twitter

Fiona's Website

Dashing Onions podcast feed



Things we mention in the podcast
FREESOUND.ORG

TEAMS - A MICROSOFT PRODUCT

DROPBOX

PRO SOUND EFFECTS

SOUND SNAP

WE TRANSFER

GOOGLE DRIVE


Other useful resources
SONISS

AUDIO BLOCKS

ThePodcastHost.com

Sarahs Links of audio joy
OZ9 Kickstarter
Sarahs T

Support the show

Ping Sarah on @QUIRKYVOICES or send a message to quirkyvoices@gmail.com

Feel free to review and of the shows herein, and if you want to support Quirky Voices works, become a Patreon! You get early works and earlybird eps and discounts for any courses.....

HAPPY CREATING!

404 MADIVA PODCAST โ€“ WITH FIONA THRAILLE 

โ€“ FILE NOT FOUND

*************

[00:00:00] Sarah Golding Intro: Hello and welcome to episode 404 of MADIVA podcast with me. Sarah Golding. Yes, it is the timely 'File not found' episode - woohoo! -Where the guest star of audio awesome Fiona Thrailleof Dashing Onions, talking all things archiving, saving and file name etiquette.  What's a wae and a flack and an MP3 and  more! Enjoy!

Sarah Golding: Folks of the world. I have an amazing, exciting adventurous guest for you today. You may recognize them from so many amazing audio fictions and a partner of crime of mine... FIONA THRAILLE!. Hello, Fiona!

Hello-ooo?, Fiona? (PAUSE - SILENCE) Oh, hang on folx, I'll just see if I can locate her -hang on...and... i'll just...move..through here... Uh.... [00:01:00]

Fiona Thraille: BOO!

Sarah Golding: (SCREAMS AARGH!) Ah! THERE YOU ARE! Fiona I found you!  Fiona is found! 

Fiona Thraille: Hellooo! 

Sarah Golding: Well, how very exciting to you on MADIVA once again. 

Fiona Thraille: Thank you so much for inviting me, Sarah. This is awesome. Lovely to be back. 

Sarah Golding: You're a legend. I'm just learning from you just being in the same audio space. So, so, um...

Fiona Thraille:  I'm so sorry.... 

Sarah Golding: All the good habits, right? Er, but no, I am very excited to have you on. We are looking at really trying to fathom the best practices for archiving, the best practices for, for sharing of files. And also just making sure that we can, uh, you know, perhaps share things and store them forever and ever, and ever in case a producer in two years, says 'errr...that file you did for me for that show, can have it please?!' Uh, so yeah. So what, uh, what are your top tips, firstly, for archiving? What do you do specifically to, to save your numerous amazing. Audio files? 

Fiona Thraille: Well, I can, I can definitely [00:02:00] took it this about this from bad experience that I am. I am not a very organized person in my head. I do have to be very organized in real life to compensate, frankly. Um, and I. Don't always, I have to struggle to do it, put at that way, I think a lot of people do...

Sarah Golding:  I am there with you...

Fiona Thraille:  Because if you're doing things quickly and you're like sending off auditions or something and you know, it's very easy just to get onto the next thing, and then you get these little bits floating about on all sorts of places. 

Sarah Golding: Yessss!I 

Fiona Thraille: I have actually - you were saying... -  Two years, I, I was actually contacted by someone ... seven years after I'd done audio for them, saying 'you haven't got that file. Have you?' And I did. 

Sarah Golding: That's immense. Yeah. Wow. So that's impressive. That's impressive. 

Fiona Thraille: So just be prepared.

Sarah Golding: And so do you have a set way of, of saving your files?

Fiona Thraille: Yeah. 

Sarah Golding: I'd love to know what you do, and I'll reveal... what I do too. Yeah. 

I do now I've, 

Fiona Thraille: I've got, um, [00:03:00] a folder that I put up, which is called audio auditions, and then I've got another folder called audio drama lines. And so for audio dramas, I will... quite literally sort of record the audition and always, well, you have to label it as it's required by the producer because, and they tend to do quite specific ones and you must make sure that you do it exactly as they ask.

