My BrowserHistory WOD journey began without a hitch… or so I thought.
The first issue I had was finding an adequate recording software to use. I thought that I could use the built in Game bar feature from Windows 10. However, it was only able to record one window at a time while I needed to capture the entire screen. My next choice was trying out OBS studio. I heard good things about it and knew actual Youtubers and Streamers who use it. So I guessed it couldn’t be too bad. Sadly I was mistaken. Every time I tried to record (around 10 attempts) my voice would cut out each time I paused to take a breath or at the end of sentences. Then it took 3 seconds to come back in. I was very frustrating finishing a WOD only for your mic to be off 50% of the time and having to restart. I thought it was the settings or even the room I was in but nothing worked. So I asked the TA about it, and she said to try a different recording software, so I uninstalled obs and acquired flashback express. I was the one that the teacher used so it has to work I thought. I was underwelmed at the products age and its lacking features in the free version but I powered through. But it was midnight and over two hours had passed since I began trying to do the first WOD.
–The next morning–
I prepared myself for the worst praying that the new software would do what OBS could not. Luckly I was afraid of nothing the software worked fine and I uploaded it to Youtube. Finally, I fininshed the first one, two more to go. It took me around an hour to get the WOD completed in under 25 minutes, I took 3 tries in a row. What I learned from this wod was that practice makes perfect. I had to look up the answers so many times that eventually I remembered what to type without searching on the net. After I finished I watched the screencast of an example of how to do it. I quickly realized that I didn’t do it the same way as the video. Which was a good think if it still works.
–Wod 2–The Fallen Tragedy–Twice the pride double the fall.
Everything seemed to be coming along. So I started on BrowserHistory 2, however little did I know my arch nemesis, the stuttering bad mic had returned. I felt like Obi-wan on Mustafar with Anakin. “You where the chosen one flashback express, you where supposed to defeat the audio errors not join them.” So I finished my recording after several attempts and when I played it back I could only hear one word per sentence. Stunned I was ready to explode, “Impossible how could this happen now when all the other ones where fine where did I go wrong?” I thought. Not willing to redo the recording since it was just under the Rx time I set out on a way to fix the audio. This eventually took me over 3 hours. I determined I needed to download “Audacity” an audio editting software, and an etension for editing the audio of a mp4 file. Once I boosted the quiet part of the recording, as it turns out all the words where still there just reduced to a volume with only a small rodent could hear. I also cut out the backround fan and normalized the parts of the recording which peaked and bursted my ear drums open.
Then I had to save the file as an mp3 file, convert the original video to a mp4 without sound and splice the two files together insync using VLC media player. Since my laptop was old it took 40 mins to convert to remove the sound and 40 more mins to add the new sound. The moral of this story is to not cut corners and take the fast way out, it may lead to more hardship in the long run, also buy a good mic.
–Wod 3–The next day
When I started browserhistory 3 I was completely burned out from the previous day. When I tried to do the wod I had completely no clue how to do it. After attempting on my own for 20 mins I decided to look at the screencast for help. After watching the video I still was lost so I watched it three times. I really had a trouble with getting the paragraphs into 3 columns. But over trial and error and nearly banging my head against the keyboard in frustration I finally did it. And thank god the audio wasn’t messed up. One lesson I think you should take away from this story is to never give up, despite all odds there is always a way out of that hole you dug yourself in. (Which may bury you alive one day).
–The End–