Sarah Golding: Yeah. 

Fiona Thraille: So you will find that sometimes you know, that then makes your own organization... different. So sometimes if it's a producer that I might audition for more than once, I will put little sub folders in the audio auditions, saying what they are, or I'll just rename them after sending them. 

Sarah Golding: Yeah. 

Fiona Thraille: So that they're all in order, and they're all nice and easy to remember. I also find that sometimes when a group is starting out, I will actually also [00:04:00] put as a little... bit ...tag on the end, the person's name that you're working with, because sometimes that can be quite, uh, you know, several months of, um, waiting while you've sent in lines and you've sent in... Auditions or whatever.

And I can't sometimes remember the name of the script that it was, or the name of... the company sometimes if it hasn't actually been founded yet, but if you put the name of the person, then you can actually remember, Oh God. Yeah, I remember it was that one that I did for so-and-so ..

Sarah Golding: ...great...

Fiona Thraille:  and that can help.

Sarah Golding: And then you can look up their name, easily can't you... And just then hopefully that, or follow the email trail or some such to find out. 

Fiona Thraille: Whereas if you're only doing it by the script, The email might just say, this is the audio drama script. It might not have the title in it. And so then you've got to go back and yeah, it's a long, long, so just put the person's name on and then you can really easily remember.

Sarah Golding:  I think that's great. Great tip. Thank you. I mean, I tend to, for example, so for Oz nine [00:05:00] lines, I'll put the Oz nine first underscore the episode that it's four. So episode 52, underscore the name of my character, Mrs. Sheffield, or sometimes I put Mrs. S depending which doesn't help and then underscore, and I put my own name there as well in case... the people forget who I am. Uh, I'd put one at the end and if it's the first take or if i've sent the next take and so on ,and then I, you know, go up the numbers. So two and so on. Or if it's pickup specifically, I do the same and I write 'pickups 1' after the name of the carrier character. And I've just found putting that name of the show at the beginning really helps.

And if it's a long one, so for example, we've just done. Rosa Kranz and Gilda Stern Aren't Dead,, uh, which everyone should listen to. It's great fun by Emily CA Schneider. And, uh, so yeah, I've just obviously pared that down to the acronym RKAGSAD look at me - i CAN DO letters in a [00:06:00] row. So yeah, so that that's, um, a thing that I find is, is really. A lot easier. And sometimes if like, you know, it season four, episode five, I do S4 underscore E5 and so on. So that essentially, if I'm looking for a specific thing, I can put any one of those keywords in, and, uh, to the search part of, uh, where I store things. And hopefully it should come up with, with the thing.

I mean, as far as, um, how to save, where do you save your, your things? Do you save it directly onto your, your laptop desktop now or. What kind of progression have you made from beginning voice actor to who you have become - you beast! 

Fiona Thraille: Slightly up from the beginning one? Yeah. Um, I do, yeah, I do save it directly onto the laptop and I do also record directly onto the laptop because ...there was a point where I was going to record into my Dropbox, but I [00:07:00] did read online and I don't know how true it is that there can be lag issues and it can basically mess up your audio. So from as far as I'm aware, the best advice is to record onto a file in your, um, when, when you're setting up your DAW, make sure that it goes onto a file actually on your laptop. And then after that, when I export it, then I do save it into my Dropbox actually. Cause I, I have paid for, um, a Dropbox just because of the sheer amount of space. It takes up ...

Sarah Golding: Sheer volume of amazing things you've been cast in.... Cause you're so awesome. Uh, yeah, I mean, but that's interesting actually, cause you get two gigabytes for free of Dropbox, if you didn't know, and that's what I'm doing, I'm feverishly copying off all the time to my hard drive. I've got a little 500 GB sand disc doofer which plugs in and, uh, you know, several other hard  disks full of  ...of... Sarah talking [00:08:00] to a microphone in various accents, but yeah, I cannot condone enough, that's the wrong word.

I cannot recommend enough some the, the, the use of a hard drive and just to ping everything on there. And obviously you must look after that with your life, because then everything is potentially on that. I also store things up in the cloud to. 

Fiona Thraille: Oh, cause you use an Apple computer. Don't you so you have icloud....

Sarah Golding: I do! I'm a Mac. How about you? 

Fiona Thraille: I'm a PC. So yeah. So on that, um, there's cloud storage on... google. I believe I, I did just go with Dropbox in the end because I find it, a lot of people that I work with do use it and you can share files and things like that, but there are lots of other cloud storages   available depending on your...preference....

Sarah Golding: They are!   . 

Fiona Thraille: And, and a lot of it is free. 

Sarah Golding: There are many, yeah. I mean, you can choose actually with the iCloud support from Apple, with regards [00:09:00] to 50 GB, 200 GB or two Trillobites, and you can even share the 200 GB and two trilobite plans with your family, which is what we've got. We've got ridiculous amount of storage for photos and all sorts of other Golding shenanigans.

Fiona Thraille: Trillobites sound like  something you find under the sea, you know, in prehistoric times, don't they?

Sarah Golding:  They probably.... I'm saying it wrong. It's like, yeah, that is a trilobite. I'm meant to be saying Terabytes. That's just hilarious. Okay. (THEY LAUGH) 

One of those days, right? Those weeks, months, years. 

Fiona Thraille: Who was it? I think quite a lot of people who know a lot about computers... say that basically something is not saved until you have it in. Is it three or four different places? So yeah, make sure you've got it on your computer. If you can fit it. My one doesn't fit much on it now. Um, and on a physical hard drive, like you say, and [00:10:00] in somewhere on a cloud and then, you know, that you've.... got it in case there's a house fire or I don't know, cloud breakdown or something...

Don't say such words. 

Sarah Golding: Yes. Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, and also I think it'd be interesting to just have a talk about the different types of files. So MP3 is the most. Bandied about, I feel currently people mostly ask for MP3s -WAVS are becoming more popular with regards to yeah. The, the, the standard of the file really isn't it? So, I mean, I don't know what you understand by those set terms, but essentially I think the, the WAV file. Is lossless, isn't it comparative to MP3?

And essentially it's going to hopefully if all your is working correctly, it's going to record what you've said accurately without actually LOSING the audio quality, uh, in that format and comparatives to, uh, [00:11:00] MP3. I think the file size of it, it works out, uh, from research at 10 point. Zero nine megabytes per minute, which is quite interesting if you've got a large quality recording of that, which is at 44.1 kilohertz at 16 bit. Now, if you're like me and you're thinking, well, what do those numbers mean? I don't know if you can shed any light on what 16 bit means Fiona and how you record your, your groovy sounds .

Fiona Thraille:  Well. Yeah, I mean, What were you saying about, um, WAVS is, is quite important. If you have a WAV and you look at it in the spectrogram, you can see that.... Everything is kind of shaded in and dotted. So you've got all of the information in the file, um, that your microphone picked up. Whereas if you then make that into an MP3, you can see there's a whole bit at the top that's kinda missing. And so [00:12:00] it does... some of the quality is affected, like you say, but it depends also what.... kind of MP3, you're going at how many kilobytes per second. And like you say, w what your sample rate is too- for most audio dramas, the sample rate that people tend to ask for tends and not always, so always read what the producer wants, but it tends to be at 44, 100. Yeah. Kilohertz. 

Sarah Golding: That's my experience too, most... in the main year. 

Fiona Thraille: Yeah. Whereas, if it's for video, it has to be, um, a higher quality to match the video. I'm not quite sure about on what happens with video itself, but that would be 48000. 

Yeah. And 

Sarah Golding: there have been a few folks who have asked me to record at 48, which is basically just keeping even more quality of the sound. And I think it talks about the psychoanalytics really arentwe of what ...the human ear.... Can hear [00:13:00] essentially isn't it? And, uh, and so that just potentially has just a lot more within it that, uh..

Fiona Thraille:  Well, it's quite literally sampling the sound at a faster rate. So it's like, uh, um, I think. Kind of like film where, you know, you get the old, slightly juddery ones because there, or when you, when you watch American TV, that sort of different sample rate, I believe God, I might be talking absolute rubbish here!. But you know, when you see them slam a door and it kind of judders. Because our sample rate is different from the sample rate in America. But if I am talking absolute rubbish, please forgive me because I'm not a qualified sound engineer. This is just things I've sort of picked up a time. 

Sarah Golding: Groovy.... I love it. There'll be a quiz at the end. Right? 

Fiona Thraille: Oh please please write in and say no, why d'you get guests whocan't tell you about sample rates?!?   Um, but yeah, I mean, generally the, um, also with [00:14:00] MP3s, yeah, the. Traditional MP3 that you would get say on a compact disc, again, as far as I'm aware is 128 kilobytes per second. Whereas very often you'll see. Um, again, I think really when someone's producing something, the ideal is to have the very highest quality files to begin with. So if I'm producing, I would prefer. WAVS or FLAC's because they are losless. So you've got all the information because you're going to be putting it all together in side of the thing, and it will be eventually sort of compressed down and losing when, once you send it out into an MP3 at the end for the final results. So the higher quality...

Sarah Golding:  Now a FLAC.... 

Fiona Thraille:  Yeah, FLAC's, um, Basically, you've got the lossless and the lossy types. So MP3s are lossy. So you lose that information. FLAC and WAV's [00:15:00] are not lossy, but like you say, a wave form is really, really big and chunky, but I got, um, advice actually from Stephen J. Cohen. Who's an absolute...

Sarah Golding: ... ledge...

Fiona Thraille: ... genius at, uh, audio. And he was saying. Once you've finished with your files. If you've got wave forms, if you then convert them into FLAC's, the FLAC is capable of it'sagain loss list. It's got all the information, but you can compress it at different levels of compression. Um, and I found this out very recently, actually, because if you use RX Izotope, RX for cleaning your files, You can then if you choose, um, FLAC to export it to, it gives you lots of, um, options of sort of eight compression, six compression three.

And so I did actually ask online, you know, what level of compression is a good idea> it's not losing the [00:16:00] information, it's just squishing it ...and it takes up less space than on your hard drive. But if you need to use that file again, then. The less you squish it, the quicker it is to use and open and for your computer to process.

Okay. So if you can be using the files, you don't want to squish them too much because then maybe your computer, depending on its power, will. Have, you know what, I hate it when I talk about these things, because I have such a fear of saying the wrong thing that I believe that is the way that it works in very much layman's terms.

Sarah Golding: I mean, what, what did you compress that? What did you choose for your general practice?

Fiona Thraille:  I chose something vaguely in the middle, uh, because I thought, well, I do want to, it was something that I wasn't going to be using again. You know, it was pure storage. So I thought, no, I will. I would just, um, put it in the middle.

Super... 

Sarah Golding: So fLAC'sare... Free [00:17:00] lossless audio codecs. So having a look delve into that a little bit more, and if something, if that -if space is an issue for you, that's something you could maybe, maybe consider doing. 

Fiona Thraille: Yeah. You can definitely change your change, your WAV forms into. Into FLACS and that will quite considerably shave uhm, , um, yeah, the space off them.

Sarah Golding: And when you've been, uh, you know, it's been a while and you've been asked to look for a file. What do you do? How do you find what you've, uh, you've done. What's your, your method of finding, uh, hunting for things you wanted to re find? 

Fiona Thraille: Uh, firstly. mild panic. And then, yeah, I will. I mean, you can do it several ways. Can't you? Like you said, with keywords, you can look for the keyword of the script or the company.. Auditions. I tend to get rid of, um, after a while, but, um, the lines I do tend to keep, well, actually I must admit I don't actually keep all of my lines. I don't know if you do, [00:18:00] but I do. If it's something like an audio book, you know, where it is, Could conceivably be needed again in a different form, but for something like an audio drama that I did three or four years ago, I haven't actually saved all of my lines. If it's come out and it's been produced, I'm kind of hoping that the producer will have kept them if they really want to remix it in the future. Is that terrible? Um, I don't know. Some, do you keep all of yours? 

Sarah Golding: I keep...Everything now? Yeah, because I was asked two... Three, well now it's probably far four years ago. I was asked for something, uh, Yeah, that, um, had been a long time since I had had recorded it. And, and, and yeah, I just, I felt awful that I didn't find it... And I have had issues like when, uh, my laptops have crashed or..you know...Given up because of the amount of stuff I've been pinging on to them. Uh, there have been [00:19:00] occasions where I've lost some things. So I did, uh, lose a little bit of a character for Y2K. I did for lovely Karin Heimdahl, and that was frustrating, but, um, that was a tech fail more than a Sarah. Save fail, but yeah, I do try and keep everything. And as I say, I've got several hard drives in play and, uh, and the cloud as well. So it's sort of floating here and there.

I mean, with regards to sharing things, what are your favorite go-tos if you're sending things to, to producers, if they haven't asked a specific way or it's through a Google drive form or something, how do  you - how do you share? 

Fiona Thraille:  Yeah,, ideally, in short... check what you producer wants, because they might have different things. But if you've got a producer that just says, Oh, send me an MP3 and they don't have any further requests on it, what I would tend to do because I've been asked for these sort of levels so much is 192 kilobytes per second, and [00:20:00] sample rate of 44, 100 kilohertz. The sample rate, you can normally start at the beginning of your session when you're in your DAW.

It will actually have that as an option very often, or you will find it in your settings. And when you're exporting into an MP3, it will very often give you more options. And that's when you can choose the kilobyte per second rate, um, for 192 or higher, if you, if you prefer. Um, but obviously bear in mind that the higher you go, the bigger the file will be.

But like I say, hopefully the producer. We'll give you the parameters to use, and then you can do it according to them because, you know, if they don't say what they want, then I'll send them the WAV form. So it is large. Um, and so I, ideally, in, in Dropbox, you do have the option to copy the link to that one file.

Yeah. So, or, or a folder if you've got several files, if it's, if they're dividing the scenes, so you can literally [00:21:00] just copy the link, send it to them. And then they go to the Dropbox and they can find all the files there and download them as they need, or, or, or the whole folder, because, you know, if you've got like 20 files for them, you know, I don't want to have to download everyone individually cause that's a lot of time.

So then they can download that whole folder and that's. Quicker, but I do that because it's a bit, .... Time-saving because then you don't have to wait for it to upload because you can, if, if they want something like WE TRANSFERis a good one, but then you have to actually upload it at your end. It sits in space and then they download it.

Whereas with the Dropbox, it's already there in space and it's just giving them the, you know, the address to it really. So. 

Sarah Golding: That's my go-to actually, I almost always use a Dropbox. I think being able to send, as you say, itemized whole things in one file is hugely useful. And I think the other way I've worked is through [00:22:00] Google drive pinging things into that. So there's a specific place you've been asked to pop things into. So that's just a question of opening it up, dragging and dropping it from my Dropbox probably, or my iCloud saving depending. And I must say as well with TEAMS, for example, uh, as part of the Microsoft office pack, if you're  utilizing that, I think it's something like two terabytes of storage you have with Microsoft office.

And currently with OZ9, we've been utilizing that, uh, we do our table reads and things over teams and, uh, yeah. All our files are, are in there as well. So there's a folder marked audio. And then obviously under the specific episode, we drop our upload, our, our lines and they ping into there. So, so I think, yeah, if you, if you havea little look at... At Microsoft office, I think that's another way of utilizing some great storage.

Fiona Thraille: Do you have to be, um, [00:23:00] do you have to. Have Microsoft office because you have to buy that. Don't you? I was just wondering, cause I've, I've not got Microsoft office. I just wonder if you, can you still join the team if you have a free account?

Sarah Golding:  Yeah, I see.I've entered through two different ways through the OZ9 team, who've got their own setup. Done administration wise. So, so yeah, so they dealt with all of that and the other one is through school. I teach over teams to, to the students. Wonderful, amazing students. I teach there all through that, so I haven't had to pay a thing. So, yeah. 

Um, but yeah, and I think also you can have a, a raid protected NAS drive as well, according to the wonderful Karim Kronfli, uh, and that has local [00:24:00] backup storage, uh, so that if one disk fails, you don't lose everything, which is -if you're working on larger things, probably worth a little investigation into, uh, and if not ping us on the audio drama hub and get Karim working, get his brain cells working to help you and anybody else who knows all the tech side of that kind of thing, uh, grand, and any other ways of, of sharing things. Have you done any odd things before??? 

Fiona Thraille: Oh yeah. The, the other thing I guess I've done is, um, It was once mooted, actually, this is ages back, actually sending a, um, a little drive, you know, through the post. And that was a long time ago. Um, but I mean, you know, if you got really desperate, that is also a way, if you were having real internet problems, um, or the other one with Dropbox, you can actually share folders, but I would sort of urge caution with this because sometimes if you have a [00:25:00] big... dropbox that you pay for, you have gazillion, you know, it's just a ridiculous amount of space in it. Uh, whereas like you were saying, if you have the free account, you might have a more limited space. And so what can happen, um, in the past is, you know, you can share a Dropbox with someone. And if they put too much in it, suddenly you find your own Dropbox is kind of dying, uh, because it literally, if you share the folder, the folder literally will go on your computer or in your Dropbox as well.

Whereas if you share the copy..., the link than it, doesn't, you're just getting it from out of. The cloud. So yeah...

Sarah Golding:  That's a really good point. Yes. I know. I have had people share whole episode things with me before with all of their things on, on artwork or music and everything else. And, and I've had to say, I'm really sorry. I can't, I can't share this because I'm on the free plan. So, so yeah, I think it's definitely something to bear in [00:26:00] mind. Absolutely.

Fiona Thraille:  And if you can get around that by creating a little folder, which is just for files or something. Yeah. And that would, that would be easier.

Sarah Golding:  Sharing that one. Yeah. Superb. And, and how about, I mean, I know with regards to voice actors, there are some, that also do the kind of mixing and the sound design side of things. So it might also not just be dealing with, uh, you know, voice files of their own, but also numerous sound files. Is there anything you can give top tips wise for, for that kind of scenario?

Fiona Thraille:  For storing the sound files? Uh, the effects. Oh, goodness. Yes. Um, it's, it's...

Sarah Golding:  That's whole different beast, isn't it?!!. 

Fiona Thraille: Yes. It gets really complicated because it depends how you want to store them. My particular thing that I think that you got to think about is, um, If you have music or effects, you don't want to be going through every single time to check the creative [00:27:00] commons license or the license that you have for each one. So I actually tend to file initially by license. Um, most of the time I use creative commons, zero, which. Basically it's a, you can remix it, you can tweak it. You can even commercially use it and you don't have to credit the original... person who, who created it, which is lovely that they donate it. And I tried to do the same...

Sarah Golding:  Yeah, legends!, 

Fiona Thraille: ...um, and donate effects and stuff of my own back. But the reason for that is you can do ones where it's accreditation, um, which is a CC by SA, which is an attribution, share it like, so you must credit, you can still kind of tweak it and do other things. But the problem that I've found is. With credits it's where do you put them? You know, because you can't credit every single sound effect in, [00:28:00] in the tr-, in the actual audio credits, . Cause  you bore your audience and yes, you can do it on the website, but is that enough? You know, is it enough? Does it go out in the notes? Do the notes always come up on people's screens? So. I'm always really, really, really over-cautious. So what I tend to do is use CC zero, and then I do credit on the website. Cause I think it's nice to credit. Even if people don't want them ... 's like  yes, you shall be credited. Yes. But then legally it means that. I'm still clear, whatever, you know, even if those credits... 

Sarah Golding: All bases are covered aren't they? 

Fiona Thraille: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, so I, if, if it's music, I will actually take a screenshot of the license very often and keep that in a file with it. So I always know what the license is and just make sure, but like I say, I try not to do anything other than CC zero. Or if you've bought sound effects, you might have a different license. I bought some seagulls cause they were at the time, very [00:29:00] scarce on...

Sarah Golding:   (MAKES 2 RUBBISH SEAGULL NOISES) I could have done it for you. 

Fiona Thraille: It's beautiful. 

Sarah Golding: No...really not...

Fiona Thraille:  That has a different license. And so I just like to keep them there, keep them my little licenses with the sound effects and music, particularly music. Um, and otherwise I, I tend to use, uh, Freesound.org, which I also upload sound effects too. And you can actually tag ADH, audio drama hub, and then other people can, you know, you can know that we're ....one of us!, uh, that you're using. 

Sarah Golding: One of us! One of us! Think that's so good as well. And I know quite a few people have started to do that more often. So yeah, if you are making sound effects and I have done some for a few things I've done of late the, including the Rosa Kranz and Gilda Stern...If anyone needed the sound of a Pearl being spat across a room... I've got you covered. So, uh, yeah, I'm going to be popping that on in the next week or so, so yeah.

Do do utilize that. And I think, uh, you know, do a [00:30:00] plea for, for anything that, you know, you, you want, maybe, maybe people have made it already. If you're, if you're having a specific problem. I have seen that on the hub as well. Uh, folks just. The yeah. Just saying '...has anyone gotthe sound of, uh, well, actually very recently Graz Richards is as called for a man falling out a tree.

So, you know, and there was some hearty responses, which I hope it has been fulfilled. So yeah, I think, uh, utilize , uh, the community, uh, good heart of the people who were making to hopefully find some more of, of groovy sound effects that that will make a difference to your show. And how about archiving that.

Fiona Thraille: Oh, yeah, no, it might be someone desperate to push their friend out of a tree. And now they've got the excuse. That's cool. 

Sarah Golding: What ya sayin' Fiona??? You said that with...slight vehemency...

Fiona Thraille: , But just on FREESOUND,  that the reason I mentioned that is because it has a thing next to your profile, you click on attribution's and it gives you a complete list of [00:31:00] all the sound effect who made it and what license it is all in one go, and you can literally just copy and paste that. And use that in your credits. And that's why I use it a lot. 

Sarah Golding: And, and it dates them as well when you pick them up. So if you think, Oh, I did that last April, then. Yeah. You can just scroll back and find that. And, and that's the other thing, as well as like with sounds, you know, there's certain. Specific names you give to things and you might have a hundred different punches or a hundred different chair scrapes, I think is something that you you've mentioned to me. How do you, how do you archive all of those sounds so that, you know, why is you're looking for? 

Fiona Thraille: Well, this is the thing,  isn't it it's, you know, it depends how you personally.... want to use things and how you feel your, because yeah, if you had something like a metal chair scraping, you could put that in a file for metal, you could put it in a file for chairs, scrapes, or, um, or [00:32:00] upsetting noises, you know, that kind of thing.

And. I looked on pro sound effects. Um, and they've got a thing all about tips on how to store your sound effects and they, they, well, one of their good tips actually is when you've bought or you've gained some sound effects. If they come in zip files, it suggests unzip them and throw away the zip file because you immediately, that is something that... it's quite common to do. I've definitely done it a lot. And you suddenly find you're storing double the amount, you know, and they also, they suggest, I mean, if you're really using... obviously we're talking about voice actors here, so maybe you're only using a few, um, sound effects, but if you're using a lot, what they actually suggest is actually changing the metadata in each file when you get it to put in your own keywords. So then you can very easily search. I think that's quite a lot [00:33:00] of, a lot of work for someone who's not using, um, sound effects a lot. So you might prefer just to put it under things like chairs and you can search by length as well. So if you're looking for a background. You know, um, you might be able to find it more easily that way.

Sarah Golding: Okay, great. Brilliant. I mean, that's also so hugely, hugely useful. And I think because there are a lot of folks who are, you know, running the whole shop as well as doing their voice acting. And I did want to just give them a nod too, cause you're, you're amazing folks. You do do everything, you know, and, uh, hopefully some of that, if you haven't thought of before, you can investigate a little deeper now.

So Fiona, Fiona, thank you so much for sharing all your brilliant expertise there. I mean, I think with regards to sensible behavior, obviously it is key to make sure you are saving these things with the specific names in mind. I think [00:34:00] resaving things as the... normal categories that you decide work for your formatting, your categorization is brilliant.

Um, because yeah, there are some, like, I think it's STORYMORE and you have to type in a hundred different numbers and letter codes as well as.... The episode and take, and it's like this big, long thing, and that doesn't really mean anything to me, but it does obviously mean something to someone who's trying to archive all of their things. So yeah, I think it's key to, to do what works for you. And even if it means perhaps having two copies of that file, one you've renamed and that one, then you'll definitely find it somehow. Uh, but thank you. I think the advice you've given us. AAAAmmmazing . Is there anything you'd like to impart as a last hurrah?

Fiona Thraille: Yeah, actually after I've said all that about, Oh, chair noises and stuff like that, that is how I started doing, um, things when I [00:35:00] was first mixing. But actually now a lot of the time I tend to actually file my sound effects, um, under projects. So if there's a particular project, say it was. Rosa, Rosa and Gilda, then I would put a file Rosa and Gilda and then download all of the sound effects, um, or finding my own sort of older folders, like the chair folder, um, sound effects that I needed and put them into a sound effects file for that show.

And so then three shows later you think, Oh, I had a, you know, Bleeping cicada in such and such. And I find it easier to remember from the shows they were in, rather than something that's quite abstract, you know? Oh, I remember number four of my  by cicada file was quite good!. 

Sarah Golding: By [00:36:00] Beebopaloobopabopbambooommm.... Yeah. 

Fiona Thraille: So, so you could actually, you don't have to store effects, you know, unless you want a particular, um, Library of them. There are so many online that are available. Um, and you can also join, you know, um, some of the best sound libraries, things like SOUNDSNAP. Um, there's a fee for that and you can join that and they have pretty much everything under the sun that you could ever want. So if you're using them a lot, you could either do it from an online source.... or download them per project. And that's kind of what I tend to do now. 

Sarah Golding: See, look at all thatadvice that was super

Fiona Thraille: This is just from a layperson's perspective, you know, it's not from a, an expert. 

Sarah Golding: Well, I think it's from someone who's working in this particular field right now, talking language of other people who will be able to understand it. Right? So I think you've done a [00:37:00] bloomin marvelous job, so thank you very much. And it's so, so, so lovely to have you on MADIVA!. I hope your next exciting adventures in audio go well.... what can folks expect to hear from you hopefully in the next, uh, next year?

Fiona Thraille:  I am working on a series for Dashing Onions Audio at the moment called ''Perfect retreat'. And. I am actually, yeah, I'm quite excited about it because it's going to be ...it's usual kind of odd, rather supernatural kind of, um, thing. And, but this time it will hopefully be able to showcase a lot of. ...additional talent that people have, you know, in songwriting and poetry and even ART I'm going to put up a webpage for it as well. So I'm going to be looking for yeah. What people have been doing during lockdown. It's not about lockdown, uh, but [00:38:00] just people expressing themselves, and if they... want to, um, Submit something, then I will have all that up. Um, cause I think it would be nice to have, you know, a place for creativity to go. And this kind of fits the story as well. 

Sarah Golding: I agree. Yes. There needs to be more outlets. I know there are quite a few, but there still needs to be more because I think ...

 (MUSIC BED CREEPS INNNNN UNDER....) 

... creativity is one way of getting through all the trauma -for want  of a better word- of our last...er... Year or so, so... sounds amazing. I look forward to seeing that on the Dashing Onions feed, and happy writing, happy creating, you absolute legend! Thank you for coming on. 

Fiona Thraille: Thank you so much for having me. It's lovely to chat again!. 

Sarah Golding: Woohoo! Okay...Bye!

Fiona Thraille: Byyyeee.... (LAUGHS) .

 

MUSIC: [ MUSIC ENDS]

 

NAMING FILES TIPS
DIFFERENT TYPES OF FILES - MP3, FLAC, WAV
DROPBOX USAGE
FILING ETIQUETTE AND Creative Commons LICENSES
FIONA'S FUTURE WORKS...